Ayawaso probe: Government's white paper deadline this week

The government of Ghana is expected to issue a white paper on the findings of the Emile Short Commission of Inquiry into the 31 January 2019 Ayawaso West Wuogon by-election gun violence by the end of this week.

The three-member Commission chaired by the former Commissioner on Human Rights and Administrative Justice, Justice Francis Emile Short, was established by the government with a mandate to make a full, faithful and impartial inquiry into the circumstances that led to the violence and establish the facts thereof. The Commission was given a month to present its findings to the president. The government, per the Constitution, has six months to either issue a white paper on the findings or not.

As the 6-month period elapses this week, Mr Short said the findings can only be made public after the issuance of the white paper.

He told Accra 100.5FM’s Kwabena Bobie Ansah on ‘The Citizen’ show on Tuesday, 10 September 2019 that: “The government has a 6-month window to publish our report. I think that the 6month deadline will expire this week and so we are all looking forward to some response from the government within this week”.

“Until we get some response from the government, I am not in the position to comment on it. In fact, we are not required to comment on our report because it has not been published although there has been leakages of parts of the report, but until government publishes a white paper on the report or indicates that it is not going to publish a white paper on the report, members of the Commission are not allowed to comment on it.”