A leading member of pressure group, OccupyGhana, Sydney Casely-Hayford has accused the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) of doing “a poor job” in investigating the $100,000 Ford gift expedition case.
According to him the report released by CHRAJ is a mechanism to prevent others from suing President John Mahama for accepting the gift from a Burkinabe contractor who is said to have benefited from some lucrative government projects.
“CHRAJ has done a poor job and continuous to do a poor job. This is not an independent appraisal of anything. This is a white wash to try and give the president an opportunity to block anything that anybody comes up with to try and sue him further and it is not good enough we should stop this,” Casely-Hayford said.
CHRAJ was petitioned by the Progressive People’s party (PPP), Youth wing of the CPP and a private citizen to investigate the president’s acceptance of the car which they say leads to a conflict of interest and corruption.
But CHRAJ in its report released on Thursday noted that, it did not find the President guilty of bribery, fraud or conflict but said President Mahama breached the gift policy.
But speaking on the Big Issue, Casely-Hayford said CHRAJ’s report is disappointing.
“It [The report] doesn’t make any sense, there are so many things that are wrong with this transaction and CHRAJ as an organization is honestly so disappointing. There is a lot of material in that report, [that] it would have been better off not even disclosing because it makes the whole thing look so bizarre that it raises more questions than answers,” he added.
CHRAJ report shames critics
But the Co-ordinator of the 2016 National Democratic Congress (NDC) campaign, Kofi Adams argued that the CHRAJ report vindicates the president.
“Today is a day of shame for them, they [critics] have been exposed that they are only trying to destroy a gem, a pearl that we have,” he said.
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By: Godwin A. Allotey/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Follow @AlloteyGodwin