By William
Yaw Owusu
Wednesday,
December 06, 2017
Former Attorney General (AG) and Minister for
Justice, Martin A.B.K. Amidu has stated that there are people in the public
sector who are sabotaging the fight against corruption by President Akufo-Addo’s
New Patriotic Party (NPP) government.
According to him, they are doing it for the benefit
of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), which just left office.
He said some of those public workers in senior
position, particularly those promoted at the dying moments of the Mahama-led
NDC administration, are doing ‘cover-ups’ for corrupt former officials and some
powerful persons in the country.
According to the former AG, the troubles that the
Akufo-Addo government is facing in its attempt to retrieve the GH¢51.2 million fraudulently
obtained by NDC financier, Alfred Agbesi Woyome, was an indication that there
are moles in the government.
“I have raised the red flags for President
Akufo-Addo and his team to be alert to the dangers ahead and the ultimate plans
of Woyome and his mentors waiting in the wings for a possible positive outcome
at the Africa Court,” he said in a news release.
The former AG, who is credited for his fight against
corruption, earning him the accolade ‘Citizen Vigilante,’ said, “Nothing
epitomises corruption in the annals of the history of this country better than
the circumstances and context of the Woyome case, and its trial by an irredeemably
corrupt High Court Justice,” according to Mr Amidu.
He said, “No reasonable person expects President
Nana Akufo-Addo to personally investigate and deal with suspects in fulfillment
of his promises of fighting corruption and dealing with past corruption which
substantially contributed to earning him the Presidency.”
He said such a function should be taken up by his
appointees “to whom he has assigned ministerial responsibility for security and
intelligence, law and order, and particularly justice.
“One of the problems faced by some of the appointees
of the present government is the ability to go beyond the biased advice being
proffered to them by the senior public officers they inherited from the
previous government,” he said, adding that “a conscientious and knowledgeable minister
should be able, within the first three months in office, to know how many of
his officers were recently promoted by the outgoing government and their role
in cover-ups in the ministry.”
He said the inability of any minister to understand
the composition and promotional history of his/her senior public servants upon
whom he depends for advice within the first three to six months meant that “he
may be working with moles planted before the demise of the previous government.”
Mr Martin Amidu said the criminal prosecution
mounted by the state against Woyome was a sham from the start and added that
the collaborators of the NDC financier had been left off the hook.
He claimed the same senior law officers “who
thwarted the execution of the judgement and engaged in various spurious
agreements with him while their more senior court-going colleagues were in the
Supreme Court trying to execute the judgement, are still those in position to
advise the present government on outstanding matters related to the case.
“The manner the case was prosecuted by the government
and its lawyers clearly facilitated the verdict pronounced by the irredeemably
corrupt former Justice Ajet-Nasam of the High Court, who the whole world now
knows sold justice for cash and had a penchant for chasing accused persons for
payment.”
Mr. Amidu said that in any civilised system of
criminal justice administration, the Woyome trial should have been vacated at
the instance of the Republic “because of the overwhelming evidence that
now-disgraced Justice Ajet-Nasam did not have the capacity to administer
impartial criminal justice by virtue of his internalised endemic corrupt
nature.”
He said that there are other aspects of the Woyome
case which the government could pursue in addition to the judgement and order
under reference, if the NPP administration was really bent on fighting
corruption.
“Unfortunately, you (President Akufo-Addo) have the
misfortune of working with some officers who have earned their mid-night
promotions protecting the looting and covering up of the activities of the
previous government,” he said.
He then added, “They have no interest in pointing
out residual matters in this case to your government unless your government has
a personal commitment, the energy and industry to fish out those matters by
yourselves.”
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