NPP, NDC differ over events in Bimbilla
More fall victim to deceased AIDS patient
Composers file suit against use of Gamugram
Accra (Greater Accra) 16 March 2002 - A retired Supreme Court Judge, Mr Justice G.E.K. Aikins has advised the government to appoint more than one judge to the Supreme Court in view of its decision to apply for a review of the decision of the court which declared the Fast Track Court unconstitutional.
This, he said, would ensure that the Chief Justice’s hands are not tied in empanelling the court for the review. Mr Justice Aikins, a former Attorney General, gave the advice at a well-attended symposium organised by the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) on the recent ruling of the Supreme Court on the unconstitutionality of the Fast Track High Court.
He said there is the need for the government to appoint two or three justices instead of one to the Supreme Court so that the Chief Justice could have more room to decide which of the justices should be selected to sit on the review. He said if the government appoints only one justice to the Supreme Court as appears to be the case now, the Chief Justice would have very limited option in exercising his prerogative to empanel the justices of the Supreme Court to sit on the review.
“If we are not careful, an impression would be created that an agent is controlling the Chief Justice,” Mr Justice Aikins said. He said there is the tendency for the justices who sat on the case brought to the Supreme Court by Mr Tsatsu Tsikata, which declared the Fast Track Court unconstitutional to maintain their positions in the review and, therefore, there is the possibility that the party that is dissatisfied with the ruling may not have a fair review.
Mr Justice Aikins said there is the need for the justices of the superior courts of judicature to be careful so that the decisions of the court are not politicised to the extent that they become detrimental to the state. He said, in his opinion, the establishment of the Fast Track High Court is not a constitutional issue at all, but purely an administrative one. He added that it is the prerogative of the Chief Justice to create divisions of the high court as stipulated by Article 139 section 3 of the 1992 Constitution.
It is in his view that there is no need for the Fast Track High Court to be specified in the Constitution to make it constitutional or otherwise. Mr Justice Aikins said the Fast Track Court was established to facilitate the administration of justice in the country.
Nana Asante Bediatuo, a legal practitioner, said the issue, which was brought before the Supreme Court by Mr Tsikata was purely an administrative matter and not a constitutional issue. He said the justices of the Supreme Court normally speak with one voice on administrative matters.
Mr Yaw Owusu Addo, Vice-President of the Ghana Journalists Association and Director of Radio, GBC, said the ruling of the Supreme Court has thrown the media into disarray and stressed the need for journalists to understand the implications of the ruling for them to discuss the issues more dispassionately. Last February, the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling, declared that the Fast Track High Court was unconstitutional. - Daily Graphic
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Bimbilla (Northern Region) 16 March 2002 - The NDC and the NPP have differed strongly over the result of Thursday’s by-election in Bimbilla. While the NDC claims the NPP used its incumbency and material incentives to get people to vote for its candidate, the NPP said the party’s victory was a sweet one won out of hard work.
Speaking after his party had lost the election by a margin of about 5,000 votes, the NDC General Secretary, Alhaji Huudu Yahaya, said the action of the NPP does not augur well for the country’s democracy. He said although the party has accepted defeat, there were still issues to be sorted out. Alhaji Yahaya said his party will immediately study the results and events prior to the election after which it will come out with its position.
The NPP General Secretary, Mr Dan Botwe, said the party won through the commitment of the rank and file of the party’s membership. He said the party’s strategy for the election was very effective, stressing, “we considered ourselves underdogs and, therefore, worked very hard.”
Mr Botwe described the election as a study session through which the party is going to strengthen its organisational strategy for the next election. He was confident that his party will perform better in the Northern Region in the 2004 election and win at least 18 out of the 23 seats. The party won only three seats there in the last elections. He said the NDC accusation was surprising as the NPP was not desperate for the seat.
The General Secretary of the PNC, Mr Gabriel Pwamang, described the election as free and fair but said events leading to the polls created a lot of problems, particularly for his party. He referred to the defection of Mr Nitiwul to the NPP and said: “We have been treated unfairly because we groomed Nitiwul for the election.” He said the lessons learnt from the elections were useful. – Daily Graphic
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More fall victim to deceased AIDS patient
Accra (Greater Accra) 16 March 2002 - Fresh investigations by the ‘Times’ have it that Atswei Pat, the 28-year-old AIDS victim, who minutes before her death disclosed that she had infected 39 men with the virus, had infected more people with the virus at Chorkor, a suburb of Accra.
