Its commissioner Francis Emile Short recently returned to Ghana after serving as a temporary Judge with the International Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania for close to five years.  

 

Commissioner short, on his return spoke to host of Citi FM’s Breakfast Show Moro Awudu at the studios of Citi 97.3 fm.

 

He spoke on a variety of issues, ranging from his personal life, human rights situation in Ghana, and operations of CHRAJ amongst others.

 

Below is a transcript of the interview

 

 

Moro: Welcome back home Mr. Emile Short.

 

Emile Short(E.S): Thank you very much. I feel great coming back home. There is no place like home.

 

Moro: Who is Emile Francis Short?

 

E.S: Well, I was born in Cape Coast. I went to school in Cape Coast, St. Augustine’s College. 

 

After that I went to London to read Law at the London University and at the Lincoln‘s Inn. I was called to the Bar in 1966.

 

I hold a Masters Degree in Law from the London school of Economics and Political Science. I worked in London and in New York for sometime before I return to Ghana in 1973.

 

 From 1973 to 1993 I was in private practice in Cape Coast, my Hometown. In 1993, I was appointed by the then President Rawlings to be Commissioner of the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice CCHRAJ).

 

 I held that position until I was elected by the General Assembly to be a temporary Judge with the International Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania. 

 

I came back two weeks ago after I asked to be released to come back to CHARAJ pending the signing and drafting of a judgment which is still outstanding.

 

MORO: How was it like growing up? Did you go through some difficult times?

 

E.S: Well, I was lucky; I don’t think I had very difficult times. My father was also a legal practitioner so I was privileged to have a good education and a smooth passage through school. I was sent to the United Kingdom to study law and so I thank God for his grace and mercies.

 

MORO: How best can you describe yourself?

 

E.S: It’s very difficult to talk about oneself but I think I have a sober disposition with very strong Christian beliefs. 

 

I’m a born again Christian. Generally speaking my parents instilled values of honesty, integrity and hard work in all of us. 

 

So, in a nutshell that’s how I’ll describe myself though it’s very difficult to talk about oneself. It’s better for other people to talk about you.

 

MORO: What kind of a person were you when you were in St. Augustine’s College? Did you have a nickname?

 

E.S; In fact I did, as result of playing table tennis. I was quite good. I represented my school and at one time represented Ghana. And my nickname was ‘man shadow’.

 

MORO: Why ‘man shadow’?

 

E.S: I think it was because of the way I dashed from one end to the other trying to retrieve the ball. You see, I did it at lightening space. So I think that’s how I got the name ‘man shadow’.

 

MORO: You must have been quite good to have represented Ghana?

 

E.S: Yes, I was quite good.

 

MORO: Did you win some laurels?

 

E.S: Yes. But I wasn’t able to attend International competitions because I was attending school. Actually, when I went to the States I did win quite a number of trophies in table tennis men divisions that I took part in. I’m also a very passionate golf player.

 

MORO: Who were some of the people in your class? 

 

E.S: Well, quite a number who have been in public service. It’s difficult to recall all of them. But one of my room mates was the late Justice Odibo Ocran. 

 

He was on the Supreme Court but passed away sometime in 2008. There are other people like Eko Sam who is an Investment Consultant. Some of the other names don’t come readily to mind. 

 

MORO: What were you doing before you were appointed Commissioner for CHRAJ?

 

E.S: I was in private practice at Cape Coast. I however travelled to Accra occasionally to do cases in Accra. I was specializing mainly in Land cases and Testate and Interstate cases.

 

MORO: Where did you acquire that kind of passion from?

 

E.S: I did a lot of work in legal aid. I was a member of the Central Legal Aid committee. Cape Coast is a place where there are lots of land litigations and litigations about distribution of properties of deceased persons. So my special focus was on those cases because it was prevalent in Cape Coast.

 

MORO: Tell us about your exploits in terms of winning cases?

