Don’t become a Chief Clearing Agent

Celebrated Ghanaian investigative journalist Manasseh Azure Awuni has sounded caution to the John Mahama-led administration to tread cautiously in its bid to fight corruption after the new Attorney-General embarked on a mass clearing exercise.

Manasseh’s expressed concern that the new NDC government may be setting a bad precedent for future governments to follow lead. He said the government owes Ghanaians an explanation on why the cases have been dropped.

According to Manasseh Azure Awuni, while some of the cases such as the Democracy Hub protestors case raised eyebrows, others “border on corruption and charges of causing financial loss to the state”. He said such cases should have been allowed to proceed so that the courts will make the final decision on their innocence of the accused persons.

Some of the cases dropped so far are:

1. Bank of Ghana case – former Deputy Governor Johnson Asiamah

2. COCOBOD Case – Opuni and Seidu Agongo

3. Leaked Tape Case- Former NDC National Chairman Samuel Ofosu Ampofo and Anthony Kwaku Boahen

4. Ambulance Case- Ato Forson and Richard Jakpa

5. Democracy Hub Protesters – No Charges for Barker-Vormawor & Ama Governor

6. Saglemi Housing Project – Charges Against Collins Dauda

7. SSNIT Operational Business Suite Case – Dr. Ernest Thompson and 3 others

Read Manasseh’s statement below…

CHIEF CLEARING AGENT

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Ghanaians deserve to know the basis for the government’s mass discontinuation of court cases against officials and associates of the previous Mahama administration.

A few of the cases, such as the prosecution of the Democracy Hub protesters, raised concerns among many Ghanaians. One may not be surprised that those charges are dropped.

A majority of the cases, however, border on corruption and charges of causing financial loss to the state. For a president vowing to reset Ghana and prosecute government officials who have stolen or caused money to be stolen from the public purse, the mass clearance is a wrong start. It’s a dangerous precedent.

What President Mahama is telling the NPP officials his administration will charge is very simple: if you are charged, drag the case as long as you can, and if your party comes into office, the court process will be truncated, and you will be set free.

This does not portend well for accountability. This dangerous precedent defeats Mahama’s resolve to fight corruption and defeats such future endeavours. For a president whose administration began the prosecution that resulted in the jailing of its own party people in the GYEEDA scandal, this is a new low and a faulty step.

The Attorney-General must not truncate prosecution just because he has the power to do so. That power belongs to Ghanaians and must be exercised in our interest.

The courts should be allowed to deal with the evidence and decide on the guilt or innocence of the persons charged. In some cases, the state lost vast sums of money, and we should have answers.

Even with the ambulance case, in which the persons charged were acquitted by the court, the state had lost money. That scandal was not fabricated, even if the wrong actors may have been targeted.

I produced a documentary on those ambulances (titled “Grounded Wheels” on YouTube), and I had no doubt the ambulance procurement was a scandal. I was surprised at the fixation on Jakpa and Ato Forson, while officials of the ministry that procured the ambulances and labelled them substandard after failing to inspect them before shipment were left untouched.

Had the procurement not been a scandal, the Mahama administration would not have moved the ambulances from the forecourt of the State House and hidden them at the Air Force Base in Burma Camp. People were dying for lack of ambulances, and the movement was to keep the problematic vehicles from the public eye. I entered and filmed the ambulances for my documentary, and some of the defects matched the inspection report that labeled them unfit for use as ambulances.

So, if the case in which the defendants were set free was an actual scandal, one can imagine the rest.

I nicknamed Akufo-Addo the Chief Clearing Agent, and Mahama seems to relish that title. Let us not forget that the persons Akufo-Addo cleared and publicly defended were not all clean. Pius Hadzide, for instance, who was cleared of his involvement in the Australia visa scandal, publicly confessed his role when he was campaigning to be the MP for Asuogyaman in the just-ended election.

If the government clears all its party people standing trial, the people whose power the government exercises must be given sound reasons. Operation Recover All Loot (ORAL) cannot succeed when its implementers are engaged in Operation Clear All Looters (OCAL).

And we can do better than pick lessons from failing democracies like the United States.

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