Double Salary Scandal: Martin Amidu Points Finger At Akufo-Addo
Former Special Prosecutor, Martin Alamisi Burnes Kaiser Amidu has said President Akufo-Addo is to be blamed for the states failure to bring criminal Charges against Ghanaian Legislators who were cited in an audit report to have received doubled salaries.
Martin Amidu in a statement issued on Tuesday, May 25th alleged that President Akufo-Addo instructed former attorney General, Gloria Akuffo not to bring charges against the MPs in the 2018 audit report.
“The credible information I received on the case is and was that the then Attorney General and the Director of Public Prosecutions had both perused the case docket and had come to the conclusion that charges be filed against some of the suspects for prosecution.”
“The Attorney General was instructed not to do so by the President who unconstitutionally usurped the investigatory and prosecutorial constitutional authority of the Attorney General on grounds of political expediency of having the suspects agreeable to play ball in Parliament for the Government”
“The framers of the 1992 Constitution followed the hallowed tradition of Anglo-Ghanaian jurisprudence by enshrining the prosecutorial powers of the Republic of Ghana in an Attorney-General who is professionally responsible for prosecutorial decisions made on a non-partisan basis and not the President”
“I served as Deputy Attorney General and Attorney General for almost fourteen years and can testify to the fact that no Head of State or President ever sought to direct or interfere with the prosecutorial discretion of the Attorney General during that period.”
“The President’s response at the media encounter of 13th December 2019 is the first time I ever heard, in my life, a President unashamedly and publicly usurping an independent prosecutorial constitutional discretion of an Attorney General.
“The allusion by the President to a group performing the constitutional duties of the Attorney General to enable the President to decide, and “be in a position to let the country know what the final outcome of the double salary thing is…” shows beyond every reasonable doubt the interfering role of this President in the administration of criminal justice in deciding who must or must not be prosecuted for crime and not the Attorney General.
The Attorney General regrettably became a poodle of the President by ceding his or her constitutional prosecutorial mandate to the usurping President- the statement said