It is currently unclear how government’s much hyped Special Prosecutor office will be funded.
This is because there is no financial allocation for the setting up or running of such an office in the recently approved budget estimates of the Attorney General’s department.
The Attorney General’s department is expected to supervise activities of the Special Prosecutor.
Setting up of the office of the Special Prosecutor was one of the key campaign promises made by Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo which he explained was necessary in tackling corruption related issues in the country.
The Attorney General met with Parliament’s Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs committee on the matter.
Speaking to Citi News’ Duke Mensah-Opoku after the meeting, Chairman of the committee, Ben Abdallah, said they currently do not know where the funding will come from although he maintained that the office “is one of the priorities of government.”
“…Government has given a deadline around next year 2018, so let’s wait and see if the promise is not realized taking into consideration the deadline, then we will be right in taking government to task. Because as I’m talking, we don’t even know where the money will be coming from, whether it will be provided outside this budget estimates, but by the government or it’s going to come from somewhere else, we can’t tell.”
“But let’s not be judgmental at this time of the day by saying that there would be a conflict of interest with respect to where government is to get funding from be it from a particular entity or individual. Probably the money will be provided for by the government itself,” he added.
Confusion over Special Prosecutor’s office
There have been varied opinions about the creation of the Special Prosecutor’s office.
Whereas some believe it is in the right direction, the Minority Members of Parliament had threatened to go to court over the matter.
The Minority Leader, Haruna Iddrisu, in an earlier Citi News interview insisted that, the Special Prosecutor’s office could not be established without tinkering with Article 88 of the constitution, which deals with the role of the Attorney-General.
“…That is my understanding of the law. It belongs to the executive chapter of the constitution which is entrenched; therefore you cannot be seeking to review that through an Act of Parliament… I am certain that article 88 is entrenched, and not that which can be reviewed simply through a process of an Act of Parliament,” he explained.
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