ghananlpcommunity/ghana-gov-speeches-sentences huggingface dataset:
I am of the fervent hope that the boards of the 2 institutions which are by law, charged with responsibility for managing the Funds, will come up with innovative means of ensuring that sufficient contributions and donations are made to the Funds, to end the perennial lack of funds syndrome which has always plagued these two very important institutions of the state.
The dreadful office accommodation challenge of the Ministry of Justice was legendary.
The situation was so critical that some state attorneys were utilising shipping containers as their offices when I assumed office.
Work on a 12 - storey building, comprising 10 levels above ground and a two-tier underground car park to accommodate the Ministry of Justice, which incidentally, the current President commenced in 2001, when he was the Attorney-General, had stalled over the years, with the state of works was officially recorded as only 36% complete by June, 2021, when I visited the site with His Excellency the President.
Through the necessary commitment of resources and diligent supervision, I am happy to state that by the Grace of God, the 12-storey edifice named “the Law House” -new Head Office of the Office of the Attorney-General and Ministry of Justice, has been completed and was duly commissioned on 10 th June, 2024.
I have indeed moved into the new building.
THE FUTURE OF THE OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL AND MINISTRY OF JUSTICE Mr.
President, I dream of a modern public legal service for our nation fully equipped to discharge its onerous constitutional and statutory duties to the Republic of Ghana.
Towards realising this dream, I am of the fervent hope that, soon, each of the regional capitals of the country from which the Attorney-General operates will boast of its law house.
I have commenced discussions in this regard with the World Bank towards the possibility of a funding of this project, but definitely, this can only be realised in the next term of the NPP Government.
The expansion of the Ghanaian economy with its attendant myriad of needs calls for an enhanced public legal service to address the complexity of emerging challenges.
The number of state attorneys presently, about 300, is woefully inadequate.
This partly accounts for the inordinate delays in the delivery of legal opinions, defence of claims against the state and prosecution of crime.
We need about 1,500 state attorneys for a proper discharge of the functions of the Attorney-General under Article 88 of the Constitution.
We need to embark on a massive recruitment exercise of lawyers for the public service in order to satisfy the demands of the state.
In 2021/2022, the capacity of the Office was augmented with the recruitment of about 60 attorneys.
Processes are currently underway to employ a further 70 fresh attorneys with interviews scheduled for the latter part of the month.
This will bring the number of attorneys recruited over the past three years to 130.
I envisage that every ministry, department, agency or district assembly ought to be serviced by at least one state attorney.
The situation whereby some ministries, department, agencies or metropolitan, municipal and district assembly employ their own lawyers does not augur well for proper harmony and synchronisation of government’s legal work.
Thus, my vision is that in the near future, to ensure cohesion in the public service and avoid an uncoordinated approach which leads to inefficiencies, all lawyers working for each of these public institutions ought to be employed by the Office of the Attorney-General.
In the meantime, pending the firm institution of such a policy, I have planned a conference of all lawyers working in the public service, whether they are state attorneys or not, for some time in October.
The conference, organised with the support of Prof Kofi Abotsi of UPSA School of Law, will provide a platform for knowledge sharing and refresher engagement with the ultimate objective of building the capacity of lawyers working for the state in various agencies and departments in the areas of negotiation, structuring, drafting and review of government contracts, contemporary issues in international arbitration and ensuring improved inter-agency collaboration.
To build that desired world-class legal service for Ghana, there is a pressing need for lawyers generally, and particularly those in the public service, to constantly add value to themselves.
It was with this motive that a partnership between Georgetown University, Washington DC, and the Government of Ghana represented by the Attorney-General executed in September, 2021 seeks to ensure that each year, five lawyers (from both the public and private sectors) would benefit from a post-graduate legal education sponsored by a scholarship jointly funded by Georgetown University and the Scholarship Secretariat of Ghana.
Indeed, the first batch of five lawyers who profited from this arrangement successfully completed their studies in May, 2023.
