President Akufo-Addo signing the bill into law while Vice- President Mahamudu Bawumia supports him
President Akufo-Addo has finally accented to the Special Prosecutor’s Bill, which was passed by parliament late last year.
This was at a short ceremony in his office at the Flagstaff House yesterday, where he also assented to four other Bills already passed by parliament.
They are the Zongo Development Fund, Coastal Development Authority, the Middle Belt Development Authority and the Northern Development Authority.
Present at the ceremony was Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia.
With the Special Prosecutor’s Bill effectively becoming law, the stage is now set for the prosecution of alleged past and present corrupt government officials.
The opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) has been bragging that the anti-graft body be brought on because it is of the view that its members would not be caught in the corruption web.
President Akufo-Addo has reminded everybody not to read political meaning into the establishment of the office of the Special Prosecutor.
It is therefore expected that the much talked-about office of Special Prosecutor would be established in the coming days with great anticipation as to who will be appointed for the post.
Even though the names of lawyers Akoto-Ampaw and Phillip Addison have all been rumoured as likely candidates for the position, it is not clear if the president would give either of them the opportunity.
President Akufo-Addo expressed the hope that “the establishment of this office is going to be an important step in our collective determination to root out corruption in the public life of our country.
“All of us know it (corruption) is a major bane in the development of Ghana and hopefully, this office will make sure that public officials – past and present – are held to account for their actions and that corrupt acts will no longer go without investigation and if necessary, sanctions, once due process has been respected.”
Though there are existing laws that are supposed to prosecute corrupt public officials [past and present], the establishment of the office of Special Prosecutor is expected to pay special attention to such cases and expedite action on them.
On the establishment of the Coastal, Middle Belt and Northern Development Authorities, President Akufo-Addo explained that in the course of the 2016 campaign, the political leadership of the NPP made it clear that it wanted to try a new approach to the development of Ghana.
That, he said, was because the centralised approach to development witnessed in the aftermath of Ghana’s post-colonial life had not been successful in delivering development at the grassroots of the Ghanaian society.
“Therefore, we made this commitment that we will spend on each constituency, every year, the equivalent of $1 million. These Development Authorities, which are now going to be put in place, will be the vehicles for the management of these funds, and the expenditure of the equivalent of $1 million per constituency commitment,” he added.
Explaining the rationale for the enactment of the Zongo Development Fund, President Akufo-Addo indicated, “We have insisted that these particular communities, the Zongos, require a special consideration from our development initiatives, for reasons that are obvious – the deprivation and under-development that have characterized the lives of the peoples of the Zongos.
“It is not something that a healthy society can tolerate, and it is important that affirmative action of the sort is taken to address the needs of the Zongos. That is what the establishment of this Fund is going to try to do.”
By Charles Takyi-Boadu, Presidential Correspondent