CHRAJ Ford report 'disappointing' - PPP

The Progressive People’s Party (PPP) has expressed disappointment with the report released by the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) exonerating the president over bribery allegations involving the Ford gift saga.

The president accepted a Ford Expedition SUV car as a gift from Burkinabe contractor Djibril Kanazoe.

Mr Kanazoe was later given series of contracts by the Government of Ghana, including a $650,000 deal to fence a tract of land around Ghana’s mission in Burkina Faso.

Unsatisfied with the conduct of the president, the PPP, the Youth Wing of the Convention People’s Party (CPP) and a private citizen petitioned CHRAJ to have Mr Mahama investigated for conflict of interest and bribery.

The commission, after its investigations, however, concluded that the President’s action did not amount to bribery, fraud or conflict of interest.

But CHRAJ indicted the president for contravening the gift policy regime for public officials.

Responding to the development on Class FM’s 12Live news programme, Policy Advisor for the PPP, Mr kofi Asamoah-Siaw said CHRAJ’s report “is quite disappointing”.

He told Regina Borley Bortey on Thursday September 29 that the gift policy which CHRAJ cites must be interrogated further to find out if it was “implemented by the President – a self-regulatory code of conduct for public officers”.

He argued that the President had misconducted himself so “it does not take away the fact that some wrong has been done”.

For his party, leader of the CPP Youth League, Ernesto Yeboah, told Accra 100.5FM on the same day that the “report does not clear President Mahama and makes him unfit to be voted as president for another term”.

He expressed worry with the report from CHRAJ because, in his view, the President’s acceptance of the gift “still borders on abuse of office; if you cannot keep a mere gift policy, how then is he going to assure the people of Ghana that he will be able to hold the sacred oath of his office?”

For him, it appears the report was hurriedly prepared to license the president to contest in this year’s election.