Let�s Honour Our Own � Rtd Supreme Court Judge

Justice VCRAC Crabbe has bemoaned what he described as the �Pull him down� attitude of Ghanaians. According to the retired Justice of the Supreme Court, this unholy attitude has been brought about by selfishness, envy and pure greed which have all been occasioned by the excessively partisan nature of our politics to the extent that the quest for the collective good of society has is replaced by the need to individually gain. Sharing his personal life experiences, the former Justice of the Supreme Court recalled how leading personalities such as Mr. S.K. B. Asante have been instrumental in shaping his life to become a renowned personality. Mr. Crabbe recalled how as a young and ambitious young man, Mr. S.K.B. Asante ably assisted him by introducing him to the Commonwealth to start his professional life as a lawyer; a life which he claimed had greatly impacted on his life. Mr. Crabbe made these known at the formal launch of the J.B. da Rocha Chair in Law and Politics in Accra on Monday. The B.J. da Rocha, Chair in Law and Politics is annual lecture instituted in the memory of the late legal luminary by the Mountcrest University College. Addressing the gathering mostly drawn from academia, Mr. Crabbe lamented that, rather than promoting ourselves as a people we end up demonizing, sabotaging and assassinating the character of our fellow countrymen who show so much promise in their chosen fields of endeavor. �It is regrettable that leading personalities such as J.B. Danquah, Prof. Kofi Abrefa Busia, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah and a host of others who dedicated all their lives in the service of our country had to die rather shamefully and regrettably in prison and in exile. We have become a people with no principles and shared values, thus we continuously honor others other than our own people. This attitude of the modern day Ghanaian has become so pervasive that today the current crop of Ghanaians do not have people to look up to as heroes. As a country we should develop the culture of honoring and celebrating our heroes in their life time as opposed to the current situation of also waiting to do so posthumously,� he said. The late J.B. da Rocha, was a legal luminary and also served as the first National Chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) when it was first formed in 1992. He died in the year 2010 after protracted illness. The J.B. da Rocha Chair in law is a platform so created to keep his memory and that of other illustrious sons and daughters of the land by celebrating their works and achievement. The maiden lecture will be held on Tuesday, May 14, 2013 at the Ghana Law School Auditorium with the Honorable Joe Ghartey, 2nd Speaker of Parliament as the maiden speaker.