A legal practitioner, Akoto Ampaw has taken a strong exception to some assertions that the creation of the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) by the government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) is merely a political gimmick to clamp down on political opponents.
“The Office of the Special Prosecutor is a novelty which is against a certain culture of resistance to change, hence the thinking that it is political to prosecute past government ministers and appointees.
“We have a political and an economic structure which is resistant to change, there are institutions, there are people in the public services, there are people in the business community who do not want change but every government has its own agenda to prosecute, which requires the collective efforts of the citizenry, especially civil society, to have the agenda executed.
“That does not mean the policies are political, if the President wants to tackle an issue by himself, he will fail unless he has mobilised support of civil society definitely, I do not believe the Office of the Special Prosecutor is a political gimmick but needs to be well-resourced to be able to fight corruption.
“Civil society and well-meaning Ghanaians should put pressure on the government to provide funding for the office to conduct more investigations to be able to prosecute criminal cases which can be realised through service of qualified and skillful investigators, lawyers, auditors, accountants, experts in international finance and banking.
“The public euphoria which surrounded the appointment of Martin Amidu as Special Prosecutor was ill-informed, due to failure of the government to communicate to the citizenry the office would not be ready immediately,” Mr Ampaw noted.-3news.com