According to him, the NDC should be happy because President Akufo-Addo has found the kind of quality needed to fight corruption in the country within the opposition party, which he describes as a good sign.

“…It is good for the party to rather celebrate that they have a person that they made, that they shaped. He stood against them on principle and it’s good that their opponent who is in power now has seen that quality and wants to put it to greater use of the country. I think that is commendable,” he added.

[contextly_sidebar id=”rqdzlXLoOv27X07n6qrPSJAlBwuEr6pT”]Martin Amidu, a former Attorney General, was named as the Special Prosecutor by the President on Thursday January 11, 2018.

He is expected to be approved by Parliament in the coming days.

Although a member of the NDC, Mr. Amidu has been an avid critic of his party, especially prior to the 2016 election, where he wrote some disparaging articles against the then government led by John Dramani Mahama, describing the administration as corrupt.

This led to some friction between Mr. Amidu and some members of the NDC.

But speaking on Eyewitness News on Thursday, Dr. Akwetey advised the NDC to take Mr. Amidu’s nomination in good faith because the party used to be known by its zero tolerance for corruption, an attribute that Mr. Amidu possesses.

“NDC stood for anti-corruption and in the past, that is what defined them—the revolution and so on. In fact, the country used to see NDC as the anti-corruption party. In the 2008 election, what made the NPP lose was corruption – they said NPP is corrupt and NDC was coming to fight it because NDC was anti-corruption.  In 2016 the public had a different image. So I think it does well for the NDC to reaffirm their credentials.”

Amidu won’t pursue personal vendetta

On whether Mr. Amidu will turn the heat on the NDC because of his dislike for some members of the party, Dr. Akwetey said this won’t be the case since it could bring Mr. Amidu’s downfall.

“Now the aspect of people being afraid that he is coming to do a personal vendetta and targeting certain individuals and so on, I don’t think so. I think he is not going to be a prosecutor and a judge, and that this is a matter that people of all competencies from every side would watch carefully. He has a lot to lose if he does not come to it with integrity, competence and fairness, but rather comes to do political vendetta. That will also be exposed.”

“I think NDC is equally interested in cleaning up the system of corruption. NDC cannot be botched up and say everybody in NDC is corrupt, no. If you talk to them, there are those who have been fighting,” Dr. Akwetey added.

About Special Prosecutor office 

President Akufo-Addo last week signed into law the bill setting up the Special Prosecutor office after it was approved by Parliament in November 2017.

The Office of the Special Prosecutor marks the fulfilment of a major campaign promise of Nana Akufo-Addo in the run-up to the 2016 elections aimed at fighting corruption.

But members of the opposition NDC had complained that the office cannot be independent if the Special Prosecutor was going to be a loyalist of the NPP.

The President in announcing Amidu, said he received the nomination from the Attorney General Gloria Akuffo, and has accepted the nominee, whose name will be forwarded to Parliament for approval when the House reconvenes from recess.

“The Attorney General is by a letter dated to me Thursday 11^th January 2018 addressed to me exercised her power of nomination and submitted to me for my acceptance the name of the proposed special prosecutor. I have accepted the Attorney General’s nomination and will, in turn, submit for Parliament’s approval when it reconvenes on 23^rd of January 2018 for its first meeting of this New Year the name of Martin Alamisi Benz Kaiser Amidu to be the first Special Prosecutor under the law,” he said.

The President noted that, Mr. Amidu has the requisite integrity and independence of character to occupy such challenging office.

“I have done so because I am fully convinced that Mr. Martin Amidu, a prominent legal personality who held the high office of the Attorney General of the Republic in the government of the late President John Evans Attah Mills has the requisite integrity, competence, courage and independence of character to discharge effectively the responsibilities of this office.”

More About Martin Amidu

Martin A. B. K. Amidu was the Attorney-General and Minister for Justice from January 2011 till January 2012 under the late President John Evans Atta-Mills.

Amidu, a member of the NDC, served as the Deputy Attorney-General for about the last four years of the Provisional National Defence Council military government.

After civilian rule was established in the Fourth Republic in January 1993, he continued to serve in the government of Jerry Rawlings as Deputy Attorney-General. This he did for both terms lasting eight years until January 2001.

In the December 2000 presidential elections, he stood as the running mate of John Atta Mills. They both however lost to President John Kufuor that year.

In January 2010, following a cabinet reshuffle, President Mills replaced Cletus Avoka with Martin Amidu as the Minister for Interior. As Amidu is a Builsa, some people raised questions as to his neutrality in dealing with the Bawku conflict. He, however, went successfully through vetting by the Parliament of Ghana and has since assumed his post.

