Professor Emmanuel Gyimah-Boadi
Co-founder of Afrobarometer, Professor Emmanuel Gyimah-Boadi says the treatment meted out to the immediate past Auditor-General, Mr Daniel Yaw Domelevo “is just shameful.”
Making reference to what others have described as a forced retirement for Mr Domelevo, Prof Gyimah-Boadi said it epitomizes a situation where it was increasingly becoming clear that the presidency was not ready to work with institutions or leadership it has not appointed.
“I think the worse of it is that, we have a presidency that is increasingly looking like it has difficulty working with institutions and leadership that it has not appointed. Then, the Domelevo incident, or debacle is for me a clear example of that,” Prof Gyimah-Boadi said in a television interview which airs on Citi TV, Wednesday night.
“As for the President’s [Akufo-Addo] credibility in terms of anti-corruption, I’m afraid to say it is in tatters. It has been in tatters for a while but this puts it in the coffin,” Prof Gyimah-Boadi who is also founder and former Executive Director of the Ghana Center for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana), added.
An excerpt of the full television interview with Bernard Avle on his Point of View programme, which will air at 9pm on Citi TV was played on radio [Citi FM], and monitored by Graphic Online.
Speaking to the host of the TV programme, Prof Gyimah-Boadi suggested the situation was symptomatic of a bigger problem of an intolerance by the executive [Presidency] to deal with people it had not appointed into office.
The full interview will be aired at 9pm GMT, March 10, 2021.
“…there are some similarities between Martin Amidu’s case and Domelevo’s case, but I think the substantive differences are significant.
I see Martin Amidu at least in part [as] a victim of self injury, a scorer of own goal.
But I see Domelevo as a victim of well orchestrated actions by individuals who are officials, and by institutions, state institutions over who Mr Domelevo was exercising proper constitutional and legal oversight, and officials and institutions that Mr Domelevo had sought to hold to account.
The man, who was doing his best to basically protect the public purse, to claim surcharges for an improperly spent public fund, one who is trying to fight corruption is the one who is rather being persecuted, and hounded out of office.
And when you contrast that with the great lengths that have been taken to allow appointees of the President, and supporters of the president and party activists, and others to get the opportunity to claim the benefits and rule of law, to claim the benefits of due process, for internal investigations to be set up and declare them exonerated and so on, when you contrast that with the treatment being meted to Mr Domelevo, its just shameful,” Prof Gyimah-Boadi stated.
He said the situation was disappointing, “but disappointing for reasons I believe Mr Amidu has to take some responsibility for…, to the extent that to my knowledge, he [Amidu] was given adequate resources to work with, and if he wasn’t given adequate resources to work with, there were others in the wings to help and to support and also he didn’t really stay that long on the job and tried to fight it out.”
“As for the President’s [Akufo-Addo] credibility in terms of anti-corruption, I’m afraid to say it is in tatters. It has been in tatters for a while but this puts it in the coffin,” he said.
more to follow…
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