His Excellency John Dramani Mahama has fired the Chief Justice of Ghana, Gertrude Torkornoo, following a recommendation made by an inquiry of a five-m
His Excellency John Dramani Mahama has fired the Chief Justice of Ghana, Gertrude Torkornoo, following a recommendation made by an inquiry of a five-member committee. The Chief Justice has been suspended since April after three individuals petitioned.
What did the commission find out?
The commission reported that grounds of misbehaviour had been established and hence recommended her the hot seat.
The committees recommended that the president fire Justice Gertrude Torkornoo.
The panel examined 10,000 pages of evidence provided by 13 witnesses for petitioner Daniel Ofori to reach its conclusion.
The chief justice provided testimony and summoned 12 additional witnesses, including specialists.
The other two petitions are still pending. In 2023, Ms. Torkornoo was nominated by former President Nana Akufo-Addo to be Ghana’s third female chief justice.
She is the first current chief justice to be investigated and removed from her position.
In Ghana, chief justices have job security, meaning they can only be removed from their position under specific circumstances, such as incompetence or misconduct.
In April, the opposition New Patriotic Party criticised her suspension, calling it a political attack and an effort to weaken judicial independence.
Several lawsuits disputing the removal process did not succeed. She had previously overcome a removal request during Akufo-Addo’s administration, which determined that the petition had “several deficiencies.”
The current governing party, which was in opposition at the time, had accused her of bias in some of her decisions.
Former attorney general, Alfred Tuah-Yeboah, criticises the decision;
Alfred Tuah-Yeboah, former attorney general, has criticised the government’s decision to remove the chief justice, calling it a “dangerous precedent”.
“The petition that I read showed no proper grounds to warrant her removal… If the threshold is what we read in the petition, then I fear for the future of the judiciary,” he is quoted as saying.
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