President John Mahama has said that since Ghana is living in a democratic dispensation, it is important to take people accused of corruption through the judicial process.
Taking his turn on GTV’s Encounter with the presidential candidates ON Wednesday, Mr Mahama said: “People want me to arrest everybody who’s been accused of a crime and lock them up because they did it in PNDC time. Yes; I would have locked them up; but we didn’t have a constitution then and if we didn’t have a constitution and I was a dictator, if you are accused of corruption, I will catch you and lock you up and wait until you are proven guilty or innocent then release you. But we cannot eat our cake and have it. People have to go through the process and the process is very slow. Everybody knows.”
Mr Mahama who has always been accused by his critics of dealing softly with those accused of siphoning state funds through programmes such as GYEEDA and SADA, said: “These GYEEDA prosecutions started in 2012; and we are in 2016; but I can’t go and catch them and lock them up on the presumption that they are guilty. The NSS case how many years is it? Three years now. People inserted ghost names in the national service payroll and got millions of Ghana cedis, we’ve retrieved GHc40 million from them. Some of them have pleaded guilty and offered a refund so we’ve gotten back GHc40 millions of taxpayers’ money.”
“But those that are under criminal investigations it’s been going on for three years now. But we just must have patience with the process because we cannot go back to unconstitutional system,” he added.
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(Via: NewsGhana)
