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Gov’t will win
Sam Okudzeto’s case-Attorney General
Audrey Agyiri-Inkoom,
Ghanadot
Accra, Jan 11, Ghanadot - The
Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Madam Betty Mould-Iddrisu
is clearly an unhappy woman and very upset at certain twists
and turns arising out of a legal suit filed by former Board
Member of the Bank of Ghana (BOG) and New Patriotic Party (NPP)
stalwart, Sam Okudzeto.
Speaking on
Radio Gold’s “Alhaji and Alhaji” political talk-programme,
she accused the ace lawyer of being an egocentric; whiles
she blustered that government “will use every arsenal in the
legal array that they can muster to win the case.”
“We have
been fighting this case at the High Court, at the Court of
Appeal and now he has taken us to the Supreme Court. We
intend using every possible….arsenal in the legal array that
we can muster against him in order to win this case. It is
inconceivable that any right thinking citizen of Ghana would
wish to stay on in a Board just for his personal
gratification.
However much he wants to
cloud it as it being a constitutional issue, an issue that
must be put to the test, he knows more than anybody else the
harm that he is doing to the BOG, and the nation at large,
by not allowing the Board to be reconstituted. It is really
in the worst possible case that any right thinking Ghanaian
would do this.”
President
J.E.A. Mills soon after taking office dissolved the Boards
of all state Institutions, agencies and other Parastatals
including the Bank of Ghana. He subsequently reconstituted
the Board appointing new members to replace Mr. Okudzeto and
others.
But the legal luminary, who
was affected by the action since his tenure ends somewhere
in April 2010, believes the president had no power to
dissolve the Board of the Bank of Ghana and sought an order
to restrain the president from swearing in the new members
to the Board.
In April,
2009, Mr. Sam Okudzeto commenced a suit against the
government for wrongful dissolution of the Board of the Bank
of Ghana. A member of the dissolved Board, Mr. Okudzeto said
the action of the president amounted to a flagrant violation
of the laws of the land. He therefore filed a writ at the
Fast Track, seeking a declaration by the court that the
action of the president was illegal, null and void.
Mr.
Okudzeto's legal action, it seems, is having a telling
effect on the operations of the BOG and hampering the work
of government, as any amount of money that has to be
effected through the BOG for governance, has been stalled,
for now.
But the
Attorney General has the firm conviction that at the end of
the day, government will win the case, since Mr. Okudzeto
does not even have the “locus standi” to initiate the suit
in the first instance.
Micah Audrey
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