Prof Kweku Azar writes…I am still in shock.

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The Judicial Service has used taxpayers funds to hire a private attorney to issue threats to the taxpayers and to demand their silence on how it performs its public functions!!!!!

I know this is Ghana, where power is knowledge, right and might.

But this is too much of an aberration and abomination even for us!

Justice emanates from the people and is administered on their behalf by the Judiciary.

It is, therefore, way below the belt for the judicial service to characterize these same people as uneducated and ill-informed, merely to justify a self-serving stricter view of permissible criticism of judges or the justice system.

The deeply flawed characterization is reminiscent of that used by a British Judge in 1899 to justify why committals for contempt by scandalizing the court is obsolete in the UK but is fit for use in small colonies, consisting principally of colored populations (McLeod v. St. Aubyn ([1899] AC 549, p. 56).

The characterization is not just demonstrably false and utterly needless but it also appears to be a calculated effort to shield the judiciary from public accountability.

The Judicial Service is in contempt of the people and it must retract and apologize for the comment with urgent dispatch. It must also withdraw that whole statement, whose primary, if not sole effect, is to chill expression on court proceedings.

Further, those behind the contemptuous remarks have lost the right to serve in their positions. They ought to resign from the service or, failing that, be fired.

Those behind this putsch must

RetractApologizeandResign!

Da Yie!