Global leaders are lately discovering that the hotbed of political opposition is far removed from where they positioned their antennae. Evidently, it is not the vociferous opponents from the established opposition. Rather, it is the third trinity of the god of democracy – the third estate of the realm – the unpredictable judiciary. With their pronouncements across the globe, they make it look like what political leaders propose; that the parliament approves; the judiciary disposes.
Blame a dead French philosopher, Charles Louis de Secondat, aka Baron Montesquieu. It was Montesquieu whose treatise, trias politica that entrenched the principle known globally today as the separation of powers. As Patience Jonathan would have put it, Montesquieu has been dead for almost 250 years but his manhood or philosophy remains with us. Without separation of powers, global leaders would have balanced the equation without opposition. Very often, the judiciary is as much a mood viagra as well as a killjoy.
Global leaders assume that in voting, the electorate has surrendered their rights to reason or interfere in governance. Therefore, the courts assume what they think is best for us all. They build bridges between the executive, the legislature and the rest of us. On the other hand, leaders wish they had the absolute power of communist leaders across the globe. From Vladimir Putin to ex-Philippines dictator, Rodrigo Duterte who ruled between 2016 and 2022.
Western leaders think their media could scratch the surface of the atrocities committed in on-voting nations. Global superpowers act first and rubber-stamp their decisions at the legislative level.
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Imagine that human rights groups estimated that 20,000 Filipinos were murdered under Duterte’s infamous war on drugs. The ex-Mayor of Manilla dedicated his terms to sanitizing the Philippines from the scourge of drug trafficking, addiction and ancillary crimes. He authorised his security agents to cull suspects without trial and they obeyed with gung-ho recklessness. The courts were not invited to voice their opinion on the matter. And so, to parody Donald Trump, Duterte’s war on drugs made the Philippines safe again.
Trump wished the American judiciary would move their eyes away from political decisions. If they did, he’d still be president and both former first lady, Hilary Rodham Clinton and Mike Pence, Trump’s deputy, would be under lock and key. Not to worry, Trump is working on a return to the White House to ‘make America great again’. If his wish comes true, all jailed Proud Boys and criminal allies would enjoy full state pardon and freedom to sin again. These people marched on the Capitol in a determined zeal to turn America into a West African ally with its famous and infamous military coups. Unfortunately for them, where the likes of Assimi Goita succeeded, these rookie coupists failed. Nothing fills prison cells like an unsuccessful coup. Again, blame the judiciary.
Only last week while Trump was running his party nomination victory lap, an American judge cut a deep hole in the cloud billionaire’s pocket. They granted $83 million damages to columnist E. Jean Carroll, one of Trump’s rape victims whom he called a liar. It was travesty to the man who proudly confessed to groping women and kissing them sans consent; a shame that the law does not side the wealthy against their inconsequential victims.
Trump is not alone. In Kenya, a judge literally spat on the face of President William Ruto who had planned to send Kenyan police officers to Haiti to restore public order in the strife-torn nation. A group took Ruto to the judicial cleaners and the judges dropped their gavel on the Ruto plan to play saviour of the black race to spite Marcus Garvey.
Ruto has plans to keep appealing but while he is at it, blood continues to flow in Port-au-Prince while multinationals plunder and pillage the country’s resources. This ruling is a first in Africa where security forces are usually deployed as members of a ruling president’s private army.
The advantage of state-backed looting is that, it takes a long time for the spirit of repentance to kick in. Ask Ghanaians who only last week received artefact that British soldiers stole from one of Africa’s longest dynasties. Any talk of the return of Ghanaian gemstones smelted into British crowns might sound like the proverbial àlèlè or boiled bean pudding that has irretrievably fused into the ẹkọ or pap. It must have been sacrilegious at a time to accuse the British establishment of looting.
President Yoweri Museveni thinks himself the modern version of the conqueror of imperialism. The octogenarian just assumed the chair of the toothless Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). But he met his match in his country’s only member of the ICJ, Justice Julia Sebutinde, who ruled in favour of Israel in its war against its half-brothers – the Palestinians. South Africa had sought a declaration of genocide and a ceasefire in Israel’s disproportionate war against Palestine but Justice Sebutinde conscientiously disagreed.
Where America fails, nobody expects former Great Britain to succeed. And so it was that when Boris Johnson, former British Prime Minister, designed a plan to prevent African migrants from turning Britain into their destination of choice. The infamous Rwanda Plan has cost British taxpayers a whopping £140 million. Again, British courts have discovered the devil in the details. They don’t trust Rwanda’s eternal ruler, Paul Kagame, who strikes at his own shadows on human rights. They have dropped the gavel on the plan.
However, Rishi Sunak, the son of an immigrant and current prime minister, has vowed to invoke the talisman on this ruling. It is now Indian talisman against Rwandan juju as Kagame does not like the sound of him returning free deposits.
You would think that Canada is excluded from the list of countries under the spell of wooden gavels. If you do, you are wrong. This arctic country that hitherto attracts immigrants like ants and sugar has suffered deathly blows from the people with the gavel. Weeks ago, after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau must have felt happy that he got away with exhuming the Emergencies Act to protect Ottawa and downtown businesses from lorry-wielding COVID deniers; a Canadian judge has ruled him out of order.
Justice Richard Mosley declared that Trudeau’s use of the Emergencies Act “does not bear the hallmarks of reasonableness –justification, transparency and intelligibility.” Basically, his ruling retroactively nullifies the government’s decision to clear the streets to limit the impact of the pandemic on its populace 40,000 of whom have succumbed to the disease so far.
The truckers that blocked downtown Ottawa now count on the judiciary as an ally except Trudeau could prove otherwise. In future, no government would have the temerity to restrict movement even if a tsunami is in force. Justice Mosley seems to agree that even in such circumstances nature should claim as many as it could rather than let government invoke an emergency on the freedom of movement.
As any rookie law student knows, the law is an ass. Now that we know that the judiciary is a frenemy; who shall deliver the world from the tyranny of the judiciary?