THE MINORITY New Patriotic Party (NPP) in Parliament has welcomed government’s decision to reopen investigations into the infamous MV Benjamin cocaine scandal.
Minority spokesman on Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs, Joe Ghartey told DAILY GUIDE yesterday “it is good that it is set up under President Mills’ government.
If President Kufuor sets up a committee, they say he is covering up. So we welcome it in public so that all Ghanaians will see all the facts.”
Personally and as a former Deputy Attorney General under the erstwhile Kufuor administration, Mr Ghartey said “I want to know whether anybody covered up for anybody. As far as I am concerned, from all the information that I had, there was no cover up.”
Considering the fact that all major players in the case in which 77 parcels of cocaine on board the MV Benjamin vessel went missing were tried and sentenced, Mr. Ghartey could not fathom what might have triggered this latest action of President Mills.
He stressed that he hopes something good comes out of the yet-to-be commissioned investigations saying “he started Ya-Na, it hasn’t come to anything.”
According to him, these and others including President Mills’ decision not to acknowledge the Chief Justice, Georgina Wood when he delivered his State of the Nation address yesterday was part of a grand scheme being employed by the current administration to discredit the judiciary.
“If you add all these things together, then you cannot blame the Minority for thinking that it is part of a concerted effort to undermine the independence of the judiciary.”
By Charles Takyi-Boadu