Stephen Kwaku Asare, a US-based lawyer and Accounting professor, has chided the government over the decision to reject the key recommendations of the Justice Emile Short Commission of Enquiry into the Ayawaso West Wuogon by-election disturbances in the Greater Accra Region.
It investigated the violence which characterised the Ayawaso West Wuogon by-election on January 31, 2019 and the white paper primarily indicated that the commission failed to achieve their core terms of reference.
The government position among other issues rejected the key recommendations of the commission which stated that the individual who assaulted Sam Nartey George, the Member of Parliament (MP) for Ningo Prampram MP Sam George should be prosecuted.
The white paper also rejected the recommendation which said Bryan Acheampong, the minister of state at the National Security should be reprimanded.
Commenting on the white paper, Prof Asare insisted that the government cannot merely reject the adversarial recommendations, however, averred that “the government can reject findings that are not adversarial, for instance, supposing the commission stated that go and build a house, the government can reject that.
“But if the commission makes an adverse finding against someone, that type of finding is deemed a judgement of a court and that judgement of the court cannot be set aside by the government, the only way the government can get around is by not publishing the report,” he pointed out.
Contributing, Dr Kwesi Aning, a security analyst, described as worrying aspects of the government white paper on the commission report saying, “In layman’s English, the government is saying that if those were to be an examination question, then members of the commission deviated from answering the question.
“That the report does not represent or does not provide faithful representation of the causes leading to the Ayawaso crisis, if we are to accept that interpretation, then there is a fundamental challenge, we need to go back to the drawing board,” he bemoaned -starrfmonline.com
