Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com
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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