Mills aide lashes at NDC colleagues

The Evening News quotes Willie Ansah, former personal aide to ex-Vice-President Prof John Atta Mills as saying in a letter to the paper that he is not happy with the way some National Democratic Congress (NDC) members are defending the party’s record.

He said it was a pity that the few macho-NDC members who hawkishly are trying to defend the NDC record are unfortunately not those who are hauled before the courts, so they do not realise how the shoe pinches.

He said it was unfortunate that a few members of the NDC “for their self-serving purposes would see no fault with the past performance of the NDC.” By so doing, he said they had brought resentment against their colleagues who might have slipped here and there in the course of discharging their duties.

Mr Ansah pointed out that there was nothing shameful about admitting faults. “We are all human and we make mistakes every now and then.” He advised those who are faulting the Attorney-General for pardoning Victor Selormey for his alleged crime to reconsider their stand.

He said “in the first place, the Attorney-General is well within the ambit of the law and the discretion allowed him by his office to take such decisions,” that the decision has great benefits for both sides.

“First the state avoids the expenses of a trial whiles it gets its money back and Selormey avoids custodian sentence.” The state, he said, indeed should do more of that to avoid spending too much money prosecuting cases whose outcome one could not be sure of.

“There is also the humanitarian aspect where the case is so cut-and-dried, one could strike such bargain to save the accused too much pain. After all in this case, the state is more interested in recovering the money than in jailing Selormey,” he said.