Keep law on causing financial loss

Some members of Ghana's opposition New Patriotic Party, NPP are busy ventilating their anger at government and the Bureau of National Investigation, BNI. They do not like the idea that a senior member of their party is suspected of causing financial loss to the state and must be investigated.

And so they besieged the premises of the bureau demanding the release of Mr. Mpiani, the Chief of Staff under President Kufour who is being investigated on many deals brokered during the Kufour years.

This behaviour is in marked contrast to some of the values the opposition NPP professes to uphold. Thankfully we have the benefit of history. Here's what Akuffo-Addo said in 2001 - "Co-operation or non-cooperation, government will not be deflected from the necessity to pursue these enquiries, which are entirely legitimate. For we will not allow a culture of impunity to develop in this nation.”

Those were the exact words of Nana Akuffo Addo, then Attorney-General when he delivered a keynote address at the annual conference of the Ghana Bar Association in Sunyani in October 2001. He was reacting to complaints of intimidation of former NDC ministers and sympathisers. Well, the tables have turned and your guess is as good as mine – our vociferous apostles of the rule of law are ranting and raving; they are chanting oppression; they are threatening confusion and they are singing from a different hymn sheet.

In 2001, Dan Botwe told the Evening news that the protestations by the NDC, then in opposition “would lead to anarchy and lawlessness.” Today, a former Chief of Staff is investigated for suspected misappropriation of public funds and they are crying oppression.

The BNI was established under the Security and Intelligence Agencies Act 1996, Act 526, and given the powers of arrest, search and also all powers that the Ghana Police Service possesses in the course of investigations. The BNI can detain anyone without charge as long as they do not exceed the 48 hour period allowed by our laws. They can also use any tactic to elicit information as long as it is not ‘water boarding.’ The bureau does not have a silver bullet approach to solving crime and must not be dictated to on how to conduct its business by people who turned a blind eye when acts of corruption were going on under their watch.

The character of a party is determined in times of crises; what is most lamentable is the weakness shown by the NPP in a period of great challenge. It is an amazing act of hypocrisy for the NPP to cry ‘injustice.

I am not entirely surprised by their attempts to stymie the course of justice. What I am most surprised about is the insult to the intelligence of Ghanaians by the leadership of the Ghana Bar Association, GBA. You would expect the GBA to call a spade a spade. In 2001, the GBA was quick to denounce the NDC then in opposition for protesting against the arrest of some of its members. In a statement, it said the NDC ignored “the fact that the security agencies are legally constituted organs of state, tasked with the responsibility of investigating crime.” I hope the GBA does not take long to condemn the actions of the NPP. The GBA must also single out Kwabena Adjapong who seems to think he’s untouchable and has decided to expose his legendary ignorance of the powers vested in the BNI.

Where were Kwabena Adjapong and his group when Kwame Peprah of the NDC was summoned before the SFO and CID 35 times in eight months? Sixteen former NDC officials were either picked up or invited by the BNI, CID and SFO within the first eight months of the Kufour rule. And what did they tell us? When E.T. Mensah complained about mosquitoes in a BNI cell, Akuffo-Addo virtually told the nation it is was alright for the former minister to be bitten by mosquitoes because of events that happened in a military regime. It is lethargic to list the number of humiliating and unlawful things the NPP subjected many members and sympathisers of the NDC to. We know what happened over the last eight years. That is all behind us now. What is before us now is to run a government and make sure people who betray the trust of the nation do not get away with it. We have a government to run and criminals to catch and we would busy ourselves with the task of fixing the economy or rather 'ecomini'

In Britain, there's talk of using the Fraud Act of 2006 to prosecute some MPs who are currently embroiled in the expenses scandal - for us in Ghana, there is the ALMIGHTY ACT 458 of 1993.

Ministers in the Kufour administration and indeed anyone in the current government who have misused public funds should start chewing over their future in the next few months. The prosecutions would go on; people who are found guilty would pay a price – that is what would set this government apart from anything we may have had in the last eight years. Act 458 of 1993 must be allowed to stay, and whoever misbehaved, be they Sakyi Hughes or Mpiani must account for their actions.

From Britain to Japan, every political party has good guys and bad guys; state institutions must be allowed to pursue the bad guys.

Ras Mubarak

Publicist

Public Relations – NDC Europe mmubarak79@yahoo.com