Ford gift: Go to court if you disagree with CHRAJ - Gov’t

The presidency has accepted the report by the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) over investigations into a Ford gift to President John Mahama.

CHRAJ, Thursday, September 29, 2016 cleared the president of bribery, but indicted him for violating the gift policy with regard to his decision to accept the vehicle from a Burkinabe contractor.

It said the gift in question forms part of gifts prohibited under the Gift Policy captured in the law governing the Code of Conduct of public officers and that although there was evidence showing that President Mahama subsequently surrendered the gift to the State, the action nonetheless contravened the gift policy.

The Minority Leader in Parliament, Osei Kyei Mensah-Bonsu reacting to CHRAJ’s exoneration of Mahama of culpability of conflict of interest, bribery or fraud in relation to the manner the vehicle was gifted to him [President Mahama] said the report was a charade aimed at side stepping the issues.

“It’s a patented contrivance,” he told Starr Today’s Bernard Nasara Saibu Thursday. “Certainly, parliament was not going to engage in such a fruitless adventure."

But, speaking on Accra-based Class FM Friday, Mr. Clement Apaak said the presidency is not surprised by the reactions emanating from opponents of president Mahama.

“You know that when these issues came up, the level of agitation by the NPP and their surrogates to try and make a case against the president, the attempt to impugn his [President Mahama] reputation and to suggest all manner of things was in full gear,” he stated.

He said the position of the NDC and the presidency has always been “solid” and that the 78-page report by CHRAJ is a vindication of that. He said the CHRAJ report is very exhaustive and unequivocal.

Professor Mike Oquaye, the former second deputy speaker of parliament questioned the CHRAJ report, arguing that there are more queries that the president needs to answer as far as the circumstance leading to the acceptance of the said vehicle is concerned.

In his view, the report is inconclusive.

But, Mr. Apaak disagreed. He thus challenged him [Mike Oquaye] and those opposing the content of the report to go on and “file another case and then [the presidency] will respond appropriately.”

He said the presidency is not worried about that prospect because the “president did no wrong, he has accepted no bribe, there was never any attempt to engage in an action that was detrimental to the interest of the good people of Ghana and [CHRAJ] has duly vindicated us.”

He added “if anybody else including Mike Oquaye has a problem, he knows fully well where to go to seek redress.”