 

E.S: Well, I think I had quite a high rate of success in my private practice. I appeared in quite a number of cases in the court of appeal, especially with my late father who was also a legal practitioner. I had quite a successful practice.

 

 MORO: You taught in Cape Coast. How did your students perceive you then?

 

E.S; Actually I taught Law in the University of Cape Coast; Business Law mainly. I had a very good time. I was teaching part time while I was in private practice. It was intellectually very rewarding.

 

MORO: That was prior to your being called by the then President Rawlings to head CHRAJ. Why do you think you were called and not any other person to head such a critical institution?

 

E.S: Well it’s difficult for me to give any reasons.

 

MORO: Did the former president tell you why he wanted you to be the head of CHRAJ?

 

E.S: It was an honour to be called upon to head CHRAJ, one of the most important democratic institutions established after the transition to democracy and constitutional rule. I cannot give any specific reason why His Excellency Jerry John Rawlings chose me.

 

MORO: So what happened? Did the President call you on phone or what?

 

E.S: Well I heard the announcement on the radio.

 

MORO: Even before he officially notified you?

 

E.S: I had a hint before that I might be appointed. And then I heard the announcement on the radio and called upon His Excellency. I thanked him and had a meeting with him.

 

MORO: Why was there the need to set up CHRAJ?

 

E.S: CHRAJ is an extremely important institution. It is mandated to promote and protect human rights of the citizens. It is also an anti corruption agency. 

 

I’m sure you appreciate the extent of corruption in our society and how that impacts on our economic and National development. CHRAJ is also mandated to check mal-administration - in other words, exercise of arbitrary power by public officers. 

 

Part of our work also involves developing educational programmes, training public officers and creating public awareness about human rights, empowering the citizens to access their rights and hold accountable public officers. 

 

So it’s a very critical institution in democratic governance. It compliments all the over sight institutions like the Serious Fraud Office (SFO), the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) and the Electoral Commission.

 

 So I will say that it’s one of the most important institutions in our democratic governance.

 

MORO: Who are you accountable to?

 

E.S: The commission itself is an independent state body. We are accountable to the public. 

 

We are accountable to parliament in the sense that we submit annual report to parliament indicating our work and the state of human rights in the country. 

 

The sort of cases we have handled in the year in question. But our institution enjoys independence in the sense that we are not under the control either directly or indirectly of any authority. That independence is guaranteed by the constitution.

 

We’re a very independent institution. We’ve never been subject to control by either the previous or the current administration. 

 

Our independence has been respected throughout the period the institution has been in existence. We deal with cases as we see them and we monitor human rights conditions in the country.

 

 We do annual inspection of prisons and we publish our reports, and we investigate corruption, allegations or complaint of corruption against high public officers. We have been able to do that successfully without any pressure or so whatever.

 

MORO: Tell us about the period you were in charge of CHRAJ before you left for Tanzania. What were some of the difficult landmark cases that came to you?

 

E.S: I think the most critical period would be immediately after the transition to Democracy. One of the functions we had or still have is the deconfiscation of properties that were seized during the military era. That was a very challenging task. 

 

You will recall in 1995/996 we had to investigate Ministers of State on media allegations of corruption. 

 

That was a very difficult time. But at least, we succeeded in establishing a precedence of holding accountable persons in high public office and that trend has continued.

 

 I think that’s important because in many other African countries you won’t find a body like CHRAJ investigating high public officers. That’s a credit to our democracy. 

 

You will also recall that even before I left, there was a complaint by the minority leader against the previous President Kufuor.

 

I think that’s a testimony to our democracy and how we have been able to make advances in our democratic governance. So those were some of the high points. 

 

We’ve also, as I said, been inspecting detention facilities the prisons, the police cells since 1995 and we’ve drawn the attention of the relevant authorities to the unsatisfactory conditions in these detention facilities. 

 

We’ve also done a lot of good works in promoting awareness of human rights throughout the country. 

 

We’ve been doing a lot of training for police officers and developed education manuals for schools. We’ve also been doing training for a wide variety of professionals and members of the public.

