Former Chief Justice Sophia Akuffo says she has no regrets about joining pensioners in picketing the Finance Ministry during the controversial Domestic Debt Exchange Programme (DDEP) in 2023.
“If I had to do it again, I would do it,” she declared on Joy News’ PM Express Business Edition on Thursday.
Her appearance on the picket line on February 10, 2023, stunned many as the retired Chief Justice stood with pensioners demanding a total exemption of their investments from the DDEP.
She held a placard that read: “We use our bond yields to pay our rent, medical bills, electricity bills and water bills.”
Asked by host George Wiafe what influenced her to take what many described as a bold and unexpected step, she was direct.
“First and foremost, I wasn’t there in that boardroom when that decision was made to give people haircuts, whether they liked it or not,” she said.
“But even if I had been, and I had disagreed, and despite my strenuous position, it went ahead to the extent that I think it’s wrong and that it’s in the interest of the public to know that it’s wrong. Yes, I would have come out and done it.”
For Sophia Akuffo, the issue was principle, not optics.
“So it’s something which I always say, if I had to do it again, I would do it.”
The decision became a defining public moment. Many believed a former Chief Justice would remain behind closed doors, offering advice rather than joining a street protest. She rejected that assumption.
“I will say that maybe it’s my home upbringing, or how I understood my legal education,” she explained.
“You don’t sit there and just let unlawful things be done, and if you feel strongly about it and there’s no one to listen to you, you shout it out.”
She recounted how her participation came about. It was not pre-arranged. It was personal.
“I saw that there were some people picketing, and I saw somebody I knew on that picket line. Phoned her and said, “Was it you I saw?” She said, Yes.”
“And I said, Okay, are you going again? And she said, Yes. I said, Can I join? And so I went.”
For Sophia Akuffo, the picket was not a break from her judicial past. It was, in her words, consistent with it. And years later, she remains firm.
“If I had to do it again, I would do it.”
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