I must acknowledge the hiccup that arrangement has suffered in view of funding difficulties.
I will explore means of boosting same.
In addition to this, my ministry assists state attorneys to regularly pursue various academic courses relevant to their roles and sponsored by some state institutions, in prestigious universities abroad, including the so-called Ivy League institutions.
AREAS OF THE GHANAIAN LEGAL SYSTEM REQUIRING URGENT REFORM We must perceive law as a tool for promoting good governance and creating a Ghanaian business environment characterized by transparency, certainty and fairness and in which the interests of the nation are secured.
For this matter, there are many areas of our legal system that require the intervention of the State to introduce reform to ensure that the quest for private sector development and foreign investment does not have the vicious result of impoverishing the State.
There is also the need to ensure that crime or wrongdoing does not go unpunished, particularly for the privileged in society.
In this regard, I have had the kind cooperation of the President of the Republic and his Cabinet as well as the Parliament of Ghana, in introducing some far-reaching reforms.
A little over a month ago, the Ghana Arbitration Centre, a requirement of the Alternative Dispute Resolution Act, 2010 ( Act 798 ), which had been outstanding since 2010, was set up.
The establishment of the ADR Centre presents a viable opportunity for multi-billion dollar commercial disputes and cases involving the use of the nation’s natural resources to be resolved in Ghana.
It will also enable members of the Ghana Bar Association, to sharpen their skills in the resolution of such disputes.
Taking account of Ghana’s strong democratic credentials, the ADR Centre should propel Ghana into an arbitration hub in Africa, particularly West Africa.
Further reform of the arbitration environment in Ghana is needed.
In this regard, I have the firm instructions of the President to take steps to ensure that most international arbitrations involving Ghana take place right here in Ghana and are regulated by Ghanaian law.
Thus, I will present to Cabinet in the next few days, as part of the processes for the passage into law, an amendment to the State (Property and Contracts) Act, 1960 (CA 4) , to mandate all contracts involving the State and its agencies as parties, to not only stipulate Ghana law as the governing law but also to have Ghana as the seat of arbitration and with the ADR Centre in Accra being the venue for the arbitration.
With this amendment, the practice whereby the State and Ghanaian lawyers travel to various jurisdictions – Paris, New York, London, Singapore, etc.
for the conduct of arbitration involving the Government of Ghana and where arbitral awards are enforced all over the world at enormous cost to the State will cease and will be consigned to history.
An important piece of legislation introduced recently which seeks to reduce unnecessary cost to the taxpayer is the Contracts (Amendment) Act, 2023 (Act 1114 ) , by which public officers are prohibited from entering into a contract on behalf of the State in which the rate of interest is stipulated as compound interest.
By Act 1114, it is expected that contracts with high rates of interest especially compound interest which result in huge judgment debt and financial loss to the State, like what occurred in the NDK Financial Services Limited v. The Attorney-General & 2 Others case a few years ago, will be avoided.
The criminal landscape of our country also witnessed some reform by an effort to ease congestion in the courts and prisons through the passage of the Criminal and Other Offences (Procedure) (Amendment) Act, 2022 (Act 1079) which formally introduced plea bargaining into the criminal jurisprudence of the country.
Without a doubt, the most far-reaching reform of criminal law practice in this country will be achieved when the law that will enhance the speed of adjudication of criminal cases and address the problems associated with the jury system is enacted.
I therefore call on Parliament, to as a matter of urgency, pass the Criminal and Other Offences (Procedure) (Amendment) Bill sponsored by the Office of the Attorney-General and Ministry of Justice and approved by Cabinet, which I laid in Parliament on 14 th March, 2024.
Our criminal practice continues to be steeped in the very old and traditional ways of doing things known to the common law jurisdiction, even where the masters of the tradition have long reformed.
For instance, in Britain and the United States, interlocutory appeals in criminal practice are significantly controlled and virtually eliminated.
