The “hounding” out of Auditor-General Daniel Yaw Domelevo by President Nana Akufo-Addo, using the precedence set by President John Evans Atta Mills is wrong, former President John Mahama has said in an exclusive interview with Benjamin Akakpo on Class91.3FM’s Executive Breakfast Show on Monday, 14 September 2020.
Mr Domelevo, a few weeks ago, was asked by the President to take his 167-day accumulated annual leave.
Speaking on the matter, Mr Mahama said: “Well, the quote used is that: ‘When you fight corruption, corruption will fight you back’. And I think that that is the clear case of Domelevo”.
“He’s a person with integrity and he’s quite a strong person when it comes to unearthing malfeasance and for the period that he’s served as Auditor-General.
“I think that he’s earned a lot of plaudits for the work he has done; he’s been very fearless in terms of his fight against corruption and when corruption fights back, that’s what happens”, Mr Mahama noted.
He expressed qualms about the President’s directive to Mr Domelevo.
“I think the action by the President is wrong”, the flagbearer of the NDC told Benjamin Akakpo.
“He tries to base it on the precedence of President Mills but the point is, if something is wrong, you cannot use it as the basis of precedence and do the wrong thing”, he argued.
“So, the Auditor-General’s office is defined in the Constitution and the Constitution tries to give the Auditor-General autonomy in terms of his work; like EOCO, like CHRAJ, like the Chief Justice, the Electoral Commission Chair, those constitutional bodies and, so, it’s not in the power of the President to ask the Auditor-General to go on leave.
“If you do that, the precedence set tries to indicate that the President also has the power to ask the Electoral Commission Chair to take their accumulated leave or to ask the Chief Justice to take their accumulated leave, and, so, I think that he was hounded out of office”, he said.
According to Mr Mahama, should he win the 2020 polls, “I’m not going to hound anybody out of office. I’ve never done and I’ll never do”.
