Thy vows are all broken
And light is thy fame
I hear thy name spoken
And share in its shame
George (Lord Byron)
“I HATE TO SEE these boys in these rags and masks being given an award for that dirty job they did.” That was a harrowing and traumatic statement by a colleague who felt peeved at the award of “Journalist of the Year (2015)” on Saturday 7th August, 2016, Accra to Anas Aremeyaw Anas.
Present to receive the award could have been Anas Aremeyaw Anas or his doppelganger (double – goer), the double of a living person, a look – alike, an alter – ego. The awardee had his face covered by a mask, or a transparent visor—he was masqueraded.
Although we are in 2016, the spectacle seemed to take us to Edgar Allan Poe’s time (1839) when he wrote ‘William Wilson’ in which an unnamed narrator who proclaims the secrecy of his real identity but chooses to call himself ‘William Wilson’; and also tells of tales of misery and crime. He meets his double in school, leaves the school for Eton and Oxford and then decides to lead a changed life in Rome, but is enamoured to a duke’s wife. When his double chases him, he stabs him and finds his own body stabbed and bleeding. His rival speaks, as if it were his own voice: “In me didst thou exist and in my death, see by this image, which is thine own – how utterly thou hast murdered thy self.”
Osagyefo Osaedeeyo Agyemang Badu II made the presentation: a citation and a brand new (Hyundai Creta SUV) donated by Ideal Finance. Good luck to the person who lured some judges to get them fall into a trap and had them dismissed! Anas and the Tiger PI and their families could be laughing all the way to their homes and hovels. They are the heroes—all hail –a hero’s welcome. Their victims are crying, lamenting their conditions; their children, their families are weeping and mourning; their teeth are on edge – they should be gnashing their teeth—the financial losses aside what about the shame, the disgrace, the ignominy? And what about the taunts and teasings?
If the GJA award had been given for another reason, that could not have raised eye brows, but for Anas to be rewarded for his “investigative piece on judicial corruption that led to the dismissal of some judges of the superior and lower courts in 2015” could lead to so many arguments.
What was the method Anas used to “catch” these judges? He knew what he wanted, so would go all out to lure his victims. He would pose as seeking assistance for accused persons; he would put sums of money (which the judges had not negotiated with him); put some yams and sheep or goats in the corner of the judges’ houses – then video all these to make a case. Why were the tapes edited before being shown? Justifying ‘entrapment’ in this case? There was this case of a judge of the High Court who varied the sentence of a Circuit Court in the matter of defilement –because when the case came before him, the victim could produce a document which showed her age as more than sixteen
The affected judges and officers of the Judicial Service have their defences, but who will listen to them? The respected Supreme Court has given its ruling –sacked them; they were corrupt; they abused their offices; they debased their statuses – they, not we (of the Supreme Court); the judges should have quickly sacked the strange visitors; they should have been men of integrity, as provided for in the Constitution of the Republic (1992): “A person shall not be qualified for appointment as a Justice of the High Court unless he is a person of high moral character and proven integrity and of at least ten years’ standing as a lawyer” .
Radio and television presenters make fun of the affected judges, especially Justice Paul Utter Dery. They keep asking what Justice Dery is looking for. It gives the interlocutors satisfaction that the negative side of highly respected persons had been exposed. When Mark Antony said in ‘Julius Caesar’ “Oh judgment, thou art fled to brutish beasts, and men have lost their reason”, he meant the people’s ability to differentiate between right and wrong had disappeared from the citizens of Rome and they were blindly following the conspirators (Roman Senate). No ribaldry is meant here by ‘brutish beasts’; they were not ‘brutes’ but only to say they were following Brutus of the Roman senate rather sheepishly. The literary device used here is called ‘aposiopesis’, and suggests that one is so emotional that one cannot complete one’s thought. Linking it with the Anas’s story, it is only to say that some Ghanaians are following the Anas’s narration sheepishly.
Many people have not analysed the Anas’s story or stories critically. Some are saying: “Serves them right”, especially, recalling the 4-minute judgment delivered by Justice Atugubah following a hearing of the Presidential Election Petition. Those who thought that they had been let down or short-changed by that judgment and those who had once lost a case in court are gloating over the judges’ predicament. In psychology, this is known as ‘schadenfreude’–the feeling of joy that comes from seeing or hearing about another person’s troubles or failures (and one’s personal success). It is equivalent to ‘sadism’, and those who enjoy this are known as ‘sadists’. One could argue that people who behave this way are brutally callous
Meanwhile, Justice Dery is contemplating filing a suit against the awards committee of the Ghana Journalists Association for honouring Anas whom some newspapers prefer to call ‘ace journalist’. Justice Dery’s lawyer had stated that he was investigating the circumstances leading to the award. The lawyers for Justice Dery and two other judges had filed writ invoking the original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court to declare, among other issues, that Tiger Eye PI did not have the legal capacity to file a petition against them, and contravenes Article 146 (3) of the Constitution (1992). By the way, some people want to know whether the offences alleged to have been committed by the judges are the same, and, therefore, the punishment should equally be the same.