Mensah Thompson of ASEPA writes...

I have seen the Press Release from the office of the President on the trending Airbus bribery Scandal and I must say that the release is Pregnant with Political malice.

First of all, You have been in government for three good years, you have been privy to all the paper works on the purchase of the military aircrafts during your predecessor's regime, and there have been no cause for concern on the purchase of those aircrafts.
As we speak, you are still in possession of the paper works and you still haven't noticed any procurement infractions that would suggest that perhaps there were some under dealings in that transaction for which you have constituted an investigation prior to this matter.

So on what basis, are you pointing fingers?
On the basis on Airbus' accounts alone?
Then the Government must also admit its failure for not noticing those so called procurement infractions well over three years it has been in power and has been in possession of those aircrafts and the accompanying paperwork.
What this means is that without the admission of Airbus, our government had absolutely no means of determining or verifying whether a contract was obtained through compromising means or not and the people of Ghana would have never known about this Airbus issue at all .(now that's worrying)
So the big question is "How many *Airbuses* are currently in business with the Government of Ghana?"
How many Multinational companies have obtained contracts in Ghana through the Airbus means?

I did not see any clear demonstration of that concern in government's press statement except a subtle attempt to feed into the already vain narrative created in the media space since the matter broke and that is dangerous.

For now we must decide as a Country what we want out of this matter, to genuinely get to the bottom of this matter and put systems in place to hold people accountable and prevent future occurrences or we want to score cheap Political points out of it because it genuinely makes our opponents unpopular.
If the latter is what we want then we should continue on this trajectory of finger pointing but if it's the former which to us at ASEPA is the most viable option then we must hold our horses and allow the systems to work!

Pointing fingers now will not only prejudice any investigations that would happen, it would also narrow the scope those investigations which eventually would not allow us to get to the bottom of the matter(especially identifying those involved)

Subsequent we must also not lose sight of the fact that any investigation is to verify the supposed payment of a bribe of €5Million and who the recipients of those bribes were and that should guide the State on how much energy and resources it puts into this whole exercise so that we don't make a mountain out of a mole and loose gold whiles chasing stones!

Mensah Thompson
Executive Director, ASEPA
0542120628