I’m not bitter – Martin Amidu

Page 17: Daily Graphic, May 31, 2012. Story: Albert K. Salia A FORMER Attorney-General and Minister of Justice in the Mills Administration, Mr Martin Amidu says he not a bitter in leaving the National Democratic Congress (NDC) government of President John Evans Atta Mills. “There are several excellent reasons why I count myself very lucky to have left President Mills’ Government”, he said, stressing that “I am not a traitor”. Mr Amidu’s comments were contained in a statement he issued today the purpose of which he said was to answer the accusations and spins “on why I am not directing my criticisms in-house to the Government or the NDC”. He said it was, therefore, untrue that he was a disgruntled smokescreen being used by the NPP against the Government. Mr Amidu said he had assumed a confidential and trusting relationship that existed between the PNDC, NDC1, and NDC2 and its appointees in open and frank criticism of policies and conduct of in-group members existed in the President Mills government but have had to choose the present the path of going to the press with his opinions because “several happenings in the present government made me to realise that honest and sincere criticisms have the appearance of being accepted only for schemes and plans to destroy the integrity of the critic to be hatched”. “By my nature I just cannot refuse to give my honest and sincere opinion on a matter should anyone ask for it. It was in these circumstances that the President demanded a written report from me as the Attorney-General on the afternoon of 23rd December 2011 after his press interview with Radio Gold. The Deputy Attorney-General had written that the Government had no defence to the action that was why it settled. He is still at post. I had discovered a letter dated 9th December 2010 which gave the appearance that the Attorney-General’s office ordered the payment against the President’s instructions”. Mr Amidu, whose statement comes on the wheels of an ealier one he issued on May 28, 2012, said in a reliable and trusting association or group where the ideals and purposes of the association or group were respected and obeyed, no group member ought to use any outside channels to address or correct in-group mistakes or wrongs that are likely to affect the objects of the group. “But where the leadership in the association instead of taking criticisms in private in good faith, spins the criticism to within both the group members and to the public to discredit and defame the genuine critics, conflict studies and resolution theory and practice grants a right to put the association back to its original ideals through sub-group and public tacit bargaining”, he said. According to him, if one were just a pretender who joined the group for other motives than its objects, then he or she could just leave the group but said as a committed member of the group’s objects “you do not leave it to those who are breaking the ground rules of trust in accepting genuine criticisms but use every means to return the group to its original objects to achieve the cherished principles and ideals”. He recalled that after studying the available file on the Woyome case, he discovered to his disappointment that there was no contract and there could not have been a contract upon which to ground a cause of action and locus standi in the plaintiff against the Government. “Secondly at the time the plaintiff filed his writ there was no written and signed settlement agreement between the plaintiff and the Attorney-General let alone for it to be filed in Court. Yet the plaintiff’s claim was upon letters from the Attorney-General to the Minister of Finance to pay the plaintiff. Consequently, in a preliminary ten page report to the President in my letter D45/SF.173/10 dated 6th January 2012 I stated professionally what I had discovered, including the names of each person I suspected to be implicated in the case”, he said. Mr Amidu explained that although that letter was copied to the Chief of Staff and the National Security Co-ordinator, “The NDC press, however, continued to attack my integrity to the enjoyment of the Government and Party. I, therefore, decided to tell the public in my press release of 11th January 2012 of my perspective so that I am not hanged without being heard”. He said on January 12, 2010, the President invited him to his office for a meeting on his (Amidu’s) press release in the presence of others during which it was agreed that he and one other person workout a solution. “Then from no where the President calls me at 7.05 pm the same day to meet him in his office with Mrs. Betty Mould-Iddrisu the next morning. I attended the meeting with Mrs. Mould-Iddrisu at which there were others present. It was in the course of the meeting of 13th January 2012 that I told the President (citing examples) that he had been interfering in the execution of my functions as the Attorney-General under Article 88 of the Constitution and, therefore, I had resigned from his Government forthwith. I asked for permission to leave to submit my formal resignation letter to him within one hour. I was told to wait because the meeting had not