Get ready for drama and theatrics, a boatload of them in the coming months; why? the president has finally signed the Special Prosecutor’s bill and an office created. Let the fireworks begin.
The stage is now set for the prosecution and public humiliation of those in the public and private sectors accused of dipping their hands in the cookie jar; yes, those individuals who schemed to fleece state agencies entrusted to their care.
Nobody has an inkling about those on the special prosecutor’s list of wrongdoers. The government knows who it intends to put under the legal gun; it just won’t reveal their names; it is a closely guarded national secret.
But that is cold comfort to those who are in the crosshairs of the special prosecutor. It is going to be an agonizing wait for these individuals.
More discomforting is the fact that it is going to be a horrific and heart-wrenching spectacle when the guilty are hauled/marched off to spend the next couple of years cooling their heels in the closed walls of the nation’s notoriously famous prison, Nsawam.
I have my misgivings, in fact, I harbor deep reservations about the special prosecutor’s bill; it was tainted from the start. Long before it was signed into law, the bill had political revenge, payback time written all over it. Let’s clear eyed here: the bill was pushed through parliament by a party bent on exacting revenge and belittling and humiliating its main political opponent.
What I find grossly misleading and plenty outrageous is the claim by the President that the prosecution of those accused of embezzling public funds would not be a political witch hunt. How dishonest.
The prosecution of former government officials will have all the trappings of a political witch hunt. Judging from the glee in NPP circles and the comments of some high ranking members, the President included, how can one say with a straight face that this is going to be a criminal prosecution?
And, underneath all the excitement is this political strategy: once the NPP gets the scalps of those NDC wrongdoers, if they are convicted and are sent off to jail, the party would then proceed to craft a winning election message with the convictions and tell Ghanaians that it is the only party that can provide a firewall against corruption and other get rich schemes concocted by public officials.
Indeed, the government should be commended for seeking a way to counter corruption. But to conduct the fight in a highly partisan way, distorts the genuiness of the government’s efforts.
I shed no tears for the NDC; it precipitated the NPP’s action. During its time in office, corruption scandals were too numerous to count. It therefore knew exactly what was coming with the NPP now safely in the saddle running the affairs of the nation.
When it is all said and done, when the final corruption trial wraps up, a valuable lesson, I hope, would have been learned by all, but especially by those who have the noble intention of serving the public.
That, despite its heavy partisan political overtones, the prosecution of public officials and their counterparts in the private sector sends an explicit message; corruption and graft, ultimately don’t pay.
When you engage in these despicable vices to enrich yourself and your family at the expense of suffering Ghanaians, your day of reckoning would come. Your political enemies would come hunting for your scalp.
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