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.

NPP Rubbishes NDC Tantrums

Posted: Daily Guide |Wednesday, 17 March 2010

By Charles Takyi-Boadu
THE NEW Patriotic Party (NPP) has rubbished the call for the prosecution of members of the erstwhile Kufuor administration by some activists of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC).

The party has indicated its preparedness to resist any such propaganda trials, describing it as ‘completely baseless’.

Communications Director of the NPP, Kwaku Kwarteng believes that the agitations are “nothing but a product of the campaign of falsehood churned out by the NDC in the build-up to the December 2008 elections”.

In a statement issued to the media, he noted that the NPP is observing with interest current agitations within the National Democratic Congress for the prosecution of appointees of the former New Patriotic Party government for unstated offenses.

He said the NPP as a party believes that the sources of this agitation are the gullible sections of the NDC who seem to have believed their party’s false and unfounded propaganda which sought to create the impression that NPP ministers and appointees were corrupt.

“If former appointees, through due process, are legitimately found to have involved themselves in unlawful conduct, by all means let the law take its course”, he noted.

That notwithstanding, the party’s Communications Director noted that such due process must interrogate the conduct of not just government appointees under the former NPP administration, but also those under the former NDC administration, stressing that “there are many cases involving appointees of the former NDC administration (some of them the subjects of Auditor General’s findings) that require further action”.

It is the belief of the NPP that state institutions must be allowed to work without interference from any political party whatsoever.

For this reason, the party is opposed to the manipulation of the state’s security services and judicial system to persecute appointees of the former NPP government in response to what it described as “useless agitation from gullible sections of the NDC who have believed the falsehood churned out by their party leadership in the last electioneering campaign”.

It has therefore served notice that it will fiercely resist any persecution and politically motivated trials of former NPP ministers and appointees by the NDC government.

The statement comes in the wake of unnecessary pressure being put on Attorney-General, Betty Mould-Iddrisu by members of her own party, including the retired Supreme Court justice, F. Kpegah, who has suddenly donned the cloak of the NDC, screaming from the rooftops.

Justice Kpegah claims the supposed inaction of the A-G in the face of what he describes as abundant evidence of corruption and graft against former government officials baffles many supporters of the National Democratic Congress who are now disillusioned.

Though the Attorney-General has called for evidence to enable her proceed to court to prosecute any former government official who may have dipped his or her hands in the nation’s coffers, Justice Kpegah thinks otherwise since, according to him, the A-G has no excuse to not prosecute anybody in the NPP.
Apart from him, supporters of the NDC in the La Dade Kotopon Constituency have equally threatened to demonstrate until the A-G is sacked by the President.