Justice Emile
Short, the former Commissioner on Human Rights and Administrative Justice, has
thrown a challenge to the Special Prosecutor to explain to the citizenry the
factors accounting for his inability to successfully deal with high level
corruption cases as expected.
The president appointed Martin Amidu as the
Special Prosecutor to the admiration of majority of Ghanaians due to his
anti-graft track record after Parliament passed a law on November 2017, to
establish the Office of the Special Prosecutor as specialised agency to
investigate specific cases of corruption involving public officers and
individuals in the private sector.
However, a
year-and-a-half after his appointment, the office has not prosecuted any public
figure for wrongdoing despite pressure from the public.
Justice Short insisted that the Special Prosecutor
must explain why he had been unable to prosecute perceived corrupt appointees
of both the previous government and the current one saying, “I’ve great respect
for Mr Amidu, he’s been described as a citizen vigilante, he has a good track
record but I agree that people are getting impatient with him.
“This is because
they think they should have seen more action within the period he’s been in
office, I think he has to improve his public relations advocacy, he should explain
why he’s not meeting expectations of the public, I think he also has to
indicate why he’s not been able to prosecute as many people as expected of him,
in spite of constraints mentioned.
Mr Amidu has, on different occasions, publicly
stated that one of the major challenges hampering his work, aside from his
office being under-resourced, was the failure of some appointees of the
president to collaborate with him and he maintained that “it will be
practically impossible for me to effectively and efficiently deliver if the
friction between my office and heads of government institutions is not
addressed”.
“The success of the experiment will depend on
the extent to which ministries, departments and agencies in government with the
responsibility to cooperate with the office to achieve the vision of the
president who championed the setting up of the office,” Mr Amidu bemoaned.
-classfmonline.com
