The search for the next Chief Justice (CJ) to replace Chief Justice Kwasi Anin Yeboah is becoming topsy-turvy as an emerging report suggests Akufo-Addo’s former legal partner, Justice Yonny Kulendi, could be the next CJ instead of Justice Gertrude Torkornoo.
Earlier this week, graphic.com.gh reported that President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has reportedly pencilled in Supreme Court Judge Justice Gertrude Torkornoo as the next Chief Justice of Ghana.
However, a newspaper report by the New Crusading Guide on April 21, 2023, hinted otherwise.
The paper headlined, ‘Search for CJ: Justice Kulendi is the Next Chief Justice…Akufo Addo swerved Gertrude Torkornoo’, is suggesting that the president could go in for his former workmate to be the new CJ of the Supreme Court.
Biography:
Emmanuel Yonny Kulendi is a Ghanaian judge who hails from Issa, a village in the Upper West Region of Ghana.
In the formative years of his life, young Kulendi spent almost two years in the Wa prisons on remand, and this incident made him resolve all the more to be a lawyer.
He entered the University of Ghana, where he was awarded his Bachelor of laws degree in 1992. He continued at the Ghana School of Law and became a barrister-at-law in 1994.
He holds a master of arts degree in International Security and Civil-Military Relations from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, United States.
Kulendi had his national service at the Legal Aid Board of Accra. After his service, he joined the Akufo-Addo, Prempeh, and Co. Chambers, where he underwent pupillage.
He later founded his own law firm, Kulendi @ Law, where he worked as the firm’s managing partner until his appointment to the bench.
As a lawyer, his areas of expertise included; Investments, Securities, Commercial Law, Criminal Law, and Litigation.
On 17 March 2020 the president, Nana Akufo-Addo informed the Speaker of Parliament, Mike Oquaye that consultations had been completed for the nomination of Kulendi and three other persons to be made justices of the Supreme Court of Ghana.
Kulendi was vetted together with Justice Joy Henrietta Mensa-Bonsu on Tuesday 12 May 2020. Following his vetting by parliament, Kulendi was approved by parliament on Wednesday 20 May 2020, and sworn into office on Tuesday 26 May 2020.
Kulendi became the first Ghanaian from the Upper West Region to be appointed to serve on Ghana’s highest court of jurisdiction. His appointment also now makes him a part of a small group of persons who were called to the Supreme Court bench directly from the bar.