AG calls for amendment to Presidential Transition Act

“We speak about assets being taken and run away with. It behoves those who hold those properties to deal with them rightly. We have enough laws and regulations we should rely on,” she said.“It says before you leave office, you hand over all government property in your possession. When I took office as the Deputy Attorney General, moving to live in an official bungalow before I took possession of it, we took an inventory, we both signed it, and they took their copy and I kept my copy.”

On the matter of last-minute contracts, she acknowledged that an outgoing government had the power to continue to govern until its final day office.

“But when we apply the law, you do not interpret it to the point of absurdity. You take the totality of the law into account. The law that empowers that you rule to the last day also has an aspect running from it to the Transition Act,” Madam Akuffo stated.

The Presidential Transition Act, 2012 (Act 845) was enacted to establish arrangements for the political transfer of administration from an out-going democratically elected President and to provide for related matters.

Parliament passed a new amendment of Presidential Transition Bill in October 2016 and under the new amendment of the Presidential Transition Act 2012, the outgoing President would be required to vacate the official bungalows one month before swearing-in of a new President on January 7.