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14.03.2020 Feature Article

A Precedent-Setting Inquiry

A Precedent-Setting Inquiry
14.03.2020 LISTEN

It was only a matter of time before a brash, brazen and bruising Auditor-General Daniel Yaw Domelevo, the Kaiser of Official Fiscal Accountability, was himself called to account by Parliament, the oversight branch of our three-arm democratic political culture and government, namely, the Executive, Legislature and the Judiciary (See “Parliament Constitutes Ad Hoc Committee to Appoint Auditor to Audit Auditor-General’s Office” Ghana News Agency (GNA) 3/13/20). In recent weeks, Mr. Domelevo has come under quite a bit of media strafing for conducting himself in ways that are deemed to be incongruous with his portfolio of Government’s point man on fiscal probity, transparency, accountability and justice, as pontifically touted by Chairman Jerry John Rawlings, founding-father of the country’s present main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) and, before the latter, the sanguinary Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) junta and the equally bloody junta of the so-called Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC).

As well, the John Dramani Mahama eleventh-hour named Auditor-General has been accused of frivoling with the considerably whopping sum of GHȻ 350,000 that he requested from Mr. Richard Boadu before Mr. Domelevo consented to having personnel of the National Audit Services examine the account books of the GETFund scholarship scheme, of which Mr. Boadu had just been named Chief Administrator in the middle of 2017. The auditing exercise was to cover the period from 2012 to 2016, when the Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) literally ruled the roost. According to Mr. Boadu, the GETFund Administrator, Auditor-General Domelevo curiously decided to politicize matters by insisting on including the fiscal years of 2017 and 2018 in his auditing purview and report, on grounds that exclusively auditing the GETFund accounts, as they operated under the Mahama regime, would raise needless albeit controversial questions bordering on partisan attempts by the Akufo-Addo Administration to witch-hunt Mahama-appointed operatives of GETFund.

This procedure clearly violated the established norm; it, not surprisingly, also raised suspicions over whether Mr. Domelevo was more intently focused on his job as Auditor-General or a political bulletproof jacket for the GETFund operatives of the Mahama regime. We have already discussed some of the preceding details in a previous column and so do not feel the need to unnecessarily reprise the same in the present one. What we are most interested to know is the fact of whether Article 187 (15) of Ghana’s 1992 Republican Constitution which clearly states that “The accounts office of the Auditor-General shall be audited and be reported upon by an auditor appointed by Parliament” has been periodically and regularly pursued in the past, or this is the very first time since Ghana’s Fourth-Republican Constitution came into effect that this decision by Parliament to have Mr. Domelevo’s office “financially investigated” is being carried out or followed through with.

This decision, no matter what the answer or answers to the preceding question may be, is, however, understandable, because since the beginning of his appointment as Auditor-General and the unleashing of widespread criticism that he does not appear to be playing fair with operatives of the Akufo-Addo Administration, both Mr. Domelevo, himself, and many of his staunch supporters have given the rather curious and, now, clearly erroneous impression that, somehow, the Auditor-General and his office were a law unto themselves. This apparently gross misunderstanding of the law may very well have brought matters to the precarious precipice where the Auditor-General presently finds himself. The good news here, though, is that at least Mr. Domelevo can rest assured that the parliamentary committee charged with investigating his fiscal management of the Audit Services Department is one with bipartisan support and balance and, thus, poised to delivering, hopefully, an unimpeachable verdict.

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
March 13, 2020
E-mail: [email protected]

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