 

MORO: What was the most difficult case that ever came to you?

 

E.S: There are many cases which are difficult. I think some of the cases where we had to investigate top public officers and also some of the cases involving the confiscation of properties which I handled during the earlier part of my tenure of office were very challenging.

 

Those are the ones that readily come to mind. We’ve also been handling a lot of cases involving dismissals and the termination of employment of public officers. Some of them are also quite challenging. But I think some other challenges we’ve encountered are trying to develop a culture of human rights, to get people to appreciate the importance of the observance of human rights.

 

But I think we’ve made some progress in this country on some of these issues.

 

MORO: You are back to CHRAJ. What should we except?

 

E.S; In my absence, the work continued. I kept in touch with the commission, with Ms. Bossman who was acting in my absence.

 

 I’m going to continue the good work which the commission has been doing. 

 

I’ll be focusing on some particular areas. For example, the issue of remand prisoners staying in custody for a long period of time is one area I would like to focus attention on. 

 

The issue of domestic violence is also high on my agenda. I also would like to pay particular attention to the issue of corruption. 

 

Recently, I’ve read quite a number of reports in the media about audit reports issued by the Auditor General. So there are a lot of issues that I would like to focus attention on but these are just few of the issues I‘ll be looking at.

 

MORO: Do you think we’ve made some progress in terms of dealing with corruption?

 

E.S: It’s difficult to say whether we’ve made progress. I think it’s still a very serious problem in our society both at the lower level and at the upper level. 

 

We need a lot to tackle the problem. I think it calls for a consented approach and a coalition among the various oversight bodies that are involved as well as civil society and mobilizing public opinion to get the political will to fight the menace of corruption. 

 

I don’t think we are in a satisfactory state at all. There is much work to be done in combating corruption.

 

Corruption is the denial of the economic and social rights of the people. It is depriving us of much needed revenue to address economic and social services. It’s a serious problem and I think we need to do more to address the issue of corruption.

 

MORO: What new things or new ideas do you have as to how you think we should deal with corruption?

 

E.S: Well you know CHRAJ is a member of the Anti- corruption coalition which consists of serious fraud office and many other bodies, Ghana Integrity Initiative. 

 

We intend to intensify this cooperation. We also have cooperation with the Auditor General and the public Accounts Committee. 

I intend to ensure that we intensify this cooperation and see how best together we can address the problem of corruption. 

 

Corruption is a very complex phenomenon. It’s not something that could be addressed by a single institution. 

 

There is the need for a very intensive and consented approach. So, we’ll be discussing with our partners and Government to see how best we can address the problem.

 

MORO: Do you think anything could have changed during that period in which you were away in terms of how the commission was handled.

 

E.S: I don’t think so. I think my Deputy Ms. Bossman handled the commission quite well and she performed creditably. I’m quite satisfied with how she handled the affairs of the commission.

 

MORO: Let’s look at the issue of human rights. We’ve seen in the past and present where certain public officials are asked to leave their positions because their loyalty to the party in power is questionable. We are still battling with this kind of situation. Don’t you think so?

 

E.S: This is a milky area. It’s a gray area. And I think what we need is a transitional law which will clarify and indicate how the transitional process should be dealt with. 

 

You know when we transit from one government to another we should put in place mechanisms and measures which will clearly and indicate what should happen. 

 

The new Government might not feel comfortable working with certain people who have demonstrated loyalty to the previous administration. 

 

All these are issues that I think we need to discuss intensively and eventually come out with transitional legal framework which will regulate these difficult and ambiguous areas in our political system.

 

MORO: At what point in time does CHRAJ, for instance, delve into matters? Are you petitioned before or you observe and delve into issues you think is worth investigating?

 

 

E.S: Well following the recent Supreme Court decision in the Anane case, it’s quite clear that we can investigate allegations of corruption in the media. However we cannot investigate allegations of human rights violations, abuse of office and conflict of interest unless there is an identifiable complainant. 

