Speaker Edward Doe Adjaho may have arbitrarily used his discretionary powers to quash the impeachment motion sponsored by the New Patriotic Party-led Parliamentary Minority, but President John Dramani Mahama was not completely able to dodge the bullet as Speaker Adjaho and his fellow National Democratic Congress (NDC) scoundrel associates had hoped.
For starters, although the issue concerning the then-Vice-President Mahama’s unconstitutional decision to accept a gift from a person with whom the Mills-Mahama government was in official contractual dealings with is presently before the Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), the 1992 Constitution and CHRAJ’s own website clearly articulate the fact that CHRAJ is not a court of law and therefore whatever findings it comes up with, regarding the Kanazoe-Mahama payola affair, cannot be presumed to be legally binding.
What complicates matters in the latest revelation, aside from the fact that the basis of Speaker Adjaho’s decision to summarily dismiss the minority-sponsored presidential impeachment motion was grossly ill-advised and clearly politically motivated, is the fact that the legal authority of Parliament as an oversight branch of government far supersedes that of the Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice ought not to have been so cavalierly devalued and dismissively discounted by Speaker Adjaho.
In other words, Parliament could still have proceeded with its impeachment motion and call for further investigation of the Kanazoe-Mahama Affair, even while CHRAJ carried out its constitutionally mandated investigations. In essence, the real problem here is a legally trained Parliamentary Speaker and former National Democratic Congress’ Member of Parliament who clearly does not fully appreciate the meaning of the country’s current Constitution, thus his flagrant and capricious decision to summarily and unilaterally quash the august House’s impeachment motion, on the untenably risible and quaint notion of something called “One Criminal, One Policeman.”
Of course, we are all aware, as bona fide citizens of Ghana, of the fact that the reality of law-enforcement has at least “One Criminal and Two Police Officers” as the enforcement normative. But even more serious is the fact that it well appears that President Mahama was fully aware of the fact that he was in breach of the law bordering on the reception of gifts from persons with business dealings with the Government of Ghana, thus his decision to allow somebody else other than then-Vice-President Mahama to clear his Ford Expedition gift at the harbor in that assign’s name (See “Kwakye-Ofosu Fails to Explain Why Mahama’s Ford was Cleared in Another’s Name” MyJoyOnline.com / Ghanaweb.com 9/5/16).
In recent weeks and months, the President’s spokespeople have insisted that the Ford Expedition gift was intended by the giver, Mr. Gibril (Djibril) Kanazoe, for the Government and people of Ghana. If so, then what could be the rationale and/or motive behind such an unusual arrangement? And then also, why hadn’t the then-Vice-President Mahama authorized one of the Government’s own procurement agencies, or even one of its ministerial branches, to clear the purported gift from the harbor? The Deputy Communications Minister, Mr. Kwakye-Ofosu, appears to have further complicated matters for President Mahama by smugly asserting that the intended recipient of the gift who, by the way, has vehemently insisted for quite some time now that the gift was official rather than personal, was the one who personally forked up the monetary amount of duties imposed on the Ford Expedition out of his own pocket.
Here also, Mr. Kwakye-Ofosu further submerges the noggins of his boss in hot and deeper waters when he explains that although under Ghana’s laws the President does not pay taxes, that law only applies to presidential salaries and other official perks. And that Mr. Mahama was, in this instance, obliged to pay taxes because this particular import “was a personal gift.” Clearly, no level of shenanigans on the part of Speaker Adjaho and his National Democratic Congress’ Parliamentary Majority is apt to indemnify President Mahama from this inescapably open-and-shut case of thoroughgoing corruption.
It can hardly be gainsaid at this juncture that a veritable act of criminality was committed in the Ford Expedition case, and the longer the NDC apparatchiks attempt to stall on legitimate investigative proceedings, the worse matters are wont to get even more complicated for the Chief Resident of the Flagstaff House.