By Dr. Michael J.K. Bokor
Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2015
Folks, a careful monitoring of the situation in which the magistrates and judges, police prosecutors, and staff of the Judicial Service have been placed by Anas' undercover investigation of their scandalous conduct in office has revealed to me how much traumatized they are. It tells me that they are really living in hell on this earth.
Those scandalized magistrates (or judges of the lower courts) who have been suspended by the Judicial Council (or Chief Justice?) know how hard it is to have the shoe pinch them!!
And those judges of the superior courts doing deeds of derring-do to have the matter abandoned or twisted in their favour must by now have realized their folly.
The worst affected of them is Justice Paul Uuter Dery, who is running around in circles, doing legal acrobatics for nothing. He has set himself an uphill task that will crush whatever is left of him. Why is he the only one among the scandalized personalities to go all this distance? Because he thinks that Anas' evidence against him is imaginary or that he isn't involved in any deal of the sort as exposed? Or what else?
And he is ably being led by John Akparibo Ndebugri. I wonder how many cases he has ever won, though. All he is doing is blowing hot air in the media as if that is the panacea to the legal tussle.
When the scandal erupted, Justice Dery quickly took to court, thinking that he could use technicalities to scuttle efforts to expose him and his accomplices. He filed a suit to stop the airing of the recordings by Anas. It didn't wash with anybody.
Then, he sued Anas and the media houses playing the frontline role in publicizing the scandal. That didn't work for him either.
Justice Dery and his gang physically sought to intimidate the committee appointed by the Chief Justice to probe the matter and walked out of sessions, having already filed a suit against that committee's work. Their walking out of the session hasn't stopped the committee from working, even if it did so haltingly while waiting for the determination of the suit against it.
Now, the suit against Anas and the others has been thrown out, but Justice Dery isn't ready to call it quits and wait for the Fate that will befall him and his fellow accomplices. He has chosen the most weird path to take, which is to petition the Judicial Council (that is, the Chief Justice) to investigate the dismissal of the contempt application he filed against some media personnel in the country. (See http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/Dery-petitions-CJ-over-contempt-case-384749).
Is this man really serious? The substantive case of bribery, corruption, and the subversion of justice that has been raised against him is more gripping to the Chief Justice/Judicial Council than this so-called contempt of court matter that he is pursuing as a desperate manouevre to free himself from the claws of the law. But he is deceived.
How can the Chief Justice, who is heavily invested in this scandal because of its huge negative impact on her administration and personal integrity, afford to stray away from this matter of huge public interest? She won't tolerate any interference or deflection of the sort coming from Justice Dery.
Having assessed issues up to this point, I am certain that Justice Dery is at his wit's end and forcing desperately to hang on before the axe strikes him. He knows what technicalities can do in legal battles; but he is scared at each juncture that his effort is deflated.
Now, he and the other accomplices are seeing themselves in the mirror and are scared of the impressions. Having allowed their conscience to be bought to subvert justice, there is no way they can redeem themselves. It must be clear to them by now that those they wrongfully convicted because they were induced with money and material gifts (bags of garri, fresh snails, tubers of yam, massage at 9 am, guinea fowls, etc.) have had their prayers answered.
Those wrongly convicted people and those let off the hook because of the subversion of justice may have their own impressions formed by the Anas expose; but Justice Dery and his accomplices are really suffering!!
Now, they should know how it hurts when the law is twisted. In their case, though, their real trauma is yet to set in. Recourse to mere technicalities won't save them. And when it is all over, they will go down as the architects of their own doom.
For Justice Dery alone, the hell that he is living in now seems to be getting hotter and more fearful anytime he makes any move to free himself. Lady Fate is coming down in fury to deal with him and his accomplices; and we wait enthusiastically for that moment. Naniama!!
I shall return…
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