Chief Justice Gertrude Torkonoo and Kwaku Ansa-Asare

Former Director of the Ghana School of Law, Kwaku Ansa-Asare, has weighed in on the ongoing debate surrounding the recent public address by suspended Chief Justice Gertrude Torkornoo regarding her removal process.

He criticised her call for a “public hearing”, asserting that constitutional matters of such gravity should not be aired publicly.

Speaking on Citi FM’s Eyewitness News on June 25, 2025, Ansa-Asare described the Chief Justice’s remarks as inappropriate, suggesting that the address was merely an attempt to court public sympathy.

“Ghanaians wanted to support her to go all in, and then at the end of the process, everyone will see whether the process was transparent. She has done more than 50% and now she is saying that the process was skewed, but she cannot resign? And that I realised that I have got to a corner, a place of no return, so public here I come for you to hear my side,” a report by citifmonline.com quoted him as saying.

Ansa-Asare further criticised Justice Torkornoo’s leadership of the judiciary, saying her current situation reveals broader problems in the justice system; problems, he said, she didn’t address during her three years in charge.

“What she is actually telling the whole nation is that she is supervising a broken justice delivery system, and for the first time, she is a victim of such a system. Now if she is a victim of the broken justice system in this country, ‘na who cause am’?” he questioned.

“She has been Chief Justice for three years now. Didn’t she know that she was supervising a broken system that ought to be fixed?

“If now she is saying she is a victim of a system that is supposed to deliver justice to aggrieved persons, and now she is an aggrieved person, and has been given a raw deal, her message to Ghanaians should rather be that the justice system is broken and needs fixing,” he continued.

Ansa-Asare’s remarks follow Chief Justice Torkornoo’s first public response since a petition was filed seeking her removal, in which she expressed concerns over alleged constitutional breaches and procedural lapses in the Article 146 impeachment process.

VKB/VPO

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