Woode Committee Should Follow the Leak!

The Georgina Woode Committee into the “MV Benjamin” Cocaine Scandal has received more than its fair share of advice as to how to proceed in order to discover the miscreants who stormed the vessel and stole the 77 parcels of cocaine, as well as where the cocaine presently is.

Some have advised the Committee to follow the Kofi Boakye Tape, for the voices on the tape give clear leads as to who were involved in the misadventure and where the cocaine is.

Some have advised the committee to follow the cocaine, even though the cocaine is what the Committee has been set up to find.

Our own informants, as well as our Legal analysis, however tell us that the Committee should “follow the leak”, for it is the leak that will lead the Committee to who stormed the vessel, who stole the cocaine, and where the cocaine is.

The extrapolation is simple. The US and UK intelligence agencies gave the cocaine intelligence to the Government of Ghana.

Given the delicate nature of the intelligence, only very few people in Government and Government institutions must have known about it. So who and who in Government knew? If these could be identified, then the circle of suspicions would be narrowed to a very small group of people.

Next, who in this small group of people has a relationship with, or is connected to, any of the persons who have been arrested and who have confessed on tape knowing something about the missing cocaine?

That person is the person to whom the leak was most probably leaked and who therefore is the most likely source of the leak. From there on, it should not be too difficult to trace the chain of events to who ultimately took custody of the cocaine.

Let’s Have A Second Look At Local Gov’t. Elections -- Ahwoi

Mr. Kwamena Ahwoi, Former Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, last Tuesday called for a Congress that would review and streamline the many difficulties the local government elections faced for a smooth District Level Elections.

Speaking at the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) policy forum on: “The District Assembly Elections, Preparations so Far”, Mr Ahwoi said most of the problems stemmed from the fact that boundaries of electoral areas were demarcated using the 1984 population census when the population of Ghana was 12 million.

Giving an insight into the low participation in the Unit Committee Elections, with 3,771 units having zero nominations out of the 16,000 units, he said the units were initially carved out for electoral purposes to allow the electorate to vote and not for development.

They were basically used for registration of births and deaths and for supervision purposes, he said.

For instance, there were about 10 to 20 units in Accra Central Business District alone for people to cast their votes but since nobody specifically lived there it became difficult for people to show interest and stand for the elections there.

Mr Ahwoi said the district demarcations were not population centred and called for a re-demarcation of the districts to reflect the increased population, which now stood at 20 million.

He said to improve the participation in the District Level Elections there was the need to give the mandate to the districts to conduct the elections for flexibility to enhance the decentralization process.

He said the legislation should also be reviewed to give women higher slots in the district assemblies to encourage more women to participate.

Mr K. Safo Kantanka, Deputy Commissioner, Operations, of the Electoral Commission, said nomination of female candidates for both the District Assembly Elections (DEA) and Unit Committee was not encouraging.

A total of 14,135 contestants filed nominations for the District Assembly elections out of which 1,753 (12 per cent) were females.

At the Unit Committee level 75,691 are contesting with 12,147 being 16 per cent females.