The 2016 failed presidential candidate of the Progressive People’s Party (PPP), Dr. Papa Kwesi Nduom has kicked against plans by the incoming Nana Akufo-Addo led government to establish the office of an independent prosecutor to fight corruption.
According to the business mogul, the proposed office would not necessarily be an efficient mechanism of fighting the canker.
President elect Akufo-Addo expressed plans of creating a special prosecutor’s office, arguing that it would help fight corruption in the country as the office would be apolitical.
He said in an interview with BBC recently that: “We have decided that we want to take the politics out of it [the fight against corruption], so that the screams of witch-hunting and others will not arise, by establishing an office of a special prosecutor or somebody who will be independent of the executive and whose remit will be to investigate and tackle issues of corruption.”
“Hopefully, that person is going to be somebody who is going to command the respect of the society, and at the same time has an independent mind to make the decisions,” he added.
But speaking on Thursday, 29 December, 2016 at a press conference in Accra, Nduom argued that the creation of such an office is needless and that it would be more effective to decouple the Ministry of Justice from the Attorney General’s office.
That, according to him, is the most efficient way of fighting corruption in the country.
He said “When you have an Attorney General who is a cabinet member and is the most powerful person in terms of fighting corruption, how is that possible in our part of the world that you sit there with your colleague and you are the one who will look at your colleague and say you are a thief, you have stolen money from the state and you have done something against us? How does that happen? What we are asking for is a separation. Let the Minister of Justice become the President’s lawyer while the Attorney General’s office becomes the people’s lawyer and let’s bring that independence there.”
He continued “I hear from time to time somebody has been talking about us letting the two remain; but we will have an office of an independent prosecutor. That is not what we are talking about here; we are talking about separating the two by law and changing the constitution to make it happen.”
Source: Ghana/StarrFMonline.com/103.5FM/Mohammed Awal
