The Member of Parliament for Okaikoi South Nana Akomea has stated that the Mills-led administration has not jailed any past official because it has found no evidence yet to prosecute them.
According to him, the government is doing all it can, digging deep to find something incriminating to prosecute former officials who served in the erstwhile Kufuor administration.
“… A lot of my colleagues are in court as I speak … and I believe that the government is spending a lot of time conducting investigations.”And if any of us has not been hauled to the court it is because they haven’t found anything yet…” he insisted.
Nana Akomea was contributing to discussions on Metro TV’s current affairs programme Good Morning Ghanaon Friday. He was reacting to a story on the Front Page of the Chronicle Newspaper which suggests that former Finance and Economic Planning Minister Dr Anthony Akoto Osei has praised President Mills for respecting the rule of law even though he faces pressure from members of his party to jail past officials.
However the Okaikoi South MP holds the view that the president is not doing anybody a favour by not jailing past officials: “…It is not because the President is following some rule of law or some magnanimity.”
The New Patriotic Party (NPP)MP stressed that “they [government]are actively looking to prosecute us. If tomorrow they find out that when I was a minister I embezzled some public funds, I don’t think they will hesitate two minutes to drug me to court.”
Haruna Iddrisu, Communications Minister and a co-panelist on the programme, said President Mills upon assumption of office swore an oath to respect the rule of law and to be fair and just to every Ghanaian – an oath, he insists, is being acted upon by the President who has publicly declared that he would not interfere with Ghana’s judiciary.
“There is no evidence and there can be no evidence that the President is interfering with the judicial process of Ghana,” the minister stated.
He added that the President’s focus is on his ‘Better Ghana Agenda’ and not on political vendetta and further challenged members of the opposition NPP to say otherwise. “Let [the] minority accept that the focus of this government, unlike them, is not political witch-hunt or political vindictiveness. Our focus is building a better Ghana…”
“Let anybody in the NPP tell us that today the rule of law is not operative and functional in Ghana and that one or two of them have not been subjected to a fair trial,” Haruna dared the NPP.