US based Lawyer and Accounting Professor, Kwaku Asare popularly has stated that the country must not flout the constitutional requirement on the age of retirement, urging President Akufo Addo to revoke Martin Amidu’s nomination as the Special Prosecutor.
According to him, the only way the President can continue to have Mr Amidu as the Special Prosecutor is to have the constitutional provisions amended to allow the latter to occupy that office.
Article 199(1) of the constitution states that “A public officer shall, except as otherwise provided in this Constitution, retire from the public service on attaining the age of sixty years.”
Mr Amidu, an anti-corruption campaigner popularly known as the ‘Citizen Vigilante’ is to be vetted today Tuesday February 13. But a former deputy Attorney General Dr. Dominic Ayine on Monday filed a suit at the Supreme Court arguing that Mr. Amidu is too old to hold the position of Special Prosecutor.
He wants the apex court of the land to annul the appointment because “…by reason of his age, (66 years), Mr. Martin Alamisi Burns Kaiser Amidu is not qualified or eligible to be approved by Parliament as the Special Prosecutor under Section 13(3) of the Office of the Special Prosecutor Act, 2018 (Act 959).”
The First Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Joe Osei Owusu insists the age of Amidu cannot disqualify him from becoming the Special Prosecutor.
Speaking to Fiifi Banson on Anopa Kasapa on Kasapa FM,Tuesday, Prof. Asare stated that the Attorney General may have missed the age of Mr. Amidu because the AG’s department is under-resourced and over-worked.
“The Attorney General Department is over worked and understaffed staffed, that is what is causing such lapses. We should not blame the AG, we should try and understand what is going on. Until we give her enough staff and resources, there’ll be more lapses. I’m not the least surprised such a lapse has occurred.
“If the President really wants to high Mr Amidu, he doesn’t have to hire him as a Special Prosecutor. He can hire him as Attorney General or Deputy Attorney General, both of them will still be involved in prosecutions. But for the Special Prosecutor post, age limit will cause problems. We have to take a re-look at the retirement age. 60 years is too young to be retiring people, people are 60 years but they’re still strength to work, we don’t need to be keeping this 1950s laws on our books. We need to consider if we want to increase the retirement age from 60 to 70 years.”