Editorial - Betty To Appeal To Who?

Another ‘Wild-Goose-Chase’!!!

It is only in Ghana that senior public officials, including Chief Justices, have no shame. In the face of clear incompetence, bad judgements and sheer misconducts, they hold on to their seats and desks. They either play the deaf or dumb, pretending that it must be business as usual.

It was in Ghana, where the Chief Justice, George Acquah, assumed ownership of a parcel of land, which was part of a bigger land mass which the ownership, was being hotly contested for, by two families, in his court. He refused to see anything wrong with that act. He stayed on and died whiles in office. That was Ghana then.

Today, after setting the whole country on a ‘wild goose chase’ for the past three years, the Chief-architect of this fruitless journey, the current Chief Justice of the Republic of Ghana, wants Ghanaians to continue believing her: It should be business as usual. Lord Have Mercy. As for this, No We Cant! (With all apologies to President Obama.) Chief Justice Georgina Theodora Wood, wants Ghanaians to believe she did her best for the country, when she was tasked to investigate the MV Benjamin scandal and the Kofi Boakye tape that came-up, afterwards. She even wants some people to believe that last Friday’s thunderbolt-ruling by the three Appellate Judges of the Appeal Court, was shocking, wrong, baseless, unacceptable and for that matter, must be appealed against and thrown out. In fact, the Attorney General of this country, who has to watch this Madam C.J. with a jaundice eye, also seems to have bought into her pancake assurances (because she has been out of town for so long). Mrs Betty Mould Iddrissu, days after the ruling, has been dropping hints of going to the Supreme Court, to challenge the ruling. She has been saying this without looking at the authorities sitting at the Supreme Court, to whom she will send the files of the case to, if she truly goes ahead to challenge the ruling by the Appeals Court.

She might have probably forgotten, (she was away in UK, and is admittedly uninformed) that the lady in the Chair at the Supreme Court, is the one who started this whole exercise of fruitless results.

Madam AG, the fact is, before the Georgina Wood Committee ended its sittings at the Ministry of Interior Conference Room, many who zealously followed the proceedings had lost faith in her and had as a result predicted that the report will be good for the public place of convenience in Ashaiman.

Some lawyers had predicted that the then government, by following the Wood report, will go after men who had nothing to do with the MV Benjamin shipment and as a result, leave the true drug barons behind the shipment, off the hook. Behold, today, it has come to past. In the post-mortem exercise, the mindset that informed the prosecution - knowing very well the baseless nature of the charges - has been blamed and yet, Georgina Wood is holding on her seat. The Security Expert Dr. Kwesi Ennin and former Special Branch Director, Mr. Kofi Bentum Kwantson, have blamed the whole process of investigating and prosecuting the MV Benjamin saga. In the wors of Mr. Bentum Kwantson, the Wood report is in the first place BOGUS. Right from day one, we on The Informer had joined the prophetic lawyers and some experts to predict that the country was doing much about nothing, as far as the trial and conviction of these gentlemen were concerned, if indeed the government wanted to pursue, arrest and prosecute the true drug barons. Today, it is clear that Ghana was set on a ‘wild goose chase’. After coming full circle it is important for the country to step up the gear, as promised, to go after these unwanted elements in the society.

The way forward is for the John Evans Attah Mills government to implement its pledge of setting up a high-powered investigative team, to reopen, reinvestigate and review all high profile cases.

This is the sure way of unravelling the MV Benjamin importers and their partners.

If Madam AG believes her C.J friend is very credible, and that she was right in setting the whole country up for such a fruitless race, she should find out why the five witnesses that appeared at Wood’s Committee sittings, were heavily brutalised, whisked-away and arrested, for talking too much.

Ask her why she did not resign if she taught the action by the National Security at the time, had adversely, affected her fact-finding mission.

It is important to know, because it is her fact finding report and recommendation that has attracted wide-spread condemnation.

After questioning her, you must ask yourself, is it proper to appeal to her (at the Supreme Court) to review her decision?

It is simply not worth it, unless you also want to set the whole country, once again, on a ‘wild goose-chase.’