General News of Wednesday, 11 December 2019
Source: citinewsroom.com
2019-12-11
Justice Gertrude Torkornoo
One of the three nominated Supreme Court Justices, Gertrude Torkornoo, is advocating for a sustained national conversation on corruption.
According to her, corruption has manifested itself across the nation in many forms and deliberate attempts must be made to deal with it.
She was responding to a question during her vetting at the Appointment Committee of Parliament.
“I think that when it comes to corruption, we are dealing with a national matter. We should have a national arrangement because we have different strings of behavior that fall into corruption. We have those that are purely criminal and those that are not. I think that we need to, as a country, have a hectic and thorough conversation around corruption.
Everybody is pointing to the next person but we are rarely dealing with many issues in many areas of life; you can find it in church, you can find it when a headmaster takes school money, you can find it when a hospital administrator takes hospital money. So, it is a prevalent social behavior and we all have to discuss it and accept that it is not helpful and we have to deal with it”.
President Nana Akufo-Addo nominated her alongside two other Justices of the Court of Appeal to replace three Supreme Court Justices who have retired or due to retire, including the current Chief Justice, Sophia Akuffo, subject to parliamentary approval.
The other two justices; Justice Mariama Owusu and Justice Avril Lovelace Johnson were vetted yesterday, December 9, 2019.
Appearing before the Appointments Committee, Justice Mariama Owusu debunked assertions that there is an orchestrated plan to stifle legal education in the country.
According to her, the sector has instead seen tremendous expansion and transformation.
Responding to a question at the vetting, she said many of the potential lawyers treat the profession as a secondary one.
About Justice Gertrude Torkornoo Justice Gertrude Torkonoo was born on 11th September 1962; she had her secondary school in Ghana and attended the University of Ghana, then Ghana School of Law.
She has two post-graduate law qualifications, one of which is an LLM in Intellectual Property. She has been on the bench since 2004.
She is currently the Vice-Chair of the e-Justice Committee and a board member of the Judicial Training Institute.
