The Attorney General of Ghana, Godfred Dame believes the ad-hoc committee tasked by the Speaker of Parliament to probe allegations in a vote of censure motion filed against Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, did not understand the work it was asked to do.
According to him, the committee violated some rights of the Minister due to this misapprehension.
Mr. Dame made the claim on Thursday, December 8, 2022, when he was contributing to the debate on the motion of vote of censure filed by the Minority against the Finance Minister.
“It is actually in view of this misapprehension of duties by the committee, of the nature of work that it was tasked to do that certain fundamental human rights of the Minister for Finance were grossly violated. I refer to the request by the Minister for the production of documents that he required to present to assist him to defend himself. I also refer to the request for full particulars by the Minister to defend himself and the committee rejected the requests saying it was impracticable in light of the time granted the committee to report to Parliament.”
He went on to say “the committee got it grossly wrong” for rejecting all those requests and went ahead to “sacrifice justice on the altar of convenience” and that, “it is unconstitutional and rendered the whole exercise a nullity.”
The Attorney General further enumerated some alleged instances of injustice the ad-hoc committee perpetuated against the Finance Minister when he appeared before it.
He then took a swipe at the co-chair, Dominic Ayine, and accused him of misleading the committee “on the trajectory of a violation of due process.”
“My good friend Dominic Ayine again stated very erroneously that the committee was not bounded by Article 23 of the 1992 Constitution and I consider it a very serious error because the committee misapprehended the nature of the work that it was supposed to do. Article 23 is part of the Constitution, and it is applied by the court, and it is not the case that it applies to only administrative bodies.”