Tuesday, June 21, 2016

MAHAMA UNDER PRESSURE TO RETURN CAR

By William Yaw Owusu
Tuesday, June 21, 2016

Pressure is mounting on President John Mahama to clear himself following the stunning revelation that he received a brand new 2010 model Ford Expedition vehicle as gift from a Burkinabe contractor.

The contractor, Djibril Kanazoe, sent the car gift, worth $100,000, to his friend - President Mahama - through the Ghana Embassy in Ouagadougou.

The Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII) has waded into the debate and asked President Mahama to return the controversial gift because according to the anti-graft body, the President’s action “breaches the state’s anti-corruption code.”

Pressure Intensified
The pressure appears to have intensified after a comment by Communications Minister Dr. Edward Omane Boamah, that President Mahama cannot be bribed and  the minister’s ‘incorruptible’ comment has been described as an attempt to whitewash the president in the face of obvious inducement by his contractor friend.

Curiously, Djibril Kanazoe has since been awarded juicy government contracts and was behind the construction of the $650,000 Ghana Embassy fence wall in Burkina Faso, apart from other multi-million dollar contracts since his encounter with the president in 2010.

Two Options
The GII Executive Director, Linda Ofori Kwafo, has been speaking on the issue and said the guidelines of the Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), gives President Mahama two options in the matter.

“Either he gives back the 2010 Ford Expedition he received or pays the market value of the luxury vehicle,” she said on Joy FM yesterday.

Conflict Of Interest
She said that the acceptance of the gift by President Mahama is a clear case of conflict of interest, explaining that conflict of interest might be ‘potential,’ ‘apparent’ or ‘actual.’

“President John Mahama has put himself in two of these scenarios – potential and apparent,” she claimed, adding that the president, who launched a code of ethics for government officials in 2013, is fully abreast with issues of gift-taking, conflict of interest and corruption.

“President Mahama knows what gift to accept and not to accept,” she insisted. She condemned the government spokespersons and cronies who have tried to rationalize the president’s action.

Mrs Kwafo said that anti-corruption campaigners “get very worried when public officials try to explain it - depending on whom we are talking about.”

PPP Fights On
Dr. Paa Kwesi Nduom’s Progressive People’s Party (PPP), which has been leading a campaign since the journalist, Manasseh Awuni Azure of Joy FM, broke the news, to get President Mahama to come clean of the matter, has chided the Communications Minister for holding that the president is “incorruptible.”

A statement issued in Accra and signed by the party's Policy Advisor, Kofi Asamoah-Siaw, said considering that a Ford Expedition vehicle was given to President Mahama by the Burkinabe contractor, there is no way anyone will absolve him (the president) of bribery.

The PPP said the minister’s claim about the incorruptibility of President Mahama is “unsustainable,” saying “Perhaps, Dr. Omane Boamah does not appreciate the actual meaning of incorruptibility.”

Inaccurate Statement
“The purpose of this statement is to make it clear to the Minister of Communications that the circumstances of the           gift-giving and acceptance of same by President Mahama render the minister’s statement on the president’s incorruptibility inaccurate.

“The president accepted a gift that influenced the decision to award the Burkinabe native the two contracts in 2012. The President of the Republic of Ghana has taken a gift from a Burkinabe contractor under bizarre circumstances and the Minister of Communications wants Ghanaians to believe that the president is incorruptible?” the statement underscored.

Article 284
“Ghana has not commissioned our president to go around the globe accepting gifts from private individuals, contractors and friends to shore up the presidential fleet. What we have told our president is to avoid conflict of interest situations as contained in Article 284 of the 1992 Constitution.

“Dr. Omane Boamah should appreciate that all bribes come in the form of a gift. Moreover, two items of the same kind and same value can be a gift or bribe, depending on the circumstances of the giver, the taker and the relationship between the giver and the taker.

“In this particular case, the relationship between the president and his Burkinabe friend constitutes a conflict of interest situation, and therefore the Ford Expedition gift is considered a bribe,” the PPP statement emphasized.

Suffering Penalty
According to the PPP, “This matter of national and international embarrassment cannot be resolved with the usual propagandist approach without the culprit suffering the penalty for it. We expect parliament to initiate impeachment proceedings against the president for this act of gross misconduct.”

The party said it had instructed its lawyers to file a complaint with the CHRAJ in accordance with Article 287 of the 1992 Constitution.






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