{"id":21935,"date":"2025-09-04T18:09:27","date_gmt":"2025-09-04T18:09:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/expressnewsghana.com\/?p=21935"},"modified":"2025-09-04T18:09:27","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T18:09:27","slug":"selective-knots-and-strange-silences-elizabeth-ohene-come-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/expressnewsghana.com\/?p=21935","title":{"rendered":"Selective Knots and Strange Silences; Elizabeth Ohene, Come Again"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dear Nyaaba,<\/strong><\/p>\n

Time was when I beamed with pride when I heard Elizabeth Ohene on BBC. She was without doubt a journalist par excellence. She made Africa proud and Ghana prouder.<\/strong><\/p>\n

When she returned home, to party politics, I was, at first, glad that the government in which she served had chosen a professional of the highest standards, but that euphoria soon diminished. As the days went by, and with every pronouncement, she steadily chipped away at that hard-earned reputation for objectivity and fair mindedness.<\/p>\n

Nyaaba, sadly, her descent into the quagmire of jaundiced perspectives appears not to have abated, and consistent with that unfortunate trend, she very recently penned an opinion on the sacking of former Chief Justice Torkonoo, which opinion I seek to opine on.<\/p>\n

Elizabeth Ohene\u2019s latest article, \u201cREMOVING A CHIEF JUSTICE,\u201d attempts to draw a chilling parallel between the gruesome murder of judges in 1982 and the constitutional removal of a sitting Chief Justice in 2025. It is a breathtaking stretch, both in logic and in moral integrity.<\/p>\n

She speaks of a \u201cparalysing not\u201d in her stomach\u2014felt in 1982 and now again in 2025. But what should give any reader pause is the selective nature of this moral nausea. The knot appears only when her ideological opponents act\u2014however legally or procedurally. It is mysteriously absent when egregious abuses of power occur under administrations she is sympathetic toward.<\/p>\n

Let us not pretend: the removal of Chief Justice Gertrude Torkornoo\u2014whether one agrees with it or not\u2014followed a constitutional process. If the author has evidence that due process was violated, she ought to present it. But to collapse the distinction between legal removal by a sitting president and the extrajudicial abduction and murder of judges during military rule is intellectually dishonest. It is also an insult to the memory of Justices Cecilia Koranteng-Addow, Kwadwo Agyei Agyapong, and Fred Poku Sarkodee.<\/p>\n

Where was the knot, Madam?<\/p>\n

Where was this writer\u2019s paralyzing not when:<\/p>\n