We would have wished to be able to investigate some allegations of abuse of office and conflict of interest without an identifiable complainant. We hope to see whether we can change the law so that we are empowered to be able to do so. 

 

 However I must indicate that we can invite people to come and lodge a complaint where for example we notice in allegations of violations of human rights, abuse of office or conflict of interest in the media. 

 

The decision also does not prevent us from monitoring situations, for example we could investigate human rights violations in the society like the ‘trokosi’ for the purpose of advocacy and bringing about a change in these practices and bringing about legislation which can criminalize these practices. 

 

The decision does not prevent us from investigating human rights violations with the view to educating people to bring an end to such violations. It doesn’t also prevent us from intervening in certain situations and using our office to mediate. 

 

That is where both parties agree that we can mediate in a particular situation. The decision also does not prevent us from intervening in such a manner.

 

MORO: Do you think CHRAJ should be given prosecutorial powers?

 

 

E.S: Well, in some countries like Uganda, institutions like CHRAJ do have prosecutorial powers. The Inspectorate General who is my counterpart does have power to prosecute. 

 

It would be a good idea, particularly now that we don’t have a separation of the Minister of Justice and the Attorney General. 

 

That is something we’ve advocated for; that we should have an independent public prosecutor who is not allied with the government, doesn’t have any political loyalty and therefore wouldn’t feel any pressure.

 

 At the moment all we can do when we investigate allegations of corruption if we think that there is the need for prosecution is to transfer the case to the Attorney General. 

 

There may be situations where the Attorney General may find it difficult to mount prosecution against ministers of states of the governing party and therefore I think it’s important that these two offices are decoupled. 

 

I think the present government has indicated the willingness to do this. But of cause this needs a constitutional amendment. The other caution I will add is that our mandate is very large, we have a very wide mandate and therefore I don’t know whether it might be easy for us to add prosecution to our mandate. 

 

We don’t have the kind of human resource we need. We need to build our capacity to be able to do that. So that might pose another challenge for us. I think the best solution will be to decouple the Attorney General’s office from that of the Minister of Justice.

 

MORO: The issue about administrative justice. Would you like to take us through the processes you’ll be going through to correct this? It looks like it is assuming a very worrying dimension in this country.  

 

E.S: Over the years, we’ve investigated thousands of cases involving administrative injustice and have brought remedy to many aggrieved persons. 

 

 I think that is one area in which we take comfort in the fact we are able to assist people who have been victims of public mal administration. 

 

The constitution requires that administrative justice is dispensed and people are treated fairly.

 

 Anybody who is unfairly treated by a public officer can bring a complaint. People who exercise their power and discretion in an arbitrary manner can bring a complaint to us. We have investigated quite a number of these cases. 

 

We don’t only investigate these cases and provide a remedy where necessary but we also try to monitor the trends of administrative injustice so that we can then intervene in the various institutions and correct this particular type of administrative injustice. 

 

In addition to investigating complaints of administrative injustice, it is important that we identify trends in administrative injustice and take measures to correct them so they don’t reoccur in future. 

 

So these are the various ways we’ve been addressing the problem and also we’ve had training of public officers on what constitute administrative injustice. We are looking at the problem from different angles.  

 

MORO: So far we’ve seen CHRAJ deal with cases of human rights and corruption and not really about the tolerance among the people.

 

E.S: We encourage that. I must also point out that we resort to mediation in resolving most of our complaints. 

 

The first method that we adopt is one of mediation where it’s possible rather than the adversary method of litigation. 

 

This process fosters tolerance; it fosters the maintenance of relationships among people who disagree with each other or have grievances. 

 

In some of our educational programmes we’ve been promoting these values of tolerance and advocating that people should try to find amicable ways of settling disputes rather than resulting to violence.

 

This is part of our promotional mandate and we’ve been doing that in a lot of the educational programmes that we’ve been doing in the past.

 

Moro: Commissioner Short, thanks a lot for your time

 

E.s: Thank you too for the opportunity.