Further, not every verdict in every criminal trial is appealable all the way to the highest court.
Whilst mindful of the constitutional imperatives in our legal system, the Bill seeks to place due restrictions on interlocutory appeals by postponing the filing of same to only after a determination by the trial court of a submission of no case, scrapping of trials on indictment except where the offence is punishable by death or life imprisonment, providing for examination of witnesses by video conferencing, adoption of proceedings in criminal matters, day-to-day trial of all criminal cases except where same is impracticable and reform of the jury system to reduce the list of exemptions from jury service, the composition of the jury (by addition of alternate jurors), etc.
My Office is also in the process of preparing a new Legal Profession Bill as part of measures to comprehensively, and in a more sustainable way, address among other things, issues relating to access to legal education, rules on call to the Bar and regulation of professional conduct.
I am however happy to note that in the past four years, we have recorded the highest admission of persons to study law and the biggest call of persons to the Bar in the nation’s history.
In all, over 3,000 persons have been called to the Bar since 2021.
In 2022 alone, over one thousand ( 1000 ) lawyers were called to the Bar, the highest in the country’s history at that time.
In 2023, this record was broken with the admission of 1,286 lawyers at both the Main Call and Mini Call ceremonies.
I, as Attorney-General in 2021, personally ensured the admission of some 499 students into the Ghana School of Law by presenting a petition to the General Legal Council, a situation for which the Bar President still holds a grudge against me.
It is correct to say that for many of the junior lawyers, your presence in this room has been made possible by the positive decisions to broaden access to the legal profession by the Akufo-Addo administration.
We believe in broadening access to legal education whilst preserving standards and quality, cherished values without which the legal profession will lose its relevance to society.
With these giant strides, I am confident that the future of the legal profession is bigger, brighter and better.
FREE AND FAIR ELECTIONS AND THE ROLE OF IMPORTANT INSTITUTIONS OF STATE INCLUDING THE JUDICIARY AND LAWYERS Mr.
President, the lofty ideas expressed today about the creation of a sound business environment and using law as an instrument for change in the public sector will not materialise without a sustenance of the democratic order in which we live.
Fundamental to democracy and preservation of the rule of law is the organisation of free and fair elections.
The centrality of elections to democracy, and by necessary implication, the rule of law, implies that irrespective of the circumstance in which Ghana finds itself, the Electoral Commission must live up to its constitutional mandate of providing the mechanism for the citizenry to express themselves through the conduct of credible and fair elections.
The indispensability of democracy as a tool for good governance has been expressed many times in history.
Indeed, in the words of the acclaimed British statesman, Sir Winston Churchill, in his address to the UK Parliament in November 1947: “ No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise.
Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time. ”
National elections, represent a pre-eminent and I will say, undeniable opportunity, for the electorate of every country to exercise real power over how they are governed and by whom.
It is the means by which the State will be preserved.
The distinguished son of Ghana, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan (may his soul rest in peace), in a speech at the CDD Kronti ne Akwamu Lecture in June 2016, had this to say about the strength of Ghanaian democracy: “ Ghana has thrived under democracy since it was reintroduced [under the Fourth Republic], and our society, as well as our economy, has thrived as a result.
Yes, our country has its problems, but all countries have problems. ”
The credibility of Ghanaian democracy and the conduct of elections in this country can clearly not be denied by any objective on-looker.
We must resist the vain efforts of naysayers who constantly sow seeds of doubt about the credibility of Ghanaian elections.
The Electoral Commission of Ghana has had a sound appreciation of the sacred constitutional responsibility it bears to the people of Ghana since 1992.
Remarkably, it remained unshaken in its quest even in the teeth of COVID-19, and rose to the occasion in 2020 in delivering an internationally affirmed free, fair, and perhaps, the most transparent elections since the inception of the Constitution in 1992.
It bears emphasising that an election is a process.
