NPP Bolted From EOCO With Their Tails Between Their Legs Like Cowards

A legal practitioner and member of the NDC�s Communication Team, Lawyer David Annan, has labeled members of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) a bunch of cowards for doing a quick turn-around in embracing the Interim Report presented by the Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO). To him, it is reprehensible and totally unbecoming of the NPP who went prancing around in court seeking an order to restrain the EOCO from proceeding with investigations into the controversial GH�51 million paid to Alfred Agbesi Woyome, to now parade the report about and quote from it for purposes of political expediency. Lawyer Annan wondered why NPP members are feeling vindicated by the EOCO�s report when they were the very people who �discouraged, rejected, nullified and negated� the idea of EOCO as a means for investigations. It would be recalled that in the wake of the controversial GH�58 million judgment debt money paid to NDC stalwart Alfred Woyome, President John Evans Atta Mills directed the EOCO to investigate circumstances that led to the payment as well as how the nation came to incur similar judgment debts. Leading members of the NPP who were invited by the investigative body vowed not to appear before the EOCO. The party stated categorically that none of their members will co-operate and even warned its members not to respond to any invitation from the EOCO. NPP Chairman, Jake Obetsebi Lamptey issued a statement indicating that the NPP would rather lean towards the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament investigating the issue than the EOCO. This position taken by the NPP, according to Mr Obetsebi Lamptey, was based on the alleged complicity of President Mills in the GH�54 million Woyome scandal as well as the insistence to use EOCO in getting to the bottom of the issue, despite public calls for a better approach. Former President John Agyekum Kufuor also waded into the fray when he openly endorsed the decision by some former functionaries of his administration not to appear before the EOCO. He wondered how the former ministers who had serious issues with the role of the Attorney-General (A-Gs) Office in the matter could submit themselves to a probe by an institution under the ambit of the A-G's Office. �The Attorney-General's Office itself is suspect; EOCO reports to that office. So if you want me to answer openly and sincerely, that's not the place to take me,� he pointed out. At the height of the whole enchilada, NDC linchpins called on EOCO to arrest any NPP member who refused to co-operate with them and a group of Concerned NDC members also demonstrated to press home the need to haul any NPP activist named in the scandal before the state investigative body. But speaking on Joy FM�s �News File� programme, David Annan, who is also part of the legal team of Alfred Agbesi Woyome, described the NPP�s action as "disgusting". �It is reprehensible, disgusting, totally unbecoming of members of the NPP today, after having run away with their tails between their legs like cowards from EOCO to seek to use the report which they themselves claim has no basis in law�They have encapsulated in their writ, statements and averments that because EOCO is inferior body acting under the supervision of the Attorney General, and because it is the same Attorney General who would act upon the report, it is as if one and the same person are conducting the investigations,� he said.