Following the second major cabinet reshuffle by President Mills, Amidu became the Attorney general and Minister for Justice of Ghana.

Removal from Office

Martin Amidu was relieved of his post on Thursday January 19, 2012, by President John Evans Atta Mills under circumstances described by aids as ‘his misconduct’ at a meeting chaired by the president at the Osu Castle on January 18, 2012.

He made allegations relating to alleged financial impropriety on the part of another cabinet minister, allegations he was asked by the president to substantiate.

Martin Amidu, the former Attorney General, single-handedly challenged the legality of the payments after being relieved off his post at the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court in 2014 ordered Mr. Woyome to pay back the money as Supreme Court judges unanimously granted the Attorney-General clearance to execute the court’s judgment, ordering Mr. Woyome to refund the cash to the state.

Following the delays in retrieving the money, Mr. Amidu in 2016, filed an application at the Supreme Court seeking to examine Alfred Woyome, on how he would pay back the money, after the Attorney General’s office under the Mahama Administration, led by the former Minister for Justice, Marietta Brew Appiah-Oppong, discontinued a similar application.

In February 2017 however, Mr. Amidu withdrew his suit seeking an oral examination, explaining that the change of government under the New Patriotic Party under the President, Nana Addo Dankwah Akuffo Addo and his Attorney General, Miss Gloria Akuffo’s assurance to retrieve all judgment debts wrongfully paid to individuals Mr. Woyome in response prayed the Supreme Court to stay proceedings on the oral examination since he had filed for a review on the case.

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By: Godwin Akweiteh Allotey/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Follow @AlloteyGodwin

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At a seminar with officials of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP), IDEG made a strong case for active partisan involvement in local governance which focuses on development.

[contextly_sidebar id=”5qWZrzcrkPecikcKQ5AS0JZgMuDYpAEe”]The Executive Director of IDEG, Dr. Emmanuel Akwetey, also urged government to adopt what he termed as the mixed member proportional representation to encourage more women representation, and marginally deprived within the country’s local governance system.

“We think that if the assemblies are going to be elected, how we would strengthen women’s representation, how we would strengthen youth, disability and other marginal groups including even that epic minority, if there are situations like that. So let’s do the first past the post, but let’s also introduce mixed member proportional representation,” he said.

Debate over MMDCEs election

The debate of election of MMDCEs has lingered for some time, with some Ghanaians looking forward to its implementation.

The proposal has received varied views from analysts in the field of local governance.

Whereas some have complained that the country’s local governance system risk sabotage if MMDCEs are elected, others think otherwise.

The fear of sabotage stems from the fact that, an MCE could be elected from an opposition party, whereas the Central government will be controlled by another party.

The suggestion is that, such an MCE may be sabotaged by central government, by way of they refusing to allocate the necessary resources to him or her to achieve the Assembly’s set objectives.

NPP promises to make it possible 

The New Patriotic Party (NPP) in its 2016 manifesto, promised to “oversee the direct election of Metropolitan, Municipal and District Chief Executives (MMDCEs) within 24 months of election into office, to coincide with the next District Assembly elections in 2019.”

This was reaffirmed by the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo who promised that “In 2018, we are going to move to fully elected District Assembly representations including the choice of the District chief Executive (DCE). It is going to be done by the people of the districts and no longer by the nomination of the President.”

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By: Godwin Akweiteh Allotey/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Follow @AlloteyGodwin

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According to him, the Memorandum of Understanding signed between the Government of Ghana and the Chinese government, is a joint venture and not a loan.

[contextly_sidebar id=”sAF2Rmhv2wulT9OKeRmHCstdGvXYvllq”]The government has come under pressure from the Minority in Parliament and some civil society organizations over its plan to leverage the country’s Bauxite deposits in the Atiwa forest to contract the money.

“It is a joint venture; and essentially that is what the leveraging means in this context. It is a win – win situation” he said.

He said many analysts were ignorant of the government’s new arrangement with the Chinese government, saying “because as a country, we have been used to the old model of borrowing from China, many analysts have not understood this new paradigm. They, therefore, keep referring erroneously to the $15 billion Chinese loan. What we are proposing and the agreements we have reached so far are not new loans, but rather joint venture proposals using less than 5% of our potentially refined bauxite reserves.”

Dr. Bawumia was speaking at a forum organized by the Institute of Democratic Governance (IDEG) on China-Africa relations.

