Yesterday was the 800th year of the promulgation of the most important piece of legislation in the world, a bulwark against arbitrariness of rulers or even governments.
The Magna Carta, the charter of liberties, with its promulgation dissolved arbitrariness, impunity and selectiveness by the King of England.
King John, the occupant of the British throne, was the last to enjoy the unlimited powers which his predecessors savoured to the detriment of their subjects.
No longer able to stand the pressure on him to cede some of his powers so civil liberties would gain a foothold, he eventually succumbed to the people’s power; hence, the legislation to ensure these rights.
People could no longer be banished, caused to be killed, humiliated and many other infringements which trampled upon their dignity.
The liberties which we are enjoying or should today are traceable to this milestone, even as we take them for granted.
It was not delivered on a silver platter. The people fought tooth and nail to lay the foundation of what protects us from being arrested and detained on the whims and caprices of whoever is at the helm or even killed without due process.
The rule of law emanates from the Magna Carta. That is why the celebration of the transition from arbitrariness to the rule of law should be savoured more than we do other milestones in the name of continental commemorations.
Many years after the milestone, America, the British colony across the Atlantic Ocean, framed its written constitution along the lines of the Magna Carta as the most popular written constitution in the world. Even despots want to be seen to be conducting the business of governance along the lines of the 800-year-old document. Not being seen to be adhering to the tenets of the Magna Carta robs a country of the deference that qualifies her to be part of the comity of the civilised.
But for the Ghana Bar Association’s (GBA’s) commemorative symposium yesterday, nothing would have been heard about this stride in human development.
African countries have lagged behind over the years in the protection and enhancement of civil liberties. Today most of these countries cannot boast of judicial systems which are immune from the interference directly and indirectly of the executive. Under such circumstances, it is the ordinary man who suffers the brunt of the judicial anomaly.
Instances of ordinary persons unable to pay for justice being denied their civil liberties are commonplace in our part of the world.
Motley of factors account for the anomalous conditions: we entreat the GBA to fashion out a better way of assisting persons in dire need of the restoration of their usurped liberties by the state or its assigns.
The flourishing of civil liberties constitutes an important gauge of the progress of a given political entity. The GBA and civil society organisations should gird their loins and help us to make an appreciable inroad in this direction. God bless the originators of the Magna Carta.