Franklin Cudjoe, IMANI President
It is now clear that Ghana has a rented civil society organization. In the past few days this organization has been engaged to do the bidding of the embattled Auditor-General of the Republic.
The Imani group has been hired and is gradually gathering momentum in the task assigned it. It has fired its first salvo providing a covering fire for Daniel Yaw Domelevo to go on rampage with illogical charges. The Audit Service has never been so much in the public space and negatively, of course, through the blunders of its General.
Framers of constitutions in the advanced democracies along which our governance document was framed have been mindful about the dangers in allowing an individual office holder to wield absolute power because, after all, such a phenomenon does not inure to the interest of the country.
In the past few weeks, the Auditor-General has embarked on a useless journey of seeking to convince the world that he is being hounded out of office. After an unnecessary garrulous presence on the public space, he has ended up shooting himself in the foot.
For him to think that there is a subtle plot to hound him out of office and to therefore resort to renting a civil society organization the way he has, is despicable and unbecoming of a public officer of his stature. We are paying as a nation for the consequences of injury time appointments.
Ghana in the coming days is in for a noisy media terrain as the rented organization stokes the fire just so the issue at stake can be politicized for effect.
DAILY GUIDE has not been left out in the near paranoia of Mr. Domelevo. We have had people infected by his paranoia claim he is a victim of campaign of calumny. Â That, of course, is arrant nonsense.
As gatekeepers, it is our responsibility to put on the spotlight acts which are anomalous and therefore in breach of standards. That is all we are doing.
When an Auditor-General embarks on a collision course with the board of the Audit Service to the extent that he regards them as adversaries rather than colleagues working for the common good of the service and therefore the country, then something massive has gone wrong which requires remedying.
We are aware about the good efforts of the board in calling for a reconciliatory meeting which was scuttled by an Auditor-General who could not care the less about the benefits of such an engagement. It is on record that he asked his secretary to cancel the meeting because he is relishing the media glitz.
Mr. Domelevo’s understanding of the independence of his office appears to be warped. Such independence does not allow for purchases outside public procurement standards among other infractions he is being accused of.
Very soon the rented civil society organization would question the authority of the President in ordering a probe into the confusion which has engulfed the Audit Service as represented by the conduct of Mr. Domelovo on one side and the board on the other.
Is it true or not that reports which should be seen by the board before making it to the public have been treated vice versa.
Have board members been given reports about the foreign trips of the Auditor-General as required by standards of the Audit Service?
Let us interrogate these queries which we had cause to publish in previous publications and stop the mercenary tactics of the Imanis.