End of road for Anane?

Expected to Resign …After marathon meeting with President
Accra, Sept. 29 (Chronicle) -The Presidency have indicated that sooner than later the beleaguered Road Transportation Minister, Dr. Richard Anane, will be tendering in his resignation letter to the President.

Dr. Anane is said to have come to the conclusion of honourably quitting the job in order to avoid the humiliation of a possible dismissal by the president following the recommendation for his dismissal by the Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) which found the him culpable for the offences of conflict of interest and perjury.

Our sources at the presidency also revealed that the Minister came the conclusion after a marathon meeting with the president on Wednesday evening. Even though the details of the meeting could not be captured, it is believed that the focus of the meeting was for the two to dialogue on how to reach a compromising position on the appropriate step to take as far as the recommendations of CHRAJ were concerned.

As at the time of going to press, our governmental sources had signaled that about a high possibility of a press conference to be held by the Attorney General (A-G) and Minister of Justice, Mr. Joe Ghartey, later today during which he is expected to brief the press on the findings of the Georgina Woode Committee and the position of the government on the CHRAJ ruling.

It is believed that the A-G would possibly be announcing the resignation of the Transportation Minister and the government’s acceptance of the resignation as happened in the case of the former Deputy Minister of Presidential Affairs, Alhaji Moctar Bamba, who had to resign before being pushed out by the president to save his image and that of the government, when he was embroiled in a scandal that later became known as the Bambagate.

When The Chronicle contacted the Special Assistant to Dr. Anane, Mr. Ken Anku, after several calls to the Minister’s cell phone did not attract any response, he told the paper that that he was not aware that his boss was to resign.

Mr. Anku, who moved together with the Minister from the Health Ministry to the Transportation Ministry, told the paper to verify the information from its sources after his request for a disclosure of our sources was not heeded to.

As of yesterday afternoon, a Ghanaweb poll on whether the minister should be dismissed or not showed 74% out of 1270 calling for the minister’s head, while 19.7% were of the view that the minister should stay, with 6.3% undecided.