Free Tsatsu Movement amazed at Court decision

THE Free Tsatsu Campaign Movement, a pressure group, has described the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the conviction of Mr Tsatsu Tsikata for causing financial loss to the state as a stain on Ghana’s judiciary.
At a press conference in Accra yesterday, the movement said it was amazed that two and a half months after Tsikata’s application had been heard by the Supreme Court, the court had not been able to do better than the opaque performance it put up on Thursday.
The Supreme Court, presided over by Ms Justice Sophia Akuffo, on Thursday dismissed Mr Tsikata’s application and informed parties in the matter that it would file its reasons on Friday, October 24, 2008.
The court, which had Mr Justice Julius Ansah, Mrs Justice Rose Owusu, Mr Justice Jones Dotse and Mr Justice Paul Baffoe-Bonnie as the other panel members, accordingly directed the registrar to notify parties when the reasons were filed.
The movement, led by Mr Kwesi Pratt, the Editor of the Insight newspaper, and Mr Tony Lithur, a legal practitioner, said, “It should be possible for the judges to give us their reasons in open court, instead of just filing them and making copies available to Mr Tsikata,” adding that Tsikata was not the only person interested in its reason.
“Surely, it should have been possible for the judges to tell us whether their decision was unanimous or whether some disagreed with the others,”, it said, and therefore urged the court to come out openly and publicly to tell the public why it chose to endorse and ratify a conduct which many fair-minded people regarded as a travesty of justice and a stain on Ghana’s judiciary.
Following his conviction by the Fast Track High Court, Tsikata, a former Chief Executive of the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC), filed an application at the Supreme Court, praying it to quash the lower court’s judgement on the grounds that the trial judge had been biased.
According to Tsikata, the action of the trial judge had the potential of undermining the authority of the Supreme Court and, therefore, he filed the motion to enable the court to ensure that the administration of justice was not brought into disrepute by what he termed as “the desecration of justice that occurred on June 18, 2008”, the date he was incarcerated.
On June 18, 2008, Tsikata was found guilty on three counts of wilfully causing financial loss of GH¢230,000 to the state and another count of misapplying public property and sentenced to five years’ imprisonment on each count, to run concurrently.
He was charged in 2002 with three counts of wilfully causing financial loss to the state through a loan he guaranteed for Valley Farms, a private cocoa producing company, on behalf of the GNPC and another count of misapplying GH¢2,000 of public property, an allegation he denied.
Valley Farms contracted the loan from Caisse Francaise de Developement in 1991 but defaulted in the payment and the GNPC, which acted as the guarantor, was compelled to pay it in 1996.
The movement nevertheless reaffirmed its commitment to the fight for justice for Tsikata, the Signature Campaign and all other activities of the campaign, stating that it would continue until Tsikata was given justice.
It said it was also waiting anxiously for the reasons the Supreme Court would assign for endorsing the conduct and decision of the trial judge, Mrs Henrietta Abban, after which it would make its comment on them.