Ghana Being Raped

HEADS OF the Local Council of Christian Churches in the Ashanti region have said the judgment debt saga had exposed the nation as “a very vulnerable entity” in spite of her esteemed intelligence and rich human resources.

According to them, there was no doubt that the nation was being raped and deprived of her hard-earned resources through the rampant payment of judgment debts.

The council, which comprised the Christian Council of Ghana, Ghana Pentecostal Council, Catholic Secretariat, Independent and Charismatic Churches Council, Conference of the Seventh Day Adventists, the Kumasi Ministers Fellowship and Para-Church Organizations, noted that as the torch bearer of African democracy and a nation that abounded in rich human resources, Ghana should not have suffered this misfortune.

At a press conference in Kumasi after a prayerful consideration of the recommendations of the Constitutional Review Commission (CRC), Rt. Rev. Dr. Daniel Yinkah Sarfo, Chairman of the Steering Committee of the Council, noted that our local resources could have gone into national development.

“This has without doubt contributed to the current high level of poverty, unprecedented unemployment and corruption,” he submitted.

The judgment debts saga, he observed, had become a wake-up call for all and sundry to sit up and deal with the issue once and for all.

He said as the leaders of Christian churches, they believed that one major problem that had given rise to the payment of judgment debts was the failure of successive governments to decouple the position of the Attorney General and Minister of Justice.

“…our politicians are unwilling to decouple that ministry because the existing arrangement has always favored the government in power,” he asserted.

To forestall any such future re-occurrences, the church leaders said the solution lay in the separation of the Attorney General’s Department from the Ministry of Justice or the appointment of an independent state prosecutor who would serve the interest of the general populace and not only the government in power.

Rev. Sarfo added that this would ultimately ensure a fair legal system for all Ghanaians, asserting, “It is now time for civil society to rise up to ensure once and for all that the right thing is done in the interest of the nation.”

He explained that two factors had made this period the best time for them as church leaders to voice out their concerns, citing the judgment debt saga and the issuing of government’s white paper on the recommendations of the CRC.

“We were expecting the CRC to tackle the issue of decoupling the ministry in question since it was raised by some concerned individuals when the commission sought their views around the country, but the commission unfortunately glossed over the matter,” he noted.

It was the candid position of the group that fundamental flaws in the CRC report should be corrected before its implementation.