No Fundamental Rights

After he became Prime Minister of the new African state of Ghana, ambitious Kwame Nkrumah quickly discovered that the simplest way to deal with political opponents is to get rid of them. When two Moslem party leaders in Ashanti balked at Nkrumah's authority. Nkrumah rushed a bill through Parliament authorizing their deportation (TIME, Oct. 14). After hearing their appeals, Justice H. C. Smith, a Briton, ruled last week that Nkrumah was within his rights. "Since the Ghana constitution contains no safeguarding of fundamental rights." Smith wrote, "the court must uphold the law." The constitution allows Parliament to pass any law it considers necessary for "peace, order and good government."

On the eve of Smith's ruling, Nkrumah's tough-talking Interior Minister Krobo Edusei had promised new legislation "to deal with traitors in this country," empowering the regime to declare a state of emergency in any area and arrest, deport or bar from the area anyone the government chooses.

Said Justice Smith somewhat wistfully in his ruling, "In England the safeguard of liberty is in the good sense of the people and in the system of representative and responsible government."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.