When lawyers talk about law without legalese, average minds benefit from the law, and can even pretend to make some sense of what lawyers try to do in open court.
The subject of tribunals is not part of the legalese we try to run away from.
We remember how the tribunals came upon us, like kakai when they were in their elements, or like kakalika when they were considerate.
We have some understanding of reasonable concepts in law such as proof beyond reasonable doubt, preponderance of probabilities, and what a plea bargain seeks to achieve.
Tribunal palpitations
For difficult terms like mandamus and certiorari, we shall leave them for those who suddenly see reason to invoke the terror of tribunals in Ghana at this time, instead of making the courts work better by reducing delays and modernising old and tired processes.
From surmounting chronic difficulties in bail applications, to waiting forever to see the end of some cases, our justice system continues to see reform, government after government.
We have many challenges in the sector. Yet, our judiciary has proven to be a vanguard of our rights and freedoms. We can boast of some very fine ladies and gentlemen at the bar and on the bench.
Are public tribunals the new fix to an old problem?
This month, Parliament passed the Public Tribunals Bill 2026, which would establish regional and district tribunals to handle cases relating to mining, tax, customs, economic fraud, narcotics and other special matters.
The raison d’etre of the Bill is to improve accountability in the justice system, ensure swifter delivery and strengthen the fight against corruption.
Many Ghanaians my age still palpitate at the sheer thought of tribunals. Some of us remember the harsh sentences the tribunal chairman handed down to petty criminals.
One of my favorite teachers in my secondary school days was the first chairman of the Brong Ahafo Regional Tribunal in Sunyani. He had a very friendly disposition and related to students like his peers.
Yet, we struggled to separate his no-nonsense and ‘uncompromising’ history of slapping criminals with seventy years jail sentences, from his usually humane and naturally kind persona.
He taught for free, sometimes spending his own money to buy us fufu and akrantee.
Justice on wheels
Our teacher didn’t come to class like kakai or even a kakalika, but the apparition of the tribunal system, known for speedy justice and harsh sentences, followed him, especially when he came to school in his official government vehicle.
It was more like the tribunal on wheels. Even as young people who had not had any brush with the justice system, we found something intriguing about justice delivery in the tribunal system. We didn’t have a full appreciation of the inner workings of the judiciary and may have struggled to tell the difference between a civil case and criminal proceedings at a superior court. Yet, something seemed off about the tribunals.
We feared them and wondered whether there would ever be true justice when justice was speedily dispensed. It looked like something was sacrificed.
Looking back some thirty years, those fears do not seem unfounded.
Apart from the heavy jail sentences, what did the tribunals contribute to the administration of justice in Ghana?
How did they enrich the rule of law and promote national development, as the newly passed 2026 Bill seeks to achieve with the reintroduction of the tribunals?
People who cannot remember the past risk repeating the mistakes of yesterday. What do we really remember the tribunals for?
When the Minority in Parliament, led by their leader Alexander Afenyo Markin, walked out in the final hours leading to the passage of the Bill a few weeks ago, we were transported to those toxic moments in our past when we suspected that the tribunals were political extensions and appendages of the Government of the day.
Ayine won, Afenyo lost
It was not popular practice for critics of the government or independent-minded lawyers, to be appointed chairmen of public tribunals, and it didn’t seem very likely for a government critic or an opposition member to win a case.
When Attorney General Dr Dominic Ayine breezed through with the passage of the law while the minority merely lost it and walked away, we were served the same cocktail of partisan and executive dominance that characterised the workings of public tribunals years ago. Ayine won, Afenyo lost. That was tribunal justice.
To be fair to Dr Ayine and other supporters of the Bill–both in the legal fraternity and civil society, public tribunals are not alien to our justice delivery architecture.
Articles 126 and 142 of the 1992 Constitution recognise the role of public tribunals and the gap they seek to plug–to promote judicial independence, fairness and prevent delays in justice delivery.
Chaired by a lawyer who qualifies to be a justice of the High Court, the panel would also include some non-lawyers.
In the 2026 Bill, Clause 4 supports and maintains this composition.
This is where the minority departed from the majority and sought to remove it from the Bill.
As legal minds slug it out with countervailing arguments about whether tribunals would produce a cure to sicknesses in our judicial system, more careful observers are wondering whether we would not produce a different sickness altogether when we prescribe the same cure to a misdiagnosed ailment.
For instance, tribunals deal with criminal cases only. There are never-ending delays in civil matters.
We have not fully dealt with the concept of ‘political judges’. Finally, let’s be confrontationally honest about what we seek to achieve: Will the tribunals come like Kakai?
By KWESI TAWIAH-BENJAMIN
Tissues Of The Issues
bigfrontiers@gmail.com
Ottawa, Canada
