Diana Asonaba Dapaah, former Deputy Attorney-General and Minister for Justice, has come to the defense of Chief Justice Gertrude Torkornoo, describing the petitions for her removal from office as baseless and troubling.
In a strongly worded statement, Dapaah warned that the readiness to find a prima facie case in the current petitions should alarm all “right-thinking Ghanaians.”
“One must wonder how a decision taken by a panel of no fewer than five justices, of which the Chief Justice was only one, can be grounds for removal,” she said.
“Some of the same justices are now sitting on the committee reviewing this matter,” Dapaah questioned why long-resolved internal matters—some dating back over a decade before the Chief Justice assumed her current role—were being dredged up.
“If judicial staff believe they were unfairly dismissed, why haven’t they pursued legal remedies? How do such administrative actions now justify removal from office?” she asked.
Dapaah also dismissed claims that the Chief Justice is politically exposed as ill-defined and misguided, noting that all judicial appointments in Ghana go through a political process involving the President, Parliament, and the Judicial Council.
“By this argument, every judge magistrates included—is politically exposed,” she added. “So are we saying no judge is ever qualified to be Chief Justice?” Dapaah further criticized what she described as misinformation about the Chief Justice’s entitlements, referring to a “false narrative” about travel privileges and citing the official judicial travel policy.
In closing, the former deputy minister warned that the issue goes beyond the Chief Justice, calling it “a fight for the dignity of every judge” and for the memory of judicial martyrs.
“This is not a Gertrude Torkornoo fight. It is a fight for our democracy,” she said, urging Ghanaians to seek the truth behind the headlines.
