AG’s Office spoke like the NDC

             It constitutes the insufferable height of arrogance for a plagiarist with little moral and professional integrity like the Parliamentary Minority Leader to question the right of Attorney-General Gloria Akuffo to invoke her power of “Nolle Prosequi” to discontinue and discharge the so-called Delta 8, who were being tried by the Kumasi Circuit Court for allegedly helping to spring from lawful judicial custody 13 Delta Force members standing trial for manhandling the presidential appointee for the post of Asante Regional Security Coordinator (See “Order Re-Arrest, Retrial of Delta 8 – Minority to Akufo-Addo” Classfmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 5/17/17).

The insufferable arrogance of Mr. Haruna Iddrisu inheres in the fact that barely a year ago, then-President John Dramani Mahama cavalierly used the executive privilege granted him by Ghana’s 1992 Republican Constitution and a rubber-stamp Council-of-State to ride roughshod over the Wood Supreme Court verdict that committed the members of the Montie Three/Trio to a 4-month sentence, each, at the Nsawam Medium-Security Prison. But somehow, the former Mahama Labor Minister would have Ghanaians believe that Attorney-General Gloria Akuffo has absolutely no right, whatsoever, to invoke the executive powers granted to her by Ghana’s Fourth-Republican Constitution and established professional protocol to discontinue the prosecution and trial of the Delta 8 for woeful lack of evidence.

Now, if Mr. Iddrisu, who is himself a lawyer – at least a rookie one at that – believes that he and his NDC associates have adequate or forensically sustainable evidence against the judicially discharged Delta Force members, then, by all means, they have every right as bona fide and patriotic Ghanaian citizens to present such evidence in court in order to have the Delta 8 rearraigned and tried and convicted, which is precisely what Mr. Iddrisu and his NDC Abongo Boys are looking for. In other words, in the inescapably ideologically colored imagination of Mr. Iddrisu and his cronies, there can absolutely be no talk of justice’s having been served, unless Attorney-General Akuffo is envisaged by their likes and IMANI-Ghana think-tankers like Mr. Kofi Bentil to have done the bidding of the key operatives of the country’s main opposition National Democratic Congress.

The preceding is what social and political scientists term as a “tall order.” It is a tall order because even as most Ghanaian voters would readily attest, the then-opposition New Patriotic Party did not campaign in the lead-up to Election 2016 on the platform of doing the bidding or fulfilling the whimsical and capricious desires of the key operatives of the now-main opposition National Democratic Congress. As I vividly recall, what then-Candidate Akufo-Addo and his meticulous and lambent-witted running-mate, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, campaigned on was the dogged pursuit of the rule of law and the evenhanded administration of justice and fair play. And so far, Team Akufo-Addo has not reneged on its promise. For his part, could Mr. Haruna Iddrisu look Ghanaian citizens in the eye and candidly and confidently proclaim that then-President Mahama’s inexcusably scandalous decision to nullify the Supreme Court’s verdict in the Montie Three/Trio case had not the least bit been tempered by partisan considerations of the sort of which the NDC’s Member of Parliament for Tamale-South is accusing Attorney-General Akuffo?

The critical observer’s obvious answer to the preceding question is as good as yours truly’s. It is also preposterous for people who accuse Ms. Akufo of having exercised the “cancerous discretion of nolle prosequi,” in the Delta 8 cause célèbre, to claim that an airtight case could be assembled against the discharged members of the Delta Force militia organization by simply trawling or surfing Facebook or Twitter. Guess what, dear reader? I thought we were in Ghana, the Cradle of Truth and Honesty, and not the hallucinatory Fantasy Realm of Trumpland. Gee, was I mistaken, big time!

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

 

 

 

 

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