Anas was a wrong choice! : For Journalist of the Year Award

In the good old days when Kabral Blay Amihere was GJA President, I used to write freely on the arts in a column in his newspaper, the “’Independent”. My only wages for writing in that column was that every year, Kabral, as GJA President, will organise a protocol invitation card for me and my father-in-law’s daughter to attend every year’s GJA Awards Night.

The first time I attended that programme was at Labadi Beach Hotel and I remember that night so well. Godwin Avernogbor was the MC for the night, and I was privileged to be seated on the same table with him.

 The “journalist of the year” award that night, the most coveted prize, was awarded to Nana Kofi Comson, editor/publisher of the then buccaneering newspaper The Chronicle”.

Those were the days when anybody who was somebody in Ghana could not eat breakfast until he or she had read “The Chronicle”, that extremely most powerful private newspaper that was hitting left, right, centre, exposing wrongdoing in high places, keeping Ghana virtually on her toes. The choice of Nana Kofi Comson was an excellent unblemished decision – notwithstanding the fact that Nana is not a professional journalist but an accomplished practising journalist.

Unfortunately after four years, Kabral was no longer the GJA President and that ended my GJA Awards night guaranteed tickets, and as the years rolled by, my interest was only in finding out who won the journalist of the year award.

I remember Malik Kwaku Baako was voted once as the Journalist of the Year and also my good friend, Mabel Aku Banesseh of Graphic who has never agreed with me on any issue – she was also voted journalist of the year.

Reader, let me quickly say that I am not a journalist. I usually try my hands on a few articles once in a while but my profession is law. I have once lectured at the Ghana Institute of Journalism, but that does not make me a journalist.

Nevertheless, I make bold to say that the diadem of “journalist of the year” must be given to someone whose work output is top notch and exemplary nature. A journalist of the year, must inspire reporters and or practising journalists all over the country to be very serious in their work in terms of precision, reliability, truthfulness and honesty.

Let me digress a little and explain a small point. In law, we have the appellate system, that is if a High Court gives a decision and you are aggrieved, you can appeal to the Court of Appeal where there are three Justices and also thereafter, to the Supreme Court made up of five Justices.

More often than not, most judgments of those Appellate Courts are unanimous, but once in a while, you have one of them refusing to go along with the majority opinion – in law, we call it DISSENTING opinion.

The beauty of the legal profession is that sometimes some dissenting opinions are so well written that they end up eventually becoming the popular opinion, adopted in several judgments. In my practice as a lawyer, I have successfully gotten the Supreme Court to overturn two majority opinions in the Court of Appeal in favour of the dissenting view.

Glorifying crime

With the greatest respect, it is my view and my submission as a dissenting view that I do not agree at all with the decision of to vote Aremeyaw Anas Journalist of the Year – how possible?

How can we glorify Crime? 

If a journalist painstakingly acts undercover, to follow a case, through several aliases, and follows a story, and exposes a Judge, taking bribe in a case – presto!! I will vote golden honours for that journalist.

But I will condemn with all the vehemence that I can muster a ridiculous decision to award a journalist who walks to a Judge and deliberately Provoke him to take a bribe then you publish it!!!

Reader, we are all mortals. We are not saints. We are not angels. We are human beings with flesh and blood, susceptible to temptation and danger.

Reader, let me be very brutally frank with you – there are only TWO kinds of 

Judges on the bench – those who see their role as Judges as a VOCATION, as a JOB, as means of earning money.

Such Judges, and we see them everyday in the courts –  can easily be influenced because they see the work as a means to earn money. 

Usually, such judges are bullies, trying to impose their authority on lawyers “by heart”.

The second group of Judges are those who were cut out by the Almighty God for the role of being JUDGES – they are the type whose judgments are unassailable; they are free on the bench, working effectively. It is always a joy to appear before such Judges – even when they rule against you, it does not make you feel ashamed.

But both of them are HUMAN BEINGS, with wives and children, with cousins, in laws, nephews and nieces, with basic problems – school fees, car maintenances, wives who want everything in the shopping mall………..they try to be very careful, but when you deliberately walk to them to tempt them – no, that must be condemned.

When the Anas expose came, several rumours went wild – some not substantiated, others very plausible. One wild card was that a friend of Anas or relative was involved in a criminal matter and as a precondition for leaving the sitting judges’ name out of the list, he had to quickly acquit and discharge that chap.

You know, reader, there is no time bar to CRIME. If this allegation has any foundation, it is only a question of time. It will come out.

Worse of all, I understand Anas has admitted in Court that his TIGER EYE company is a phantom body, not legally registered, a ghost doing business, and being awarded Journalist of the Year?

Maybe I am the only stranger in Jerusalem, but even so, I confess I don’t think Anas Aremeyaw Anas deserves this golden diadem. I think he should be arrested and tried for provoking innocent judges into uncompromising situations.

Second look

Right now as I write, I am handling a case where someone told my client he wanted a gun to buy for his galamsey operations. My client said he dealt in jewellery, not guns. The man kept on begging him, pestering him, day and night – help me, I want a gun, please………finally, out of desperation, my client got somebody who brought a gun  - instead of the complainant turning up for the gun for his galamsey operations, he turned out to be a police informant, and brought police to arrest my client for possessing a gun…

Is this a behaviour we want to encourage in Ghana?

Sit there, and say it can NEVER happen to you...

I submit that the GJA should take a second look at the procedure for selecting “Journalist of the Year”.