This was made known by a close friend of the deceased’s aunt with whom she stayed at Chorkor. Pat, according to the informant had about 14 boyfriends during her short stay with the aunt. That, she said, was because of Atswei’s profession as a sex worker in the area during her stay. She disclosed that currently, one of Atswei’s sex worker friends is seriously ill and is suspected to be carrying the AIDS virus
It is believed that the number of people Atswei infected with the disease far exceeds the 39 people disclosed at Teshie. The source disclosed that, when the news about Atswei’s death broke out, fear gripped most of her numerous lovers at Chorkor.
‘Times’ investigations showed that, four of Atswei Pat’s former lovers have left the Teshie township to avoid being stigmatised.
Another victim, the paper spoke to had taken to serious drinking. He readily admitted in tears that, he had had several sexual relations with Atswei on very cheap terms and recalled fighting with three boys over Atswei at a ‘gbonyo party’ (funeral service party) at Teshie.
At Chorkor, a few of Atswei’s lovers mostly fishermen, identified to the ‘Times’, could not be traced. In the latter part of her life, Atswei was said to have lived in Abidjan with her first husband before returning home to live with her aunt.
It is recalled that about a month ago Atswei Pat, minutes before her death, told members of her family that she had infected about 39 men with the AIDS virus. The disclosure came after all efforts to heal her of the suspected spiritual sickness proved futile. When the ‘Times’ broke the story, the whole Teshie township went almost ‘dead’ with some of the known boyfriends of Atswei, wearing pale faces and robbed of their happiness. - The Ghanaian Times.
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Ghana ranked drugs transit point
Accra (Greater Accra) 18 March 2002 - The International Narcotic Control Bard’s (INCB) Report of the year 2001 cites Ghana as a major transit point of heroin and cocaine. The report portrays a negative picture of the country before the international community, which hitherto, viewed Ghana as one of the most respected countries in the world.
Launching the report at a ceremony in Accra on Friday, the World Health Organsation (WHO) Representative in Ghana, Dr Melville George, said that globalisation and the new communication technologies could be blamed for changing the way people live and its inherent dangers, which some individuals undermined for their illicit gains.
“More than ever before, drug traffickers have become criminals without borders and their activities spread across several jurisdiction. They use the internet to commit crimes and new technologies to agree on illicit drug sales and purchase onlines,” he said. Dr George said that phone cloning enabled drug traffickers to carry out their businesses undetected for several years, adding, “the new technologies has also made crimes easier to commit.”
“Prospective drug chemists and drug traffickers no longer need special contacts or resources; they can find such much needed information on the internet search engines which permit them to locate supply sources of which the user would otherwise have been ignorant,” he said. Dr George said, INCB recommends to government to establish specialised interagency high-technology drug units to provide critical infrastructure to protect their information and intelligence database from criminals.
The INCB, he said, was particularly concerned that young people were at risk from drug dealers in cyberspace using the internet since they would be drawn into drug related crimes by misinformation, propaganda or brainwash on the part of unseen individuals whose aim is to profit from a larger drug abusing population. He said it had been proven that cannabis was stronger and more destructive to the human body than tobacco and alcohol because of its diverse long-term effects.
The Chief Director of the Interior, Mr Edwin Barnes, said, narcotics were a menace to society and called for a collaborated effort to fight them in the country. He said it was a shame for Ghana to be the transit point of heroin and cocaine as indicated in the report. The report, he noted, implied that a lot should be done by putting up Narcotic Board offices in the regions to check the trafficking of the drugs to the other countries. He hoped that this year’s report would not indicate that Ghana continued to be a transit point for drugs but rather portray her as a country with zero-tolerance for drug trafficking - The Ghanaian Times
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Accra (Greater Accra) 16 March 2002 - The Accra Psychiatric Hospital, the nation’s leading mental health facility has in the past year recorded as many as 590 drug related cases. This showed an increase over the 525 cases recorded in the previous year. The ages of the patients ranged from 16 to 60 years.
A bio-statistician at the hospital, Mr Samuel Ashrifie, told The Mirror in an interview that though statistics for the first quarter of this year is not ready, there is an indication that more people are using substances that are harmful to their mental health.
Drugs commonly abused include cannabis, popularly known as “wee”, cocaine, heroine, pethidine, alcohol and tobacco. Whereas some drug addicts use one substance over a period of time, others abuse a combination of two or more. According to Mr Ashrifie, out of the 525 patients admitted in the year 2000, 502 were males while 23 being females. The gender distribution for last year was not readily available.
