The Member of Parliament for Dormaa East Constituency, Paul Twum Barimah, from the New Patriotic Party (NPP), has criticised former President John Dramani Mahama for his recent pledge to appoint lawyers associated with the National Democratic Congress (NDC) to judicial positions.
The lawmaker argues that Mr. Mahama’s comments regarding the current state of the judiciary are unfairly disparaging.
“We build institutions and then run them down and then we expect to get the best out of them, forgetting that we are the cause of that,” he told Media General‘s Komla Klutse in an interview on Wednesday, September 6.
This comes after Mr Mahama took on the judiciary, questioning the appointments made by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo in the recent past.
“You can see what the current president has done,” Mr Mahama said while addressing the 3rd Annual Lawyers Conference of the NDC on Saturday, September 2.
“He has appointed the biggest number of judges onto the bench, it is more than 80 towards 100 and counting.
“He has packed the court and we know they have packed the court because they want to avoid accountability after they have left office.”
The Dormaa East MP, however, said that regardless of the batch of attorneys chosen for the bench, the institutions must be set up such that once they are a part of the system, all appointments are improved.
“It doesn’t matter whether an NPP, NDC, CPP, or GCPP person(sic), whoever I think is appointed into a certain institution, we should be able to make our institutions in such a way that, the system within the institution will purge you of any political thinking.”
For him, everyone has the right, nonetheless, to criticise an institution when it falters but, at the same time, give it praise when it does well.
“So, immediately you get into the system, automatically you will be refined. That is how we are supposed to project our institutions.
“So where we think the institution has done something wrong, let’s criticise them. Where we think they deserve applause, let’s give them that applause.”
He said if Mr Mahama appoints a luminary like Tsatsu Tsikata, no one will stop him because of his pedigree.
“For me if His Excellency, the former president, says, .Come, I’m bringing you to the bar, or even if someone says he is bringing Tsatsu [Tsikata] to the Supreme Court alone, are we going to stop that?”