Deputy AG accuses Ghana Bar leadership of selective criticism over Chief Justice’s remarks

Deputy Attorney-General Dr Justice Srem-Sai has accused the leadership of the Ghana Bar Association (GBA) of inconsistency and selective criticism in its response to public comments by senior judicial officers.

He questioned whether the association had demonstrated the independence it professed after GBA President Efua Ghartey criticised remarks made by Chief Justice Paul Baffoe-Bonnie during a visit to the Minerals Income Investment Fund (MIIF).

In an interview on Joy FM monitored by The Executive Spotlight on Monday, September 14, Dr Srem-Sai said the central issue was not whether the Chief Justice’s comments could be considered political.

Rather, he said, the focus should be on whether the GBA had consistently applied the same standard when responding to similar comments by Chief Justices and other judicial officers.

“The point that we made at the conference is that when it comes to independence and when it comes to consistency, the leadership of the Ghana Bar Association leaves much to be desired,” he said.

The controversy follows comments made by Chief Justice Baffoe-Bonnie during a visit to MIIF on September 2.

The Chief Justice praised MIIF and other public institutions under the current administration, saying some of the developments he had observed had caused him to question what Ghana had been doing during the previous eight years.

Mrs Ghartey subsequently described the remarks as inappropriate while addressing the Ghana Bar Association’s 2026/27 annual conference in Ada on Monday.

Dr Srem-Sai did not directly defend or endorse the Chief Justice’s comments. Instead, he challenged the association to demonstrate that it had responded in the same way to comparable statements by other members of the judiciary.

“I don’t think the issue that was up for discussion today was about the Chief Justice’s speech; it’s about the Ghana Bar Association’s response to the speech that the Chief Justice gave,” he said.

He argued that an organisation’s independence should be demonstrated through its conduct and decisions rather than treated as an automatic attribute. The same principle, he said, applied to claims of consistency.

According to the Deputy Attorney-General, if the GBA’s position was that Chief Justices should not make remarks that could be perceived as political, it should apply that standard whenever a Chief Justice or another judicial officer made a similar intervention.

“If you condemn some and do not condemn others, that is where the issue is,” he said.

The dispute raises a broader question about how professional bodies should respond when senior judges make public comments touching on the performance of governments or state institutions.

The Chief Justice’s remarks attracted scrutiny because members of the judiciary are expected to maintain political neutrality and preserve public confidence in judicial independence.

Mrs Ghartey’s criticism indicated that the GBA leadership believed the comments fell short of the restraint expected of the head of the judiciary.

Dr Srem-Sai’s objection, however, centred on what he described as the association’s selective application of that principle.

He maintained that the controversy should not be reduced to a debate over whether Justice Baffoe-Bonnie’s remarks were political.

The appropriate test, he argued, was whether the GBA had responded independently and consistently, without being selective about which comments by judicial officers it condemned.