He said the unemployed constitute the majority of cases, numbering 371 out of the 2000 figure of 525. Others were 24 civil servants, 48 artisans, 20 traders, three fishermen, four law enforcement agents and nine students. The rest included 12 labourers, 26 farmers, one pensioner, and one physician.
Last year, out of the 590 drug-related mental patients who reported at the hospital, 45 were students as against the nine recorded in 2000. The number of artisans also shot up from 48 to 71. The trend was the same for traders who presented 34 cases, 14 more than the previous year. There was however, a drop in the number of cases involving civil servants, farmers, law enforcement agents and the unemployed in the year 2001.
Mr Ashrifie said the Accra hospital, which was built to house about 500 patients now accommodates more than twice the number and that is affecting work at the hospital. The hospital has 24 wards-15 for males and 9 for females. He said total admissions for the year 2000 was 3,670. This increased to 3,851 in 2001.
The bio-statistician mentioned the top ten psychiatric cases presented at the Accra Psychiatric Hospital as schizophrenia, depression, acute organic psychosis, substance abuse, schizo affected disorders and undifferentiated psychosis. Others are bipolar affective disorder, epilepsy, alcoholism and dementia, which usually affect very old people. He said the drug problem is far from being solved and parents should monitor their wards closely to keep them off drugs.
“Unfortunately some young students in the junior secondary schools are on drugs, probably due to peer pressure and everything must be done for them to appreciate the harmful affects of their habits”, he said. He pointed out that the problem of drug abuse cuts across the entire society and expressed regret that some elderly people who should help fight the menace have themselves been caught up in the web. – The Mirror
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Accra (Greater Accra) 16 March 2002 - The Ghanaian Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (GHASCAP) has filed a suit at an Accra High Court against Gamugram Trust Limited and the Copyright Administrator, Mr Bernard Bosumprah, otherwise known as Nana Bosumprah.
In a statement of claim, GHASCAP noted that Gamugram Trust Ltd. has acquired several millions of adhesive labels called Gamugram to be sold to persons in the music industry to be fixed on all phonogram records produced in the country or imported.
According to GHASCAP, the defendants (Gamugram Trust and the Copyright Administrator) have for this purpose been advertising in both the print and electronic media, that the use of the Gamugram label is an anti-piracy device and a mark of authentication of original works.
The statement of claim further noted that the non-use or the absence of the Gamugram label on any musical work is indicative of piracy, and the adverts imply that the use of the Gamugram is mandatory and failure or refusal to use the Gamugram label is a criminal offence of piracy, punishable by a term of imprisonment.
According to GHASCAP, Gamugram Trust Ltd. as a private company, has no legal right, authority or status to compel music owners, under the pain of punishment, to use Gamugram labels for which plaintiff is challenging the capacity of the defendant to so compel.
GHASCAP further stated that the Copyright Administrator has permitted the use of public premises and resources for the promotion of the Gamugram Trust, and that such permitted use of public/official premises and resources has created the impression of official backing.
“The plaintiff states that the role of the director of the first defendant’s company who also appears in the adverts and his role as acting chairman of the official body (COSGA) statutorily mandated to administer adhesive labels, is creating a false impression of official sanction of the use of Gamugram labels,” the statement said. “The dual roles as director of first defendant (Gamugram) and acting chairman of COSGA, give rise to a conflict of interest situation.”
Far from resting their case, GHASCAP also contends that the defendants do not have the consent of GHASCAP to use the Gamugram Trust Ltd. product, and cannot compel GHASCAP to do so against the will of its members.
The statement was emphatic on the point that the advert on television and radio creates a false impression that the Gamugram label is mandatory and coming from an “appropriate body or person”, and that this false impression is scaring away the public from patronising musical works of GHASCAP members; and also duplicating plants or machines are refusing to accept works from GHASCAP members.
The statement went on to say that the plaintiff shall contend that the advert is so framed or worded as to cause confusion in the minds of the public and the continued running of the advert would prejudice the plaintiff’s works and constitute unfair competition, since plaintiff’s works are portrayed as pirated works which should be executed from sale by the public.
The statement of claim also cited “particulars of fraud” one of which is: “failure to disclose the source of financing of the Gamugram labels as coming from private sources.” The leadership of GHASCAP comprise Carlos Sakyi, Charles Amoah, Khodjo Aquai and Gilbert Amar alias Chikinchee and others. – The Spectator
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