By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D. English Department, SUNY-Nassau Garden City, New York December 22, 2016 E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

He is passionately partisan ad-nauseam and has staunchly and unconscionably defended the right of his outgoing paymaster to grossly abuse his publicly underwritten office, in the form of the shameless solicitation of bribes at the expense of the well-being of the hardworking Ghanaian taxpayer. And so whatever contribution Mr. Daniel Batidam has to make on the critical question of the need for the establishment of the Office of a Special Prosecutor, as a means of strengthening the hand of the incoming Akufo-Addo Administration in its dogged determination to drastically reducing the level of executive corruption in the country to the barest minimum, does not muster credibility. It holds absolutely no water! (See “Batidam Punches Holes in NPP’s Proposed Independent Prosecutor’s Office” MyJoyOnline.com / Ghanaweb.com 12/22/16).

The so-called Presidential Advisor on Corruption says that any attempt to establish the Office of an Independent Prosecutor would clash with the Constitution. Maybe somebody ought to apprise the Chairman of the African Union’s Advisory Board on Corruption of the fact that constitutions are not etched or written in stone. In sum, constitutions can and must always be either revised or amended whenever the need arises or new set of circumstances makes them obsolete and impracticable. To be certain, he is not the first or second person to suggest this, but Mr. Batidam may need to explain precisely how any government goes about “decoupling” the functionally organic office of the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice from each other. He also needs to explain why to-date, Attorney-General Marietta Brew Appiah-Oppong has not been able to force National Democratic Congress’ underwriter Mr. Alfred Agbesi Woyome to return the GH? 51 million judgment debt that he illegally obtained with the active collaborative complicity of then-Attorney-General Betty Mold-Iddrisu and then-President John Evans Atta-Mills, late, and a host of other big-time movers and shakers of the ruling National Democratic Congress.

Well, he may not want to honestly let this on to his captive audience of NDC Amen-Corner of Abongo Boys and Girls, but it is precisely because the Office of the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice is inescapably and inextricably partisan. The person appointed to that portfolio essentially serves at the behest of our Executive President. It is only the establishment of the Office of an Independent Prosecutor that stands Ghanaians the chance of inducing a savory executive culture of zero tolerance for decadence and corruption. We must also quickly point out that without the yeomanly and dogged determination of Mr. Martin Amidu, there is absolutely no way that Ghanaians would have come to the priceless knowledge of the fact that Mr. Woyome was merely a façade used by the kleptocratic leadership of the National Democratic Congress to obtain his illegal judgment-debt freebie.

In reality, as an individual Ghanaian citizen, Mr. Woyome does not owe anybody a dime; it is the entire National Democratic Congress’ political machine that owes the country the GH? 51 million. In the best of societies, the NDC would have since long been proscribed and most of its front-row leaders incarcerated. Mr. Batidam is fully aware of the foregoing fact, and so why is he vacuously hiding behind constitutional abstractions and not telling his audience what actually went on in the Woyome scandal. Recently, the front man has publicly disclosed the names of some of the recipients of his pelf – I hope the obnoxiously self-righteous Mr. Batidam is not on the list.

We must also significantly add that the Mahama government has been successful in playing political football with Mr. Amidu’s noble attempts at getting Mr. Woyome to answer some specific questions about this mega-theft in court, precisely because the so-called one-man vigilante lacks the judicially binding powers of a special prosecutor. Indeed, at prior points along his arduous judicial journey, the fired Atta-Mills Attorney-General had had his life threatened by some of the most prominent and powerful operatives of the National Democratic Congress. And contrary to what Mr. Batidam would have the public believe, it has not been both constitutionally and legally a joyful ride for the citizen vigilante through and through. Rather, the diametrically opposite has been the case.

In reality, what Mr. Batidam is doing here is simply attempting to deviously thwart the all too progressive and visionary attempt by the incoming Akufo-Addo-led government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) to bring the NDC scam-artists and diehard fraudsters to book. He is simply buying time, in hopes of ensuring that justice never gets to be brought home to these “missionary” posse of nation-wreckers. But, of course, Mr. Batidam is grossly mistaken. Then also, who really cares about the practically useless job description of Chairperson of the African Union’s Advisory Board on Corruption? Tweakai!

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