Former Commissioner of the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), Justice Emile Short, has stated that the calls for the revocation of the appointment of the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) among other concerns are justified.
He has urged the president to rethink the appointment of Kwame Owusu, the former Director-General of the Ghana Maritime Authority (GMA) who was accused of corruption and conflict of interest albeit not yet cleared in any investigations to heed to the calls of the citizenry to revoke his appointment as the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the GRA.
Contributing to the controversy surrounding Mr Owusu’s appointment, Justice Short noted that even though he had not closely followed the development, the appointment sends a wrong signal on the standards of appointments which might not have been appropriate to appoint Mr Owusu to such a sensitive position such as GRA when there are allegations against him.
“It will have been appropriate for the president to wait for “the dust to settle” before making the appointment because appointments by the president must be seen to be “meritorious and not on nepotism,” he pointed out.
Vitus Azeem, the former Executive Director of the Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII), an anti-corruption body, in his contribution to the issue, demanded for the immediate withdrawal of Mr Owusu’s appointment until further notice.
He indicated that it was wrong for the president to have appointed a man whose head is buried in corruption and conflict of interest allegations to chair the board of directors of a revenue mobilisation institution.
Co-chair of the Citizen’s Movement Against Corruption, Edem Senanu shared the same view but added that the appointment sets a bad precedent in the country and contended an argument by some government functionaries that Mr Owusu set a record while at the Ghana Maritime Authority (GMA) when he was the Director-General in making profits.
“Even if it is true that GMA made profits under Mr Owusu’s tenure, it is not a justifiable ground for the new appointment since his integrity has been brought to question,” he said. –3news.com
