REFORMS IN THE JUSTICE DELIVERY SYSTEM MUST BEGIN FROM THE DESK OF THE CHIEF JUSTICE

Her Ladyship the Chief Justice, Justice Georgina Wood, is reported to have expressed her frustrations over the delay in the justice delivery system in Ghana, focusing on land litigation and has called on the bench to change their attitude to those cases.
Agreed, it is even worse when docket of cases go missing from the registry of the courts.In fact, there are many cases in our courts, even in the so-called Fast Track High Court that has been adjourned for years for reasons best known to the presiding judges.
In some instances, members of the bench are beneficiaries of some of the cases sent to court and thus there is a lackadaisical attitude to disposing off those cases just in case they stand to lose out from them. We have seen and read lists of alleged beneficiaries of sale of government lands and disputed portions of lands that bears the names of some high and mighty in society thus there is a belief that those cases would never be dealt with so long as these persons stand to profit from the litigation. That indeed is an expression of how corrupt the legal system could be.
Stretching the debate even further, Amnesty International only a few weeks ago, conducted an audit of our prisons and how the rights of prisoners are being protected. The report was damning on our nation's prisons taking cognisance of the fact that there are countless of remand prisoners who spend between 1 to 10 years before their case are disposed off in court. The unlucky ones are rarely remembered owning to the death of his/her lawyer or their dockets getting lost in-between the shelves at the court registry.
The Chief Justice indeed must be worried, not simply because of the undue delays in our justice delivery system but the high resistance to change within the judiciary itself.
Under one Chief Justice, the “Justice-For-All “ programme was instituted. Some remand prisoners benefited and others were pardoned. As usual, the programme lasted a few months and it has been forgotten while the conditions in our prisons have not changed that much. The Chief Justice should have ensured that the “Justice-For-All” programme was not seen as a political intervention to a judicial inefficiency but that programme is further regularised so justice is done to every prisoners. Let us be mindful of the fact that some are dying under the harsh prison conditions when indeed they are innocent of whatever crimes that took them there .
What then has the office of the Chief Justice done so far to ensure that reforms were instituted for non-custodial sentencing for juveniles, petty thieves among others who do not necessarily have to be thrown to jail for stealing 3 fingers of plantain or eggs, or for driving throw the red light on our roads? Should every offence committed and every judgment passed in court be reduced to a fine or in default a prison term?

It is about time the Chief Justice ,as a matter of policy, ensured that reforms within the judiciary are targeted at safeguarding the public purse as regards expenses the state incurs on remand prisoners and the sorry state of our country’s prisons.
Furthermore, the over emphasis on custodial sentencing must be looked at so those caught at the wrong side of the law are made to work in the communities that need social services instead of keeping them under lock and key only for them to return after serving their time more hardened than they entered.

Unless the central government has plans to build more prisons than schools, hospitals, roads, commercial areas, reforms within the justice delivery system must be those targeted at decongesting the over-crowded prisons for criminal case.
Merely expressing frustrations over one problem or the other is becoming a cultural thing in our country such that politicians, law enforcers, revenue collectors, civil servants, public officers use this as a exit route to societal challenges rather than sitting down to derive the right policy measures to deal with such infractions.

GMOs- AN ECONOMIC BAIT WE MUST AVOID

At the heart of the debate on GMOs is the socio-economic issue of food security and the politics of who controls our agriculture our food supplies, our imports and our farm inputs.

Inasmuch as data and information available online, concurs with the school of thought that GMOs do not pose any health hazards to consumers, the fact remains that multinational conglomerates supported by the WHO and the EU who have pumped millions of Euros and dollars into research and production of seeds for GMOs , would be looking forward to the harvest where every Euro pumped into this work will be recovered with interest especially in Africa.
I am convinced that the demonisation of the African continent by mostly western media as a continent of hunger and poverty directs the minds, hearts and thoughts of the world to the fact that Africa needs investment in food to reduce hunger and GMOs come handy as a sustainable solution to the droughts, hunger and poverty that Africa finds herself entangled in. After all, Africa bears the brunt of the adverse effects of global warming caused mainly by industrialized nations.
Our farmers are becoming poorer by the day and our climate is threatening the sustainability of organic and rain-fed agriculture.

While we look on helpless as the world feeds fat on the riches of our continent, we are being tied by trade agreements that opens us up for stiffer competition around the world and such economically poisonous ventures like GMOs are being washed down our throats. They know our leaders and the media have high libido for corruption and they simply can't walk away from bribery and underhand dealings. In view of this interests backing GMOs have penetrated deep into corridors of power on the continent and paid heavily to court the favours of loud-mouthed politicians, media practitioners and more corrupt civil society organisations to execute this dangerous agenda.

More bizarre is the carte blanche our borders have granted our 'development partners' and their conglomerates to the extent that what we have left is a turf for two mammoths to fight on while the grass grows pail beneath their struggle for dominance and supremacy on the continent; our parliament has already passed the law on GMOs and the seed companies eyeing Ghana are on a war of words as to who gains entry into the country to do business.

I ask, how come our parliament and our government let alone the ECOWAS countries couldn't have pooled bio-technologists across board and established a common research and approach to bio-tech and seed technology that remains here with us, is used and produced so what would be used for future imports of seeds, equipment, fertilizers and chemicals to sustain the production of these GMOs would remain in the sub-region and boost our economies?
Are we about to miss another opportunity in industrial revolution or in agricultural revolution to which we have large parcels of arable land and fresh water to benefit hugely from both organic and GMOs farming?
The danger is that we would be creating jobs, markets, and downstream industries for GMOs in advanced economies while our farmers continue to linger in poverty and our currency continue to face harsh pressures which will ultimately tell heavily on our balance of payments. WE are neck deep in loans with payback periods between 10 to 50 years and now we are expanding the frontiers of imports with this GMO bait that is being dangled in front of us.
WE will be done for if we allowed foreign interests to control our food security.