Betty lies

...as NDC cries for blood
Posted: daily Guide |Wednesday, 17 March 2010

By Charles Takyi-Boadu
The 2008 Presidential Candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, has responded to the vicious lies being peddled against him by Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Betty Mould-Iddrisu, who appears to be clutching for a lifeline to secure her position.

Betty had alleged on a Radio Gold programme yesterday that Nana Addo played an instrumental role in her decision to resign from the office of the Attorney-General since she was too prominent a member of the NDC, indicating that “what happened was unpardonable”, causing unimaginable pain to her and her family.

But hours after making the allegations, the office of Nana Addo issued a statement describing Betty’s claims as not only vicious but convenient lies.

While Nana Addo empathised with her predicament, whereby influential persons within the NDC are baying for her blood because of her alleged sluggishness in bringing former NPP government officials to trial, he stressed the belief that “there are more responsible ways of handling the pressure than resorting to unnecessary fabrications”.

Far from hounding her out of office, the statement noted that Betty continued to act as Head of the International Law Division during the entire two-year period of Nana’s tenure as Attorney-General.

Nana Akufo-Addo actually left the current Attorney-General behind at the Attorney-General’s Office when in March 2003 he took up his new responsibilities as Foreign Minister.

“Thus, he worked closely with Mrs. Mould Iddrisu and all the other heads of department he came to meet at the Ministry, and she was still at post when he left the Attorney- General’s Office for the Foreign Ministry two years later,” the statement said.

It indicated that even after Nana Addo had left the A-G’s Department, he graciously accepted Betty’s request for a reference letter to support her application for an international job, emphasizing that “he gave her a glowing reference because he was satisfied with her competence and fitness for the job”.

The statement noted: “She approached Nana Akufo-Addo for a reference in his capacity as her former boss and as Foreign Minister of the Republic, and did not indeed indicate at the time that her subsequent voluntary departure would cause pain to her and her family.

“Apart from giving her an excellent written reference, Nana Akufo-Addo personally lobbied the then Commonwealth Secretary General, Don Mckinnon, on her behalf, as he would have done for any other competent Ghanaian seeking an international position.”

When Nana Akufo-Addo was appointed by the then President Kufuor as Attorney-General in 2001, Mrs Mould Iddrisu, then head of the International Law Division, was among the staff he met at the Office of the Attorney General.

Though it was common knowledge that Mrs. Mould Iddrisu was the wife of the former Defence Minister in the previous NDC administration, Alhaji Mahama Iddrisu, Nana Addo resisted calls from certain quarters for him to reassign her to another portfolio within the civil service and even defended his decision to maintain her at post on the ground that he had no reason to believe that her political affiliation was affecting either her professional judgment or her competence.

“Indeed, Mrs. Mould Iddrisu was given additional duties in charge of the de-confiscation of assets,” it added.

Unlike the culture of partisan cleansing that competent Ghanaians in the public service have experienced under the current Mills Administration, the statement said, “Nana Akufo-Addo stood firm to his principles that insofar as the Constitution of the Republic gave every Ghanaian the right to join a political party of their choice, he was not going to relieve any officer serving under him of their position solely on the basis of their political party membership, affiliation or sympathies”.

This, he said, was because the only relevant consideration was their competence and professionalism and so long as they did not allow their political sympathies to affect their competence, professionalism and judgment, he would work with them.

For this reason, he worked closely with Mrs. Mould-Iddrisu and all the other heads of department he came to meet at the Ministry.
The statement therefore revealed that Nana could not fathom why Betty told the malicious lies.