Appointment of special prosecutor will quicken justice delivery — Deputy ministers designate

The two deputy ministers designate for Justice and Attorney-General have backed the President’s decision to appoint a special prosecutor to prosecute cases of corruption in public office to free the Attorney-General from the burden of handling such cases.

Mr Godfred Yeboah Dame and Mr Joseph Dindiok Kpemka, who appeared before the Appointments Committee of Parliament yesterday, expressed optimism that the appointment of a special prosecutor would help dispense justice in the country expeditiously.

Special prosecutor

Mr Dame, who was the first to appear before the committee, said the special prosecutor, when appointed, would be required to undertake special prosecution in matters of corruption in public office, among other issues, instead of the current arrangement where the A-G was expected to play that role, a situation that made it difficult for the office holder to prosecute members of the government.

The nominee, who spoke about the backlog of students who could not make it to the Ghana Law School for want of physical space, said the situation arose because of the expansion of the law degree programme and also the manner in which legal education was regulated. 

He said the situation would soon be a thing of the past when two more campuses were opened in Accra to absorb more students.

More campuses

Mr Dame said the Law School had acquired land, called the law village, at Legon to build more campuses and said he was interested in assisting his minister, if approved, to obtain funding to prosecute the project.

To correct the situation, he called for the demystification of law education through the establishment of campuses in all the regional capitals to cater for students who aspired to read law.

Asked what recommendations he would make to advance freedom of speech and media freedom in Ghana, Mr Dame, who is an advocate of press freedom, expressed concern over the heavy fines imposed on media organisations by the courts.

Such fines, he noted, were a subtle way of killing media freedom, knowing that media institutions did not have the ability to pay such hefty fines.

Joseph Kpemka

For Mr Kpemka, the special prosecutor should be a person of integrity who would not fall to political manipulation.

He said the person should be well grounded in law, with a disposition to earn the trust of all shades of the political divide.

Touching on what accounted for the backlog of cases in the law courts, Mr Kpemka, who is the Member of Parliament (MP) for Tempane, said he would assist his minister to lobby to ensure that conditions of service for state attorneys were improved to attract and retain more state attorneys to help in the speedy adjudication of cases before the courts.

On what he made of political party vigilante groups and what he thought should happen to them, the Deputy Attorney General designate called for the immediate disbanding of those groups to maintain peace in the country.

Deputy Energy Minister

Earlier, a Deputy Minister designate for Energy, William Owuraku Aidoo, had appeared before the committee and pledged to support the substantive minister to deliver on the government’s manifesto.

He was asked to state the support he would offer to facilitate the expansion of electricity supply in the country, to which he talked about the government’s policy on electrification in the 2017 budget and said he would assist the minister to achieve that objective.

 Mr Aidoo, who is the MP for Afigya Kwabre South, stated that he would offer support to ensure the effective take-off of the Second Millennium Challenge Compact with the US Government to improve energy delivery in the country.