<<Print>>

The exact reason why former Attorney General and Minister of Justice Martin Amidu was sacked from his position by the late President John Evans Atta Mills will continue to remain a mystery to the majority of Ghanaians for a long time to come. State officials who are required to act by publishing the letter written by the former Attorney General are trying very hard to find reasons not to produce the said letter. Mr. Amidu, in his latest epistle on the controversies surrounding judgment debt payments by the state to certain individuals and entities under questionable circumstances, a situation which led to his removal from office, has challenged the Mahama administration to publish the said letter to settle the issue. �I am challenging the government and the Ministry of Information to publish, for the purposes of transparency and accountability, my letter of 6th January 2012 so that the good people of Ghana may judge whether I did not name those I suspected of the judgment debt gargantuan crimes,� Mr. Amidu requested. Yesterday, a Deputy Minister of Information, Felix Ofosu Kwakye, described Mr. Amidu�s challenge as �a mute request�, indicating that the government was unwilling to accept the challenge. According to the Deputy Minister, Mr. Amidu�s challenge was directed at the former Chief of Staff, Mr. John Martey-Newman, who is currently not in office, and wondered how such a person could respond to the request. �For me, it is a moot request, because if the person you are making the request from is not there, how does he do it?� he queried when The Chronicle reached him on phone yesterday. The Deputy Minister wondered whether the said letter could even be traced at the office of the Chief of Staff. �What is even the guarantee that he (new Chief of Staff) can even trace a letter like that in the office?� he asked. Mr. Amidu is on record to have openly castigated some top officials of the Mills government for attempting to conceal heinous crimes against the state, especially in the matter of questionable judgment debts paid by the state, and the seeming lack of interest by the state to investigate them. Mr. Amidu had indicated that some top government officials had engaged in a create, loot and share situation, in the manner in which those judgment debts were paid. This stance appears to have irked faceless elements in the government who used what Mr. Amidu described as the �criminal rented press� to hound the Citizen Vigilante for his resolve to retrieve those monies to the state. �My integrity and professionalism as a lawyer was a threat to the concealment of gargantuan crimes against the people of Ghana, in which they might be implicated,� Mr. Amidu stated. He was subsequently sacked by the late President John Evans Atta Mills under very strange circumstances, described as misconduct, but failed to give details of the exact offence committed by Mr. Amidu, which was considered a misconduct. Mr. Amidu is also daring the government to explain to Ghanaians what constituted his alleged misconduct. �I have, since the former Chief of Staff, Mr. J.H. Martey Newman, dishonourably lied to the media in a press release dated January 19th, 2012, that I was dismissed for misconduct without giving particulars of my alleged misconduct, challenged him and the government to publish the particulars of my misconduct,� Amidu said. Mr. Amidu, in his own right as a citizen of Ghana, went to court to challenge the payment of some judgment debts and has won two cases, with others pending in court awaiting judgment.