VIDEO: PLEA TO FELLOW CITIZENS TO VOTE FOR A NEW GOVERNMENT
As the Citizen Vigilante, I have done everything I could to use the constitutional process to compel Alfred Agbesi Woyome to pay back the monies he owes to the people of Ghana. At every turn, Woyome has been aided and protected by the incumbent Government. Now, the technical processes of the law have prevented me from examining Woyome on oath, and we will not know who benefitted from his unconstitutional loot. However, President John Mahama, who entered the fray to protect Woyome, is not a newcomer to the corrupt practice of aiding the looting of the public purse. In the E.O. Group and Tullow Oil deal, Mahama aided the pocketing of US$13 million that was meant for the public purse. The suspected corruption in the Brazil Embraer Aircraft saga, which involved Mahama, was covered up after Mills’ death, despite late President Mills’ steps to have the matter investigated. Mahama made deals with a Burkina Faso contractor in exchange for a Ford Expedition filled with US dollars to fund his 2012 election campaign. Heed well, past behaviour predicts future behavior. Fellow citizens, please join together as you vote on 7th December to keep the public purse safe from President Mahama who has not hesitated to facilitate and conceal a range of unconstitutional actions that in the end always leave the people of Ghana poorer. Ghana first!
Analysis shows that the political elite of the new government uses the time between the first transition SONA and a change of government from one of the two political parties to make sure that it is their turn to squander public money, before the electorate switches governments. While the political elite are busy at the trough eating their turn from the public purse, political party cards and political affiliation matter more than citizenship of Ghana.
The fact that the acting President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, stands to be a beneficiary of the Bawku Traditional Area crisis precipitated due to the indolence of the Government only two months to the 2024 elections should the registered voters in the six constituencies in the UER be unable to exercise their franchise freely and fairly, comes into focus with his inaction as acting President during the October 2024 conflict period.
Kissi Agyebeng is so full of himself, he doesn’t see that by selectively appointing and giving higher ranks to some staff and neglecting others who think they deserve the same or better ranks he has antagonized several of his unlawfully appointed staff. How can he be parading a report which GNAT is contesting as reasons for his indispensability in the fight against corruption in Ghana? Especially when his OSP staff being paid in violation of Article 195 of the 1992 Constitution and Section 21 of Act 959 from the public purse are all ghost workers on the OSP payroll.
As Ghana gets closer to the 2024 election season the NPP and the NDC are deploying various deceptive tools to win over the electorate whom they will each forget after securing the votes of the electorate to come to power for the next three years until the next election year. The 2024 elections should be won by established facts and projections with high degrees of probability for actualization. Ghana must always come first!
A PDF copy of my letter to the Minister of Finance, the Auditor-General, the Accountant-General, and the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament reproduced above as part of this rejoinder to demonstrate that the Government could not and cannot in the name of fighting corruption have paid any salary to any of the cronies and friends corruptly and unlawfully recruited and promoted by the OSP contrary to the 1992 Constitution. The reason the OSP relied on seconded staff under my tenure is fully explained in my petition to the Chairman of the Public Services Commission.
A PDF copy of my petition dated 31 August 2022 to the Chairman of the Public Services Commission, reproduced above as part of this rejoinder to demonstrate that the Government could not and cannot in the name of fighting corruption have paid any salary to any of the cronies and friends corruptly and unlawfully recruited and promoted by the OSP contrary to the 1992 Constitution.
By abusing its investigatory and prosecutorial powers and mandate, and by publishing the Labianca report, the Office of the Special Prosecutor has disabled the OSP from any fair and impartial investigation of outstanding matters in the complaint made by Frank Asare to the Office on 16 November 2021. This critique reveals the Labianca report to be contrary to the Constitution and insufficient grounds for consideration for the removal of public officers from office without a trial and conviction by a court of law, instead of a deliberate trial in the court of public opinion.