concluded”, he said. According to Mr Amidu, the meeting was later adjourned to 3 pm to enable Alhaji Mahama Iddrisu, Capt (Rtd.) Kojo Tsikata and other elders of the Government and Party to join the meeting. He said he chaimed his mind not to attend the meeting after his oral resignation upon persuasions from two of the persons present both of whom he considered very good friends, (one of then in addition to his age I had great respect for when we worked together when I was a PNDC Deputy Regional Secretary). “When I returned at 3pm I waited until about 3.30 pm when a very respectable former Member of the PNDC and mentor came from the President’s office and took me to the conference room for a discussion and persuaded me to go to the Court and retrieve the GH¢ 51million for the Republic of Ghana. This was an old man who has mentored almost every former PNDC appointee and how could I have refused his plea to rescind my decision not to work for the President again, particularly when he had authorized me in very strong and assuring words to go and collect the money for the Republic of Ghana. He asked me to go straight to my office to begin working on the case and that I did not need to go back to the Presidency as he would handle that”, he said Mr Amidu said it was upon that understanding that he got his staff and himself to start working from that evening of January 13, 2012 through Saturday and Sunday to have the application for amendment filed on the morning of 16th January 2012 for me to attend the Court that morning. He said he was in Court in person and the statement of case together with the accompanying application and his single minded determination to retrieve the GH¢51 million for the Republic of Ghana is now known to all. He said the opponents of the case within Government panic at his efforts and put pressure on the President saying that “I never saw the President again to date”. “So on the morning of 19th January 2012, three days after I went to start the process of retrieving the money, the Daily Graphic, a Government mouth piece, falsely published that I had gone on my knees at the meeting of 13th January 2012 to plead not to be dismissed. It was also falsely alleged in other NDC newspapers that I failed to mention the names of Ministers I had made allegations against in my press statement. Mahama Ayariga and Felix Owusu Kwakye and others were on air the same day stating that I either had to mention those involved or would be dismissed”, he said. Mr Amidu wondered how one could blame “them when they were not privy to my official interim report to the President dated 6th January 2012 in which each person I suspected to be implicated was named”. He made it clear that it would have been unethical for him to have put names in his press statement when the President had also announced to the whole world that the Economic and Organized Crime Office was to submit a report to him on the same matter, stressing that “they had been fed false and “spin” information from the Castle”. According to him, at 12.55pm on the same day of January 19, 2012 the President sent a special bearer to him in my office with a letter in which he (President) stated that he had relieved me of my post as Attorney-General with immediate effect. “I had been in Government for over 21 years and knew that in spite of the persuasion by my old PNDC mentor and another elder PNDC colleague in Government that I not resign, the Government could be buying time to have the last say on its own terms. Northern Ghanaian culture, however, insists on respect for well behaved elders so I had no option than to obey the two elders and wait beyond 13th January 2012”, he said. He said in accordance with northern Ghanaian tradition and custom he briefed Alhaji Iddrisu Mahama, as the most Senior Northerner in the Government on the morning of January 14, 2012 on what transpired at the meeting of 13th January 2012 and the persuasions from his colleague elders and my acceptance to hold on. He said the Chief of Staff, who part of the meeting of January 13, 2012, “ hypocritically issued a press statement to the effect that I had misconducted myself as a Minister”. Mr Amidu said he sent the Chief of Staff a reply on January 20, 2012 and dared him to publish my reply to him and my letter of 6th January 2012 to the public. “He has cowardly refused to make any of them public. In view of the deceit and betrayal I have gone through in the hands of the President, how does any one expect me to trust that the Government would not again put further spins on any advice I give it or any information I pass over to it on probity, accountability and transparency discretely. That is why I have chosen to exercise my constitutional right to freedom of speech and also to defend the Constitution in my advocacy for integrity in Government openly and in the public domain”, he stated. He said he joined the PNDC Government, became a foundation member of the NDC and later reluctantly became the Vice Presidential candidate of the NDC in 2000 challenged “anybody to show me one public criticism, orally or in writing, which I made in public to the media about the PNDC or the NDC under President Rawlings”.