Kpegah Angry OverTsatsu

Justice Kpegah THE PRESIDENT, John Agyekum Kufuor has accepted the 'politically motivated' resignation of Francis Yao Nansu Kpegah, a Justice of the Supreme Court of Ghana.

“I am directed to acknowledge receipt of your letter with reference No. SP/347 dated 4th December, 2008 per which you informed his Excellency the President of your decision to resign as a Justice of the Supreme Court of Ghana with immediate effect, which unfortunately was made available to the press before it was officially received.”

The letter, signed by Secretary to the President, Ambassador D.K. Osei and dated December 5, 2008, stated that at the appropriate time the President expects competent authorities to provide answers to the other matters raised in Kpegah's letter.

In his letter of resignation, Justice Kpegah lampooned the President and the Chief Justice (CJ), Georgina Wood, for the 5-year prison term in hard labour slapped on Tsatsu Tsikata, former Chief Executive of the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC), the intended divestiture of selected properties of the Ghana Armed Forces, and according to him, the way he was sidelined whenever the CJ travelled overseas.

He stated: “I do not believe that…Mr. Tsatsu Tsikata should spend even one second in prison.”

Kpegah, who has extensively enjoyed the largess of government through medical trips overseas and brand new cars, has in the mean-time sued the President and the government, for what he claims are breaches of the 1992 Constitution, citing 14 charges.

In a statement of claim dated December 3, and filed by his lawyers, Hayibor, Djarbeng & Co of Accra, Kpegah said: “Close to eight years the government has succeeded in imposing a culture of fear in the people of Ghana through its cronies in the electronic and print media, especially the 'Coffee Shop Mafia”.

He stated that he intends to call not less than 10 witnesses, rely mainly on the constitution    and    the    Armed Forces Act and    the    Auditor¬ General's report on Public Accounts of Ghana (Consolidated Fund) for the year ended 31 December 2006 and 2007.    

Writing without a shred of evidence, Kpegah said that the mafia, names of whose members he failed to mention, set the national agenda and considers any criticism of government policies as subversive by ridiculing and insulting critics in their papers and through phone-in programmes on their FM stations.

Virtually calling for a truncation of the government's term, Kpegah, now known as 'the plaintiff', stated that “upon a true and proper interpretation of the Constitution, 1992, any government elected under the said Constitution for a four- year term is accountable within the said four-year period to the sovereign people of Ghana in whose name and for whose welfare the powers of government are to be exercised in the manner and within the limits laid down by the Constitution.”

The Plaintiff said, “The only way the government can be so held accountable by the sovereign people of Ghana is by the mechanism or procedure laid down in Article 2 (1) of the Constitution of Ghana, 1992.

“The Supreme Court is empowered under Clause 2 of the aforementioned Article to issue such orders or give such directions as it may consider appropriate to give effect to or enable effect to be given to the declaration so made”.

'The learned' judge wove a string of allegations which he stated were based on news reports from the mouth-piece of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), The Palaver.

He stated that true to their declared ideology of “PROPERTY OWNING DEMOCRACY” the functionaries of the present administration have decided to barbecue the country's resources to the detriment of the sovereign people of Ghana but to the benefit of themselves, their supporters, family members and surrogates in the print and electronic media.

That the ship carrying two tons of crude oil from Saltpond valued at $20million which was reportedly retrieved from Nigeria to the Tema Port but later could not be traced was a clear case of theft of natural resources.

According to him, “the former chairman of the ruling New Patriotic Party, Harona Esseku openly accused the President and his surrogates in the Castle of turning the seat of government into a receptacle for the collection of millions of dollars and billions of cedis as kick-backs to build a war chest for the election campaign in 2008, but that His Excellency President J. A. Kufour has appropriated the monies for personal disbursement to his cronies to the detriment of 'the party; that the government should be made to account to the good people of Ghana in this regard”.

He continued: “The claim by Mr. Alan Kyerematen, alias Alan Cash that he raised ¢13 billion towards the campaign for his failed presidential bid is untrue: the money is, in fact, from these illegal amounts. The alleged donation of ¢1 billion to the Alan Cash campaign fund by the NPP youth leader, Mr. John Boadu, is also from this illegal fund kept at the seat of government.

That the reported purchase of a hotel by the President's eldest son, Chief Kufuor, for $8million  is indeed a purchase by the President himself.”

He asserted that Chief Kufuor never raised any consortium of banks to finance the purchase of the hotel through Prudential Bank Ltd. That the claim by Mr. A. E. Saoud that he was no longer interested in the hotel business is not true. On the contrary, he was pressurized to sell his uncompleted hotel; otherwise he should not have built another hotel at the Spintex Road.

“That with impunity, government functionaries live an ostentatious lifestyle as if they are above the law and that they are not accountable to the people of Ghana.

He said the Bambagate which rocked the seat of government some time ago but was swept under the carpet is an example, adding that government officials obey the orders of the courts as and when they feel, citing the Hodare Okai case.

The worst display of such impunity and arrogance was the one displayed towards the sovereign people of Ghana in Parliament by Dr. Wereko- Brobbey and the Chief of Staff, Kwadwo Mpiani when they appeared before Parliament; they refused to render accounts when they were questioned about the Ghana @ 50 anniversary accounts!

“Another example was when Dr. Paul Acquah, Governor of the Bank of Ghana, claimed that he did not know how much the re-denomination of the cedi would cost the government!”

He said he will rely on a declaration that the ruling NPP government is corrupt and ineffectual: “Some of the corrupt practices are disclosed in the Auditor- General's report on Public Accounts of Ghana (Consolidated Fund) for the year ended 31 December 2007 and marked as F.Y.K. 2, which clearly shows the siphoning of monies from the Consolidated Fund through the Bank of Ghana.

“The actual position in the country is that whilst some are under the law, others are above it; a clear violation of the principle of the rule of law.

“Having intimidated the good people of Ghana into subservience, the present administration now feels emboldened to use the sale of lands and other assets belonging to the Ghana Armed Forces as the icing on their cake, just on the brink of leaving office.

“The effect of the sale of the lands and other assets of the Ghana Armed     Forces across the country amounts not only to degrading the Ghana Armed Forces, but also to disbanding and incapacitating same in the performance of their traditional role as found in Article 220 of the Constitution. It is therefore surprising that President Kufour and his security chiefs have not appreciated the full implications of this divestiture of the said properties of the Ghana Armed Forces: maybe the fact that it makes him a Commander-in- Chief of no army is lost on them.

“The traditional values of our society have now been turned upside down by a government which has arrogantly emboldened itself with money from the National Treasury”.

In all these claims, Kpegah stated, he would prove before a court, and mentioned himself as the plaintiff while he demanded that the Attorney General, the Chief of Defence Staff, the Air Force Commander, Chief of Naval Staff and the Coordinator of National Security appear before the court to purge themselves of the charges. A DAILY GUIDE REPORT