The Attorney General and Minister for Justice, Dr. Benjamin Kumbour, has defended boycotting the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) sitting on Tuesday and has urged its chairman, Albert Kan-Dapaah to seek proper legal advice.
The PAC chairman has threatened to subpoena the principal legal advisor of the government after failing to turn up at the committee�s sitting on Tuesday over a judgment debt payment to business man, Alfred Woyome.
In an exclusive interview with Citi News, Dr. Kumbour maintained his actions were inspired by a Constitutional provision which the PAC Chairman has failed to recognise.
�The intention the PAC chairman sought to create was that Parliament was autonomous and I wasn�t respecting Parliament,� he said. �I�ve been a Member of Parliament for eight years and I have a lot of respect for Parliament. We happen to find ourselves in a type of legal and constitutional situation that he [does not understand].�
Dr. Kumbour advised Mr. Kan-Dapaah saying, �to be fair to him as a non lawyer, he needs to get a lawyer to advise him properly on what exactly he is doing. You don�t pick one isolated Article of the Constitution and use that as a basis of a legal opinion. When you pick just one Article of the 1992 Constitution and use that as the basis for his argument, he is making a major mistake.�
He mentioned that the �Constitution has to be read as a whole. Is he aware that it is the same 1992 Constitution that requires that you do not get involved in prejudicial acts in which the cases are pending in court.�
The Attorney General also accused the PAC chairman of personalising the Attorney General�s Department.
�When you personalise an institution, then you are making a lot of major mistakes. The Attorney General is a constitutional office, it is not a Ben Kumbour office and so he should be talking more about the office and not Ben Kumbour. He doesn�t even have the information about the current circumstances of the Attorney General�s Department,� he said.