THE Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) yesterday suffered a setback in its bid to investigate the Mabey and Johnson (M&J) bribery allegation when the Human Rights Court in Accra ruled to prohibit it from further probing into the matter.
The court held that it was improper for the Commissioner of CHRAJ, Mr Justice Francis Emile Short, to have expressed his opinion on a matter then pending before the Supreme Court on Metro TV, an Accra-based TV station (see front page).
The impact of the ruling, among others, is that this controversial matter which has witnessed some heated arguments between CHRAJ and the affected persons via their counsel is practically dead in the water, at least until the ruling is reversed on appeal by a higher court.
The court’s decision that it was prejudicial for the Commissioner of CHRAJ to have made those remarks is incisive, as it especially sends a reminder that Mr Justice Short was legally stopped from commenting either directly or indirectly on a matter pending before the commission he heads.
The probability of bias in the matter before CHRAJ is high, in the face of these public comments, and, therefore, the benefit of the doubt will enure to the affected persons.
But even before this case travelled this far, there had been real questions regarding what CHRAJ was actually investigating, what level of co-operation and information it received from the UK Serious Fraud Office (SFO) and what findings and rulings it would have made.
This is largely on account of the fact that the UK court which heard the UK SFO case did not sentence any of the affected persons for the said offence of bribery.
In a case on the matter brought before the UK SFO and the court by Dr George Sipa-Adjah Yankey, who resigned his position as Minister of Health to clear his name over the allegation, both the UK SFO and the court said Dr Yankey (and by extension all the affected persons) was, at no material time, before the court and could, therefore, not have been tried, let alone be convicted on the said allegation.
Indeed, the CHRAJ Commissioner himself had occasion to bemoan publicly the lack of access to the requisite information from the UK SFO on which CHRAJ had sought to rely to make its findings and give its ruling.
It is important to recall that in recognition of the need to respect the rights of persons against whom no substantive findings of guilt had been established, the UK SFO decided not to make public the names of the UK M&J officials allegedly involved in the scandal but, in breach of standard rules, mentioned the names of the Ghanaian officials.
This case, which can be said to have emanated from a hazy background, has become murkier and more controversial.
Among the key issues in the face of this ruling are: What will CHRAJ do next? What avenues are now open to Dr Yankey and Alhaji Amadu Seidu, both public officials who resigned to clear their names, and the rest?
If another anti-corruption body must investigate the matter to clear any lingering doubts on the matter and also give impetus to the anti-corruption drive, it must draw very useful lessons from how this case originated, how it has developed and how it ended the way it did.
Be that as it may, we think the rights of the affected, especially those who held pubic office and had to resign to contest the case, should be restored until there is further reason to curtail them.
We should not endeavour to punish people whose guilt has not been established by due process, given the law-and-order society on which we seek to firmly base our democracy, especially where, in the case of Dr Yankey, he was publicly acknowledged as a competent and hardworking minister who was set to work to improve the quality of life of our people.
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