He noted that, the decision to make the arrangement with the Chinese government was properly thought through, and said the government was committed to using the money to transform the economy by undertaking important projects.

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By: Jonas Nyabor/citifmonline.com/Ghana

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Much like the station, IDEG is advocating for comprehensive measures in dealing with the illegal mining menace which has ravaged the environment.

IDEG joins a number of other civil society groups like the Centre for Democratic Development (CDD), IMANI Africa and Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP) in declaring public support for the campaign and raising awareness of the urgency of the situation.

Dubbed #StopGalamseyNow, the campaign charges the government to undertake five steps to clamp down on the menace which is destroying the county’s land and water bodies at an alarming rate.

Citi FM’s five demands include:

• The total cessation of all small and medium scale mining for a period of six months
• The cessation of the issuance of new mining licences for a year
• The reclassification of mining categories to reflect the use of new/larger equipment
• The allowance of water bodies to regenerate their natural ecology
• Tree planting and a land reclamation project

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By: citifmonline.com/Ghana

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Some key political figures have raised concerns over what they term as flaws in Ghana’s electoral system.

Speaking at IMANI Ghana’s dialogue series on post election 2016, Dr. Akwetey called for multi-stakeholder engagements to ensure that these core challenges are resolved.

“We have to look at the cost of what we do to maintain peaceful elections and democratic stability and ask ourselves if indeed our democracy is strong.  ”

“I will think that the more stable we become as a democracy and we handle our competitive elections, the lesser threat we should face and we are able to rather strengthen those things that really make us conduct our elections and also focus on the policies that elected governments will pursue and support them to achieve these goals for the nation.”

He also emphasized the need to tackle what he calls “existing threats of violence” in our democratic system.

“In a democracy there is a way in which you deal with violence, you talk about it and you find a way of tackling it,” he said.

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By: Marian Ansah/citifmonline.com/Ghana

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The Executive Director of IDEG, Dr Emmanuel Akwetey in an interview on the Citi Breakfast Show on Tuesday [October 25] said the judiciary is up to the task and able to deliver on their mandate with the various measures it has adopted to fast-track the court processes.[contextly_sidebar id=”wN3udx6Aj61IMiIyRB5bJp9f7hSeY4FX”]

“They [judiciary] look quite organized, focused and determined to do that in the national interest. They don’t talk in partisan interest, they talk in terms of what is good for the nation. They don’t want crisis so the Chief Justice has set up 17 courts and have assigned that they will work 6 days a week and things will be done expeditiously,” he said.

Mr Akwetey noted that while the court processes are important, the December 7 election date must not be tampered with.

“We shouldn’t push things to having to amend the constitution or do anything to allow that extra space,” he cautioned.

The Chief Justice, Georgina Theodora Wood at the ninth annual Chief Justice forum held in Accra on Monday said the Judiciary is committed to ensuring Ghana’s election calendar is not disrupted in anyway by the numerous election cases in court.

According to her, judges designated to sit on such cases have been instructed to deal with them expeditiously.

“At a time the high court rules have been amended to provide for witness statements, I am confident that the maximum professional diligence would be deployed by all judges in adjudicating the multiple suits being filed ahead of December 7, 2016. Our planned programmes clearly demonstrate our commitment over the period and pledge to Ghanaians to play a pivotal role towards the peace, stability and sustained social economic and political development of our country,” she said.

‘EC saddled with numerous lawsuits’

The Electoral Commission has been inundated with a lot of lawsuits from some political parties and individuals challenging some decisions of the electoral body.

The cases have raised concerns of a possible disruption in the electoral calendar.

The cases being heard included those seeking the reinstatement of some disqualified aspirants in the upcoming presidential elections and those seeking an order to compel the EC to announce results of special voting on the same day it is held.

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By: Jonas Nyabor/citifmonline.com/Ghana

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It will also establish 10 Civil Society Elections Situation Rooms (CESR) in all the regions with a national coordinating centre in Accra to disseminate credible information on the polls to the public.

[contextly_sidebar id=”MfIDJYQsX9ofMNegok5p0SMvL9xADseH”]Dr Kwesi Jonah, a Senior Research Fellow of IDEG, announced this at an IDEG “Civil Society Elections Situation Room Training Workshop” for Regional Situation room Working Groups in Takoradi.

The Workshop, organised by IDEG with support from Mondelez, was to train and equip the participants with the knowledge and other necessary tools required for the effective operations in the elections.

He said the CESRs, which were being operated in conjunction with the Police and the Electoral Commission, would focus on data regarding the voting processes, voter turnouts, results from polling stations and collation centres.