Among other things, it includes the demarcation of boundaries, registration of eligible voters, the creation of voters’ register, printing of ballot papers, distribution of ballot papers to voting centres, supervision of voting, the casting of votes, counting and processing of the votes, the declaration of the winner or winners, etc.
So far, I have not noticed anything untoward about the Electoral Commission’s handling of the process.
Even though Ghana has come far in consolidating democracy as her way of life and we can almost consider free and fair elections in this country as a matter of course, we cannot take that progress for granted.
For this reason, we continue to talk about these things as a way of entrenching those undoubted values we hold dear and warding off potential wreckers of the peace of the nation.
We must steadfastly resist the dishonourable deeds of those who without cause, sow seeds of doubt in the ability of the Electoral Commission to organise a credible election.
We must deplore, jettison and without any reservation, reject rhetoric which fans the flames of conflict.
Freedom is not free, and it is up to us – here and now – to ensure that the gains and triumphs of the past remain intact for generations of Ghanaians unborn.
We have come a long way in our struggle to build a Ghanaian society founded on the ideals in the Preamble to the Constitution, 1992.
However, we still have a long way to go.
Respectfully, a discussion of these matters without an acknowledgment of the role of the law will be incomplete.
The political architecture of the current Republic of Ghana is indeed a creation of the law.
Lawyers therefore have a massive role to play in sustaining democracy in Ghana.
Unsurprisingly, the leadership of the various political parties is dominated by lawyers.
We have a duty to ensure the proper education of the entire citizenry on regulations affecting the conduct of the elections, the duties of the citizen, and of course, dispelling misconceptions about the actions of the Electoral Commission, rather than being agents for the propagation of falsehood.
For lawyers, who regularly appear as guests on media programmes and take to social media to run commentary, I will repeat an admonition I gave at the Bench, Bar, Faculty Lecture in October 2022, that the spread of false information by lawyers and disregard for the cherished values of the legal profession, apart from being disreputable, poses a far greater threat to cohesion in society, if it comes from lawyers.
In social media interactions, lawyers ought to be mindful of the requirements of the profession in so far as ethics is concerned.
Technology did not eradicate ethics.
Neither did it render the need for ethical compliance any less important or necessary.
The time-honoured requirements to be truthful and not to unjustifiably assail the integrity of others, disparage the character of people and abuse the rights of others ought to be strictly adhered to by lawyers.
Lawyers have no business promoting election-related violence.
In talking about the place of law in the conduct of a free and fair election, we cannot forget that the work of the Judiciary sits at the very heart of our society and our democracy.
Judges are often called upon to make decisions on some of the most difficult questions arising from the conduct of elections.
However, it is judges, who with their wisdom derived from long experience, training and discipline, will make such decisions in furtherance of the principle that justice should be done.
We therefore have a duty to support the Judiciary and not to denigrate that important institution.
Ghana has gained a reputation worldwide for its justice system.
Central to that reputation is the independence, integrity of the Judiciary and the quality of judgments emanating from our courts, with decisions sometimes cited in courts in other jurisdictions.
I can confidently say that I have been an Attorney-General in whose tenure the Judiciary has demonstrated complete independence and strength through decisions it gives in cases involving the State.
In both civil and criminal jurisdictions, my Office has had many victories, but we have also experienced some adverse decisions.
Examples are the decisions of the Supreme Court in Ghana Centre for Democratic Development & 8 others vrs.
The Attorney-General (the removal of former Auditor-General, Mr.
Dormelovo from office), Appiagyei Atuah vrs.
The Attorney-General (the Imposition of Restrictions in Covid-19 case) and Ezuame Mannan vrs.
the Attorney-General and the Speaker of Parliament (the Narcotics Control Commission Law case).
In a few situations where I consider the decision patently wrong and perverse to our legal system, I have resorted to processes for a correction of same through review or an appellate procedure.
Judges must also understand that they are not enemies of the people, or indeed of the government.
