CHRAJ’s Ineffectiveness; Who’s To Blame?

Not everyone likes a robust debate but a ‘warmongering’ argument seems to have broken out within the walls of the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), as both past and present commissioners of the revered institution appear to be in a brawl over who is to blame for the current ‘ineffectiveness’ at the Commission.

While the former Commissioner, Justice Emile Short, has accused the present head of the anti-graft agency for the apparent ineffectiveness of the commission, the sitting commissioner has thrown the sting back at Short.

The current commissioner, Mr. Joseph Whittal, has described as “unfair and misplaced” claims that the commission under his watch is ineffective in fighting corruption.

Justice Short had in an interview with Accra-based Starr FM, yesterday, posited that the CHRAJ of today can in no way match the one he once superintended.

“Today, CHRAJ is not that productive in investigating allegations of corruption because really, CHRAJ does not need a complaint to investigate allegations of corruption, but it hasn’t done that as we used to do before,” he said.

When asked who was to blame for the situation, Justice Short said Mr. Whittal was responsible for the lapses.

But Mr. Whittal in a rebuttal, said Justice Short was no longer part of CHRAJ and obviously unaware of the happenings at the commission.

“We are doing so many investigations. You know allegations of corruption that are put out, some of them don’t have much traction. So, we investigate them. You can’t put out information into the public domain on investigations that really should not even have commenced,” he defended.

The current head further indicated that though they had embarked on several investigations, the commission had to drop some of them because “there’s no leg for the allegation to stand on.”

“It is the ones that have traction, the ones that we then call on the respondent to come forward and state his or her case; they are the ones that eventually come out. But our statistics show clearly that there has been some uptake in terms of proactive investigations,” Mr. Whittal stressed.

CHRAJ

The commission had recently been touted ineffective in the fight against corruption.

Communications Director of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), Mr. Yaw Buaben Asamoah, had on Tuesday expressed worry over the futility of some anti-corruption state agencies, and wished they stepped up their game.

“We have been frustrated by this corruption fight for a very long time…we have experimented with CHRAJ, it hasn’t worked, we still have to invest in CHRAJ, we are experimenting with EOCO and we don’t know how far we will go and we still have to invest in them,” Mr. Asamoah had said.

By: Grace Ablewor Sogbey/ [email protected]