It would also cover other incidents and events that may crop up at the various polling centres.

“It is an operational room equipped with cameras, phones, television sets and other gadgets to monitor and gather information as events roll out before, during and after the December general elections,” he explained.

Dr Jonah, who took the participants through the “Political and Security content of the Elections, said though Ghana was doing well in its democratic dispensation, there were still indications that the elections could be violent if the necessary measures were not put in place to curb it.

He said the current hate speech and intemperate language used on radio and television stations as well as political party rallies could spark violence, stressing that: “What is happening on our air waves is not talking about us going to vote but as if we are preparing for a war and this should be a source of concern for all.”

Dr Jonah also mentioned the emergence of political vigilante groups, increase in the number of flash points, importation of small arms, poor social and economic conditions, the lack of political dialogue among political parties, and the issue of the winner–takes-all, as indicators that could all start violent acts.

He, in this regard, called for continuous prayers for the nation and asked all to “shine their eyes” and look out for these disturbing indicators.

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Source: GNA

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This, he said, has necessitated IDEG and the Civic Forum Initiative’s (CFI) review and advocacy for a more robust local government system that can sustain the current multi-party democratic dispensation.

He identified the appointment of Metropolitan, Municipal and District Chief Executives (MMDCES) and the 30 per cent of the members of the assembly by the president without the involvement of the political parties, as the main factors weakening the current local governance system.

Dr Jonah said this when he addressed stakeholders at a regional dialogue on democratic devolution, which was organized under the theme: “Strengthening democratic development through multi-party based local government “at Koforidua.

He called for direct elections of MMDCEs by the people on the ticket of political parties saying this would ensure accountability in the area.

Dr Jonah said political parties should be freely allowed to participate in the district level elections to help reduce the apathy that is normally associated with the local government elections.

He said this is because the political parties would mobilize voters, raise pertinent issues and promote political debate during the elections.

He called for the scraping of the 30 percent government appointee system to the assemblies and this should be replaced with a proportional representation system so that more people with the requisite experience can enter the assemblies and consideration could be given to some interest groups.

Dr Jonah called for an increase in the district assembly common fund from 7.5 percent of tax revenue to 15 per cent, to help promote faster development of the local communities.

Mr Seth Abloso, member of the CFI and a labour consultant, said the multi -party governance system which the country is practicing is being threatened by political violence.

He called for more to be done to help reduce the tension that often grips the nation when the election season approaches.

Mr Abloso said as the nation prepares for elections, there is the need to secure the commitment of the political parties to continue with the constitutional amendment process after the 2016 election.

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Source: GNA

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The youth petitioned the President and the security agencies to investigate former MCE, Mr Daniel Apau Ohyeamang, for looting and misapplying public funds.

Mr Ayean Frimpong, Leader of the group told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) on Saturday: “EOCO has invited us to come to Kumasi on Monday on the issues raised in our petition.”

The youth accused the MCE of siphoning assembly’s funds, building eight houses in four years, sanctioning payments for contracts not executed as well backdating contracts and inflating population of schools under the National School Feeding Programme.

The letter jointly signed by Mr Ayean Frimpong, Mr Kenneth Collins Bonsu and Mr James O. Peprah, petitioned President John Dramani Mahama to conduct thorough investigation into the activities and conduct of the former MCE for undermining the better Ghana agenda slogan of the government.

“Please your Excellency, the former municipal chief executive (Mr Daniel Apau Ohyeamang) should be probed for undermining the better Ghana agenda after being fired,” they said in a letter made available to Ghana News Agency in Accra.

They claimed the former MCE took away a generator plant and a television set belonging to the assembly, after he was dismissed by the President early this year.

They said the items never passed through the stores of the municipal assembly as being the practice and therefore could not be traced through the records.

Mr Ohyeamang refuted the allegation in an interview with the GNA, and threatened to take the petitioners to court.

He, however, said some school feeding contracts were given to his wife and daughter, while the assembly owes him GH₵ 20,000.00.

Internal Audit report in 2013 cited widespread fraudulent deals in the municipal assembly and recommended full refund of monies lost to the assembly.

The report named Multi Dimension Limited, and JEK and Will Co Limited to pay back the assembly “within 24 hours GH₵ 18,066 it claimed by false pretence or in default face immediate police action.”

In the 3^rd quarter of 2012, the audit had demanded the assembly recover GH₵ 75,000 paid to Uphils, an internet service provider, for services not rendered.

Source: GNA

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