End The Impunity, Mr President

The panel of what, by any definition, is a panel of truly eminent persons with more than sufficient experience and expertise, the Emile Short Commission recommended in 2019 the complete disbandment of the force unconstitutionally and illegally exercising police powers in the National Security Council Secretariat.

Who ignores such sound counsel from such an eminently qualified panel? The President, the Commander-In-Chief, who is head of the Council, rather hurriedly got a new law passed and signed it in October 2020, purporting to legitimise the illegality said to pose a grave threat to our democracy.

The panel made several other recommendations from its findings after the public hearings into the needless violence during the 2019 Ayawaso West Wuogon by-election. Strangely, these have been ignored, including even those the President accepted by a White Paper.

We know that this regime security that never survives a change in government is an assembly of members of an opposition party’s illegal private militia led by partisan retired and ex-security officers.

This explains why in 2017, the NPP’s Delta Force, unhappy about the choice, beat up the head of the National Security in the Ashanti region but suffered no consequence.

Today, the new head, a lawyer of many years and former police chief in that region, says a group sent from Accra to forcibly remove him from office, who assaulted and handcuffed him, were members of the supposed disbanded Delta Force.

We know the danger when these mostly unqualified men and thugs are integrated into the regular security to avoid being sacked by another government. We know the threat if they don’t get integrated but left to return to the unlawful party militia work often justified by NDC or NPP when in opposition as necessary for private protection due to mistrust of the police.

Imagine the danger as they get integrated into the regular security agencies and get promoted to leadership for their loyalty to a party. That’s government literally building the biggest threat to the State.

Nonetheless, even under the new law, the National Security apparatus does not have police powers to arrest, search, seize, or detain criminal suspects. Dear citizen, if an operative of the apparatus purports to arrest you, you are entitled in law to resist it as being unlawful.

On the strength of the Constitution, the law sets up only two agencies under National Security to do the serious job of intelligence gathering and related business to assist police, army and others established by law for the stability of the country.

These two – the External Intelligence Agency and the Internal Intelligence Agency or the NIB (formerly BNI) deal with intelligence gathering and serious offences including terrorism, organised crime, human trafficking and narcotics. They have police powers but even that where they need you to supply a document to assist their investigations, they require a warrant from the court or from a senior police officer not below the rank of superintendent.

By Section 49 of the Securities and Intelligence Agencies Act, 2020 (Act 1030), the National Security agency (not the apparatus illegally keeping a force that gives National Security a bad name) that is invested with police powers, is to collaborate with relevant security agencies to investigate matters of national importance – serious offences but not misdemeanour offences for which the punishment is a maximum of three years imprisonment.

Mr President, operatives of the apparatus not given police powers have been doing police work and abusing poor citizens for suspicion over misdemeanour offences – petty crimes. You must stop the unconditional, egregious abuses of rights, above-the-law conduct in assaulting and torturing citizens. Citi FM’s Caleb Kudah neither broke a journalistic ethic nor commit a crime – state secrets do not lie in the open in a car park of a ministry in a busy city centre.

The Constitution in Article 19 commands that suspects are to be presumed innocent until they confess to a crime or are found guilty by the court. It instructs in Article 14, among others, that suspects have a right to a lawyer of their choice. It is a person’s fundamental human right in Article 15 not to have their dignity violated, and suspects shall not be tortured, suffer inhuman or degrading treatment or such acts likely to detract from their dignity and worth as human beings.

Why can’t these operatives respect these basic rights?

Why is it allowed and even applauded that the Accra Regional Minister has turned himself into police and court on the streets of Madina making poor citizens squat and sweep for not using the footbridge? Regulation 154 of the Road Traffic Regulations, 2012 prescribes punishment for a pedestrian’s failure to use a footbridge or an underpass does not include the degrading treatment meted out at Madina Zongo Junction, assuming the cane-wielding officers acting lawlessly on the Minister’s instructions were judges in a court. What is needed is education for compliance and resort to law.

Ministers responsible for Land and Natural Resources, Defence and Information have been defending and justifying the unlawful and extrajudicial recourse in burning excavators in the otherwise laudable operation against galamsey. The State passed one of the best laws in the Minerals and Mining Act, amended it a couple of times to make it watertight.

The 2016 amendment improved the sanctions with L.I. 2404 – 2020 Regulations, providing details on how to avoid illegal mining and punish for it. The equipment, including excavators, must be registered with the Minerals Commission and fitted with tracking devices and monitored. Operators pay fees for monitoring that must be done, including the use of drones.

Hefty fines in hundreds of dollars are charged for violation of the law. By the law, galamsey simply can’t go on if officials paid to do the work do their work. It requires the court to make an order of forfeiture upon conviction to allow the State to distribute seized machines like excavators to State institutions that need them. Yes, district assemblies need them for road and development work. In fact, it is senseless to burn them only to spend our tax money to buy excavators to reclaim and repair the damaged lands and river bodies.

The impunity makes it look as though you are presiding over a failed State.

Set up a Chapter 23 constitutional commission of very eminent persons to conduct a public hearing of their encounters with operatives of the National Security apparatus and the NIB. Many lawyers will also tell stories that will shock this country and the threat posed if comprehensive reform is not undertaken now. Make a pledge that you will not cherry-pick but implement the recommendations of this commission, whose report should incorporate that of the Emile Short panel.

Mr. President, end the impunity now!

 

 

Source: Samson Lardy Anyenini