19% supports Bawumiah’s bid to freeze corruption trials
The numbers came in on a Monday, delivered via a Facebook post from Global InfoAnalytics’ executive director, Mussa Dankwa. They were stark: 63% of Ghanaian voters back President Mahama’s push to revive tribunals a parallel justice system designed to cut through the morass of court delays. Only 19% oppose it; 17% are undecided.
The poll, released July 27, lands less than two weeks after Parliament passed the Tribunals Bill on July 16 and exactly one week after the NPP’s flagbearer, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, made an unusual public plea: Do not sign it into law.
The legislation does not invent new judicial powers. It operationalizes Articles 126, 142, and 143 of the 1992 Constitution provisions that have sat dormant for decades.
The bill creates regional tribunals with constitutional safeguards, due-process protections, and oversight mechanisms. It is, in plain terms, a legal machine already authorized by the country’s founding charter. Attorney-General Dominic Ayine even waived the mandatory one-day waiting period to speed its passage.
Bawumia’s public rationale was measured: the existing courts are underfunded and backlogged, he said, so pouring resources into a parallel system is the wrong fix. Focus on the old courts, he argued.
But a closer look at the timing suggests a more strategic calculus. The Tribunals Bill is not merely about court efficiency it is about which cases get heard, and how fast. In recent months, a slate of corruption probes tied to officials who served in the previous NPP administration has inched forward, only to stall at every procedural turn.
The traditional courts have become a quagmire for prosecutors, with defendants deploying a familiar arsenal: endless adjournment motions, jurisdictional challenges, and strategic recusals of presiding judges.
By killing the tribunal bill, Bawumia would effectively preserve that quagmire. And preserving the quagmire preserves the status quo one in which his former colleagues can leverage the system’s slowness to outlast the investigation.
The Courtroom Antics: A Playbook on Display
To understand the stakes, one need only look at the dockets in Accra.
In several ongoing trials involving former ministers and state contractors, defense teams have filed as many as five separate motions per session each requiring a hearing, each pushed to a subsequent date.
One case, now in its third year, has seen eight recusal applications against a single judge, all dismissed on merit but each consuming months. In another, a former deputy minister successfully argued a “procedural irregularity” over a missing exhibit a motion that bought his legal team four additional months to file responses.
These are not isolated glitches. They are tactical obstruction, honed over years. The courts are not failing because of underfunding alone; they are failing because the powerful have learned to weaponize their own inefficiency.
Bawumia’s argument for “strengthening the existing courts” would, in theory, address that. But his proposal offers no specifics no new funding benchmarks, no judicial reforms, no fast-track protocols. It is a generic invocation that sounds virtuous while achieving precisely nothing. Meanwhile, the tribunal system with its dedicated dockets and accelerated timelines would bypass the obstructionism that has made the traditional judiciary a playground for delay.
In political terms, Bawumia’s move is a freeze order. By pressing the president to withhold assent, he is not championing judicial integrity; he is buying time. Every month the bill languishes, an investigative target gets another month to file another motion, to challenge another witness, to wear down the prosecution.
It is a strategy familiar to any student of accountability. When the law moves too fast for the powerful, the powerful move to slow the law.
The 63% polling number is not an abstraction. It reflects a citizenry that has watched high-profile cases drag on for years while the accused walk free on bail, attending fundraisers and giving speeches. They have seen the courts fail to deliver, and they have seen the opposition cry “due process” while their own officials exploit due process to avoid consequence.
The 19% who oppose the tribunals may include true constitutional purists. But the remaining 17% the undecided are likely watching the same courtroom dramas. If the NPP’s continuing obstruction becomes more visible, that 17% may well tip.
For now, Bawumia has his plea. He has his polling counter-narrative. But the data is clear: Ghanaians are not buying the argument that slow justice is good justice. And as the trials of his former colleagues drag on, the public will see his “efficiency” argument for what it increasingly appears to be a smokescreen for a freeze.