In any situation requiring the prevalence of equity by way of evoking truth which simultaneously invokes justice through the law courts, an offended party who suffers injustice may choose this avenue for redress. This is about the most sensible thing to do for settlement of disputes through Court process or any other such appointed body. The Courts of law have not been established to remain stillborn in their shell but to stay active in determining disputes based on processes with requirements that eventually give birth to truth in honesty. If all were well, the law courts and their established affiliate institutions would be musiums but since humans have the tendency to knowingly offend and assume a right to do so against another, a systematic approach to securing justice has conveniently innured in civilised societies across the world.
Juridical justice has not been an alien entity in Ghana as a way of seeking redress for wrong done. There have been instances where both parties feel wronged and proceed to seek redress, especially at police stations with claims and counter claims with heads held high in the processs. This suggests how welcoming justice is as perceived in the minds of all. In the circumstance, both winner and loser gracefully accept whatever outcome and their terms of settlement. In some situations, an offender may either choose to hide and be fetched to face justice or deny having wronged only to be proved to have wronged where appropriate. To such an entity, a wish for justice to have been disabled is always high whereby several scenarios for dismissing justice come into play in their mind.
Soon after the 2012 Presidential election results were announced by Kwadwo Afari Djan, upon the petitioners’ dissatisfaction and ensuing intent to contest the results so declared in Court caused stair in the minds of their would-be respondents that Began to have expression in their conduct. Contrary to the perceptions and misconceptions of detractors, instead of a supposed expected violent approach in expressing grievance over the results as would have been the situation had the opportunity arrised for some people, an imminent threat to go to Court was greeted with scorn. An impression was created in the minds of the supposed would-be respondents that the threat was empty as well as impotent because there would be no evidence available to the supposed wronged. Thinking that all holes had been covered including if at-all any witnesses such as Obassanjo, STL etc, should they be called, a credible testimony worth hearing to over-turn the results so declared could not be established; but lo, these petitioners, mature and clever as they are, produced evidence to support their claim that is lifeless, impersonal and cannot be corrupted (pink sheets, electoral material).
There and then emerged a claim of immunity as an issue which was as equally debunked as hollow as it was lame and non-functional in the circumstances. Amongst various wishful scenarios aimed at disabling justice in the matter that had eventually come to be established against the perceived respondents were:
• Calling 11,916 witnesses to counter same number of polling stations, all of whom to be allowed to give evidence and be cross-examined; an issue that was constructively rubbished by their Lordship Supreme Court Justices by vitoing evidence on sworn affidavit only and only to be called to give oral testimony where necessary
• Joinder application in support by NDC whose candidate was beneficiary of the claimed wrong-doing.
• Attempted further hundreds of joinder applications by some scallywags never saw daylight
• A matter was brought against the Supreme Court for agreeing to sit everyday continuous throughout the week including weekends and public holidays as well as the Court’s decision to cap any review of its final decision on any Presidential petition
• A prolonged cross-examination came into play involving ploughing and reploughing one and the same infertile field by use of different tools and mechanisms similar to fishing in a barren poisoned sea or probably as if to invoke some magical spell to incarnadine the blue seas.
• Complaints, albeit cooked and frivolous, of inadequate number of ‘pink sheets’ supplied by the petitioners to the Supreme Court Registrar to be served on respondents were launched, occassioning an invitation of independent auditing firm KPMG to count and audit ‘pink sheets’ in the vaults of the Court.
• An Amicus Curiae chipped in as some of the fascinating intervening comic digressions that came to put some ‘spices’ in the hitherto 12 sittings of boring repetitious cross-examination. The Amicus Curiae character played was all comedy but the lack of appropriate designer costume and face painting for a concert staging.
• Witness came to reframe electoral laws, rules and theories to suit what he, representing 1st & 3rd respondents respectively encapsulated into one believed should be how the laws, rules and theories must read and be interpreted to suit their case but unfortunately those were stated otherwise by 2nd respondent who is the ultimate authority on elections. All or most of the above aim invariably at prolonging the Presidential petition hearing ad infinitum.
When all is not well but there appear pretences on the face and in the minds of the nocent, guilt or presumed innocence which requires making out under such and similar circumstances make offenders feel jittery and would want to curse justice, wishing it didn’t exist at-all.
In spite of all these, the route to justice in this Presidential elections petition which began on a narrow footpath is widdening by the hour and by the day into a sort of autobahn as events unfold through long winding circumambages of both withnesses and counsel, an unwittingly self-contriving mode usually adopted when in desperation to make a ponit where it doesn’t exist. These scheming technicalities adopted by the fidgetting respondents have involved hired personalities like Wereko Brobey, Kwame Pianim, Nyaho Tamakloe etc into making unsavoury statements aimed at psyching-out to dissuade the petitioners and their followers from pursuing the matter. Nana Addo has been personally attacked with several attempts made to frustrate his efforts when even a scallywag like Justice Francis Pegah filed a writ in a High Court, challenging his professional status as a lawyer which he lost in disgrace.

Justice is not only graceful, it is noble, virtuous, righteous; it is exhaulting; it is moral, ethical and self-giving. If all were well, if in fact there was nothing wrong with the December 2012 Presidential elections albeit free and ‘fair’; if the winner of the Presidential elections truly and in veritable truth won the majority votes of Ghanaians to be elected President of Ghana, why would the supposed elected President subscribe to such a long winding process that would eventually exonerate his claim to having genuinely and successfully won his Presidency. It is a common believe from utterances and conduct so far elicited by the respondents that all is not not well. Juridical justice therefore, in their created circumstances as esteemed in their perception and imagination has assumed an image of a scary monster, a perception they would adore had all been well. It is therefore the wish of the respondents to frustrate and disable justice from functioning.

Adreba Kwaku Abrefa Damoa; (London, (UK)