Att: Mrs. Ghartey, Ghana Bar Association’s about-face must be called out – for the record – Kasise Ricky Peprah writes

The Constitution cannot be a convenient weapon today and an embarrassing inheritance tomorrow.

There is something profoundly disconcerting about an institution that discovers the sanctity of constitutionalism only when power changes hands.

Something even more troubling when that institution once kept its distance from the very constitutional process whose offspring it now brandishes with such flourish, even solemnity.

The Ghana Bar Association must answer for its apparent about-face.
Not because it is above criticism, but precisely because it claims a professional and constitutional conscience that ought to be consistent, principled and incapable of being rented by political convenience.

Let us begin with the historical record.
The Consultative Assembly that prepared the draft of Ghana’s 1992 Constitution was established under PNDC Law 253. The Ghana Bar Association declined to participate in that process.

I was an undergraduate at the time.
And on several occasions, I went into the chambers of the Assembly—not as a delegate, not as a participant, but as a curious young student, eager to listen and to understand.

I eavesdropped.

I heard, firsthand, the condescension with which the Ghana Bar Association treated the process.

I heard the denigration of the entire exercise.

I witnessed an attitude that seemed to regard the Assembly and its work with something approaching contempt.

I do not rely on hearsay.

I was there. I listened.

That is why the GBA’s present-day constitutional grandstanding deserves a little historical interrogation.

The Association was entitled to boycott the process. It was entitled to criticise the PNDC. It was entitled to reject the political circumstances under which the Constitution was being fashioned.
But a boycott is not authorship.
And history does not become more flattering simply because an institution later discovers the usefulness of the document it once dismissed.

The 1992 Constitution belongs to the Ghanaian people. It is not the private property of the Bar, the judiciary, the political class or the fraternity of constitutional interpreters.

There is a persistent and troubling impression that the GBA becomes particularly restless whenever governments associated with progressive or social-democratic politics attempt to pursue transformative programmes.

That impression deserves scrutiny.

Let us be absolutely clear: a progressive government is not above the law. A government does not become constitutional merely because its intentions are noble. Nor does a policy become unconstitutional merely because it unsettles the legal establishment.
The Bar has every right, indeed, a duty, to challenge executive overreach.

But constitutional vigilance must not become a euphemism for political hostility.

The standard must be the same for all.

When a conservative government violates the Constitution, condemn it.
When a progressive government violates the Constitution, condemn it.
When a government pursues a legitimate social transformation, scrutinise the policy without caricaturing it.
When a policy is politically disagreeable but constitutionally permissible, say so honestly.

That is independence.
Anything less is partisan constitutionalism disguised in the language of legal principle.

THE BAR CANNOT BE A POLITICAL WEATHERCOCK

The GBA’s constitutional and professional responsibilities demand consistency. Independence is not measured by the thunder of press conferences, the solemnity of conference speeches or the frequency with which the phrase rule of law is invoked.

It is measured by the standards one applies when the political winds change.
A Bar that condemns executive overreach must also be prepared to scrutinise judicial overreach

A Bar that defends institutional independence must not become an apologist for institutional privilege.

A Bar that invokes constitutional safeguards must recognise that those safeguards constrain everyone, including the legal profession.

And a Bar that now speaks with such authority about the sanctity of the 1992 Constitution must not pretend that its own refusal to participate in the Consultative Assembly is an inconvenient detail unworthy of public memory.

It is part of the record.

The GBA has made important contributions to Ghana’s legal and democratic life. Those contributions deserve recognition.
But no institution, however eminent, is entitled to immunity from scrutiny.

The 1992 Constitution emerged from a complicated political process. The Consultative Assembly was part of that process. The GBA’s boycott was part of that history. Its reported contempt for the exercise, which I personally witnessed, is also part of the historical memory that must not be erased for the comfort of contemporary constitutional sermons.

If the Association believes its earlier position was justified, let it explain why.

If it believes the boycott was a mistake, let it say so.

If it believes the Constitution deserves reverence despite its refusal to participate in its making, let it distinguish reverence for the people’s Constitution from any pretence of ownership over its birth.

But let us have the honesty to ask:
Is the GBA defending constitutionalism, or defending a preferred political arrangement under the cover of constitutionalism?

That question is not an attack on the legal profession. It is a demand for accountability from an institution that routinely demands accountability from everyone else.

Ghana does not need a Bar that is perpetually at war with governments it dislikes and ceremonially deferential to governments it favours.

Ghana needs a Bar that is fearless before power, regardless of the colour of the government; intellectually honest about its own history; and sufficiently humble to recognise that the Constitution it brandishes belongs to the people.

The GBA may disagree with progressive governments. It may challenge their policies. It may take them to court. That is democracy.
But the about-face, if that is what the record and present conduct reveal, must be called out.

For the record.

For consistency.

For the Republic.

Constitutionalism is not a costume one wears when the political wind is favourable.

Respectfully yours,

Kasise Ricky Peprah
The Honourrebel Siriguboy