The role of a judge is not only to restrain abuse of power but also uphold the work of government when it acts within its powers or is on the right path.
Our Judiciary must embrace the concept of open justice by publishing and explaining decisions and by allowing access to the courts – in person and through broadcasts.
It is for this reason that I am proud to state that as Attorney-General, I have led in this quest of ensuring open justice in Ghana as a way of dispelling misconceptions, misinterpretations and misrepresentations of court decisions by making formal applications to the Chief Justice for live broadcast of particular court proceedings of overwhelming public interest.
In point of fact, the first time there was live broadcast of proceedings in court, in a case other than a presidential election petition, was this year pursuant to my application, and it happened with the kind cooperation of Chief Justice Torkonoo.
It is worthy to note that, the United States Supreme Court does not allow complete live telecast of proceedings.
We must therefore appreciate our progress in this regard.
As I resume my seat, I must emphasise the need for a strong bar as a partner for nation building.
A fragmented bar is not in the interests of the Bar itself.
Neither is it for society.
We must have one strong Bar Association.
We must make the processes for a physical participation of all lawyers in the annual conference flexible.
I am aware that some lawyers attempted to register a week or two ago but were not permitted to do so.
They thus cannot vote or make their voices heard in important decisions.
This situation cannot be right.
We are still a small family.
Our processes must be such as will encourage participation of all.
Else, a time will come when lawyers will find it cumbersome or tedious attending the Bar Conference and participating in important decisions.
I do not think the days when lawyers could show up on the morning of conference, register and be allowed to participate in the conference presented security risks.
Let us find a way to change.
I am aware that this year is an election year.
May I take this opportunity to wish the various candidates the very best.
May the best candidates win.
I am grateful for the opportunity.
GODFRED YEBOAH DAME ATTORNEY-GENERAL AND MINISTER FOR JUSTICE 09/09/2024
Acceptance speech by Governor of Bank of Ghana, Dr Ernest Addison Members of the Central Banking Team, Fellow Award Recipients, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen.
The successful execution of our Monetary Policy and the Financial sector reforms and subsequent turnaround in the economy, which this Award duly recognises, has been due to the hard work of the whole Bank of Ghana team comprising Management, the Board and staff.
Tight monetary policy stance helped reduced inflation significantly and maintained in single digits and well within the Banks target range, and a well anchored exchange rate stability.
We also successfully concluded three years of banking sector reforms, which saw an increase in the minimum capital requirements, clean-up of the financial sector by revoking licences of weak and insolvent institutions, and a revamp of the regulatory framework to stabilise and strengthen the sector.
Our banks are now well capitalised, liquid, solvent, and resilient to liquidity and credit risk and well positioned to support Ghana’s economic growth agenda.
I am hopeful that we will continue on this path and consolidate the far-reaching gains of macroeconomic and financial stability in Ghana.
FRIDAY, 14th AUGUST, 2020 ACCRA Salutations Honourable Minister for Defence Excellencies, Members of the Diplomatic Corps The Chief of the Defence Staff Service Chiefs The Commandant Generals Senior Officers The Rector, Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration Members of the Academia Members of Staff of the College The Rank and File of the Ghana Armed Forces Graduands Our Friends from the Media Ladies and Gentlemen It is with great honour and delight that I address this impressive gathering this morning.
I say so to acknowledge the resilience shown by the Military Hierarchy and the Staff College Control Board under the leadership of Honourable Dominic Nitiwul, the Minister for Defence.
I want to thank the High Command and the Control Board for the invitation and also for staying the course of duty even in the midst of the COVID-19 scourge that has engulfed the world, even ordering our priorities and our usual social interactions.
Conspicuously missing, and I'm sure I am not the only one to notice, and for very good reasons, is the usual pomp and pageantry associated with such an occasion.
Sadly too, are the families of the graduates who are not here to share in this glorious moment with their loved ones.
All the same, I welcome all of us here to what I will call a historic event.