Posted| Daily Guide |Thursday, 08 April 2010
By Charles Takyi-Boadu
The New Patriotic Party (NPP) has registered its displeasure about the manner in which the National Democratic Congress (NDC) is proceeding with the supposed ‘prosecution’ of its members, including former ministers of the erstwhile Kufuor administration.
It cautioned the ruling party and Attorney General Betty-Mould Iddrisu to desist from what it termed the political persecution of its members.
At a press conference in Accra yesterday, party Chairman Jake Otanka Obetsebi-Lamptey noted that much as the NPP as a party would not shield any of its members who might have been involved in any form of impropriety, it would not sit in laxity for the NDC to carry out political persecutions against its members without cause.
According to the Chairman, the process the Attorney General and the government had begun against NPP members was nothing but the result of the unnecessary pressure being brought to bear on them by the party’s founder and former President, Jerry John Rawlings, and foot-soldiers, who were baying for the blood of NPP members.
“The President and his Attorney General have kowtowed and succumbed to the unjustifiable political pressures from the founder of the party, Jerry Rawlings and some adherents, to accelerate with disturbing alacrity, the prosecution of NPP former ministers and officials, whilst the murderers, arsonists, rapists, dangerous assailants and unauthorized gun-wielders at Tamale, Chereponi, Bawku, Nalerigu, Garizhegu, Agbogbloshie, Akwatia and other places, roam the roads, streets, lanes and allays of these respective communities untouched.”
This, according to him, was evident in the fact that the 2008 manifesto of the NDC itself asserted that the NPP government was ‘corrupt’.
He noted that the Attorney General, who claimed not to have any substantial evidence against members of the previous administration, suddenly managed to manufacture trumped up charges against members of the NPP and process them for court, barely a week after she made such pronouncements.
Mr Obetsebi-Lamptey described Mrs. Betty Mould-Iddrisu as an “embodiment of contradiction”, emphasizing that “barely a week before the commencement of these prosecutions, she was on record as having lamented the situation that whereas there is a cacophonous instigation for the prosecution of officers of the former administration, the current sector ministers, 15 clear months into Prof. Mills regime, have not produced any incriminating evidence based on which prosecutions should commence.”
Jake could not help but ask rhetorically: “What credible evidences have been assembled within five days which have engendered the initiation of prosecution now? Or are we laying the ground rules for persecutions instead of prosecutions?”
He found lamentable, the strange circumstance under which former Finance and Economic Planning Minister, Professor George Gyan-Baffour was framed up to have been ‘at large’ when no police caution statement had been taken from him.
The party Chairman recalled how President Mills paused and looked at the public gallery of Parliament when he was delivering his State of the Nation address on February 25, 2010 and boldly declared:
“And let me say, we are in the process (to vigorously prosecute all past and present officials of the state) and very soon you will begin to see results.”
This pronouncement of the President was said not to be part of the original text submitted to Parliament.
He therefore wondered why the President and his Attorney General failed to prosecute recent cases of financial impropriety at the Ministry of Youth and Sports in which the President came out to say that the case was an “exercise of ministerial indiscretion rather than official thievery and corruption”.
Though the acts were prosecutable, Jake noted, “The self-proclaimed father of all citizens, irrespective of one’s political affiliation, race, religion or parenthood, discriminatorily failed to prosecute his officials.
“Apparently, under President Atta Mills, criminality is assuming political colours, which is a dangerous threat to our security and democracy.”