Former Deputy Communications Minister, Felix Kwakye Ofosu, has backed comments by former President John Dramani Mahama that the New Patriotic Party (NPP) has a history of staffing state institutions with its cronies.
Mr. Mahama made the accusation while addressing the closing ceremony of the 3rd Annual Lawyers Conference of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) on Saturday, September 2.
Mr. Kwakye Ofosu, who was speaking on Citi FM, said the NPP has a long-standing history of deliberately staffing state institutions in order to have its way in most issues in the country.
“It has been a long-standing strategy of the NPP to dominate state institutions so that they can have their way on any matter they deem fit so they go about staffing state institutions with NPP people. It started in the Kufuor era but he used more subtle means, but as for President Akufo-Addo, he has adopted the crudest fashion to do this, and you recall what he did with the Electoral Commission when he came into office and removed Charlotte Osei on trumped-up charges and promptly appointed someone we know to be NPP and when we thought that he was going to end there, he appointed one Appiah Hene who is an NPP person as a commissioner,” Mr. Ofosu stated.
Mr. Kwakye Ofosu cited a number of appointments made by President Akufo-Addo as evidence of this cronyism, including the appointment of Justice Solomon Twumasi, a former Dormaa East constituency chairman of the NPP, as a High Court judge.
“If you look at the judiciary, President Akufo-Addo has decided that at all costs, the NPP must have overwhelming dominance in the judiciary set up, so he has appointed over eleven Supreme Court judges in the last seven years and he has appointed close to one hundred High Court judges and if you come to scrutinise these appointments, you will find people who are openly NPP so it is not as if president Mahama did not know what he was saying.
“If you go to the High Court today, the NPP’s former Dormaa East constituency chairman is called Justice Solomon Twumasi and he is now a High Court judge appointed by President Akufo-Addo. There is Justice Eric Ansah Ankomah who is currently at the Tamale High Court and a known NPP person so there is no other evidence you will need to show that the judiciary has been heavily politicised.”
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