I have never been paid any money by any Government in my official capacity or because of my position as the Special Prosecutor as a judgment debt. Your intentional, malicious and deliberate defamatory words used to describe any payments to me of any part of the outstanding orders of the Court given on 4th September 2014 were understood by ordinary and right thinking members of the public to mean and you intended them to mean that the Government unlawfully had colluded with me in my capacity as the Special Prosecutor to dubiously pay me some money and other benefits resulting from Court orders.
The Office of the Special Prosecutor is Ghana’s new anti-corruption agency. With its prosecutorial powers, it is being seen by many as an expected solution to the problem of corruption in Ghana. However, the nation’s inability to adequately resource and guarantee the independence of law enforcement from politics has affected the fight against corruption over the years. Unless there is a change of attitude in practice, the Office of the Special Prosecutor Act may soon be seen by the public to be, like its predecessors, a delusion and not an achievement.
All citizens and public officeholders should know their obligations concerning banking transactions. I am sharing my most recent experience in this matter with the public as part of my prevention of corruption duty to let citizens know that the responsibility is upon citizens to instruct their bankers to return suspicious payments of public funds into their accounts. A Bank is under penal statutory responsibility to report suspicious transactions to the appropriate agency of Government and the customer is under a banking responsibility to call the Bank’s attention as soon as he notices any suspicious transactions or payment into his account or to give the Bank such standing instructions as will protect the account holder.
Ghanaians have demanded and expect that the mandate of the 7th Parliament will be consistent with the letter and spirit of the 1992 Constitution; and the promises by the President to protect the national purse and be impartial in the governance of our dear country. The evidence of criminal and unconstitutional conduct in the whole body polity is overwhelming, but unconstitutional attempts are being made through influential chiefs and elders to let bygones be bygones. This is contrary to the demands of the Constitution for accountability, transparency and fairness in governance. May the 7th Parliament and the President remember that even walls have ears and we hear the attempts at trying to compromise the President’s anti-corruption agenda in the name of reconciliation. The President’s anti-corruption drive will be still-born with such compromises and reconciliations. May Ghanaians at the end of this 7th Parliament’s tenure be proud that it has helped to restore the underlying principles and values that Ghanaians gave to themselves the Fourth Republican Constitution, 1992.
The free market place of ideas for expression of personal opinions appears to have carried some away to assume the President-elect’s prerogative of whom he may appoint into his Government by trying to stampede him with choices for several positions within his administration. What has been and is worrying for me is that some citizens are using this natural democratic process of citizen free expression of expectations and anticipation to telephone or speak face-to-face with individual citizens to suggest that they have, are recommending or intend to recommend them to the President-Elect for particular appointments. It is not in the interest of the President-Elect, his Government or the incoming Parliament. Such actions are inevitably a harbinger of cronyism and corruption in the body polity.
The results of the just ended Presidential and General Elections showed that Ghanaians have voted against the propaganda use of the state-owned media by ignoring all those false and fake news stories published about opponents of the incumbent Government, contrary to the requirements of the Constitution for fair reporting by the state-owned media. The state-owned media cannot continue in the old style of being a ruling Government or party media as opposed to a public media paid for by the tax payer to give citizens impartial reporting of news. It is time that the state-owned media took seriously the independence and freedoms guaranteed them under the Constitution and moved away from self-imposed controls or censorship to please the Government of the day. Corruption takes many forms. Misreporting or skewing reports in consideration of any benefits whatsoever or promotion from the Government is corruption of the media. Let 7th December 2016 be the harbinger of the actualization of a just, fair, transparent and accountable state-owned media reporting under the 1992 Constitution.
The decision that we, the majority of fellow citizens have made at this year’s elections portends hope, expectations and anticipation in each of us who put Ghana First at the ballot for good governance, the rule of law, probity, accountability and transparency in the coming four years of the administration of the President Elect, his Government and the Parliament Elect. I congratulate and thank you all, once more, fellow citizens for your Gargantuan efforts in heeding the advocacy of the various civil society and activist organizations in enhancing constitutionalism and democracy at this year’s elections in changing this Government. God bless you all, God bless the Republic of Ghana and may God let us always Put Ghana First.
Woyome has accused me in the media of having ordered or authorized the Ministry of Finance to pay him part of the GHC51.2million that the incumbent Government unconstitutionally looted for him. However, the fact that I had nothing to do with the authorizations written to the Ministry of Finance to pay any portion of the looted public purse to Woyome was already determined finally in the declarations made by the Supreme Court on 29th July 2014. Moreover, the Government’s own “Commission of Enquiry Into Payments From Public Funds Arising From Judgment Debts & Akin Matters (2012/C.I 79)” commended my honesty and integrity in the matter. The media and the public are being hoodwinked by Woyome’s outburst and the incumbent Government’s overwhelming silence to set the records straight. Citizens, you have a choice to make. How much longer will we hear stories of inadvertence, mischief and connivance by an incumbent Government that strips the Republic’s coffers bare so that ordinary Ghanaians must suffer financial hardship? PUT GHANA FIRST and let us get our looted money back by voting the incumbent looter Government out on 7th December 2016. Protect Ghana and the government purse by voting for a new President.
The eyes of every citizen have been opened to the arbitrary conduct and impunity exhibited by the Electoral Commissioner, and the political parties are now fully aware as to how the power of the Commissioner can be wantonly abused. Let us watch the rigging agenda of the Commissioner and her mentors during the remaining election period. She has already engineered elections in such a way that a good six weeks have been lost for the campaign period of the NDP, PPP, and the PNC. Her actions affect the equal right and facilities for political campaigning mandatorily enjoined by the Constitution. Fellow citizens be alert to the Commissioner’s other tricks. The Commissioner cannot be trusted to fairly implement her mandate under the 1992 Constitution without vigilance on our part. We must defend the Constitution!
The Electoral Commissioner is using technical grounds to render nugatory the decision and orders of the Supreme Court, where the Court ordered that “in appropriate cases to afford candidates the opportunity to comply with regulation ((2) of the Public Election Regulations, 2016 (C.I. 94)”. She is taking advantage of the Supreme Court’s ruling to wager on the fact that she is entitled by the Court’s ruling within the new nomination period to put forth alleged new and profound errors that will make it impossible for even Nduom and those others who have judgments in their favour, to alter or amend the specific errors for which they obtained their respective judgments in the High Court. Let us wait for how the Supreme Court will rise to the occasion of this new twist to its ruling should any applications be made to it today.
The Electoral Commissioner has effectively rigged the election. She does not appear to understand that the letter and spirit of the 1992 Constitution enjoins her to ensure that every political party and its aspiring presidential candidate or an individual aspirant has equal time and opportunity to canvass for the votes of the electorate. There can be no free, transparent and fair elections when disqualified aspiring candidates have their names added to the ballot more than three weeks belatedly, because the Commissioner’s preferred and approved candidates would have had an unequal advantage over them in the contest for the Presidency. Nobody can convince such candidates, their political parties, and supporters and the objective observer that they had a level playing field for the 7th December 2016 elections within the letter and spirit of the Constitution.
The EC Commissioner's arbitrary and unlawful disqualification of 13 aspiring presidential candidates and her arrogant attitude towards those distinguished citizens and their political parties or supporters does not conduce to her image as an impartial arbiter of elections. In Ghana's present circumstances the plurality of political parties fielding candidates at the presidential elections is the only guarantee to effectively policing the process by the presence, and alertness of their supporters, polling assistants and others at the polling stations on the day of elections. Whosoever wins the 2016 Presidential Elections must do so transparently and fairly. We must put Ghana First by equalizing the disadvantages of the political parties in opposition to ensure that they have a fair and even chance against any abuse of incumbency by this Government which is definitely very desperate to remain in power after eight years. Let us watch every step of this Electoral Commissioner in this election year.