9^th OCTOBER, 2019

OCCUPYGHANA® PRESS STATEMENT

OCCUPYGHANA® CONDEMNS POLICE BRUTALITIES AGAINST DEMONSTRATING LAW STUDENTS AND DEMANDS REFORMS TO PROFESSIONAL LEGAL EDUCATION

POLICE BRUTALITIES

OccupyGhana® is appalled by the brutal assault that the Police meted out to unarmed and peacefully demonstrating law students and their sympathisers on Monday, October 7, 2019. We have seen footages and photographs that show several infractions against the rule of law and of humaneness on the part of the Police. This Police high-handedness and brutality against students exercising nothing more than their constitutional right to demonstrate and air out their grievances makes a mockery of the democracy we claim to respect, and we wish to unequivocally announce our disgust with that turn of events and to condemn same in no uncertain terms.

We have closely studied the Police Statement on the matter which, to all intents and purposes, is a poor attempt to throw dust in the faces of Ghanaians concerning a true and accurate account of the day. For instance, how does the Police Service explain how the protestors somehow procured arsenals of stones to hurl at Police officers on the Independence Road stretch between the Canadian Consulate to the Golden Jubilee House? How is it possible, in 2019, for the police to call an exercise of the constitutional right to assembly “illegal” when police permits are not required to stage a demonstration, and the notice requirement in the Public Order Act can never morph into an unconstitutional demand for some kind of police permission?

We could ask a dozen questions about the Police Statement, which we find as offensive as we find their unwarranted abuse of power and their impunity in a civilised society governed by respect for human rights, human dignity, the rule of law and justice. And we wonder how Government can bear the news that many of these harmless student protestors reportedly found shelter at a foreign consulate from the atrocities of their country’s own Police Service.

We repeat and remind the Police that the right to demonstrate is an inalienable right that requires absolutely no police approval or censure beyond notification. And no edifice, building or “zone” should exist which, having the benefit of public access roads, public traffic and public thoroughfare in whole or in part, cannot accept the presentation of petitions by unarmed and inoffensive demonstrators. No ground in this country is so sacred that it cannot tolerate the lawful exercise of unarmed students’ rights to demonstrate.

We demand, at the very least an apology from the recently-confirmed Inspector General of Police who bears ultimate responsibility for this egregious display of brutishness. We also demand that all Commanding Officers who directly supervised, sanctioned and called for these barbaric attacks on innocent protestors be punished in accordance with the law.

PROFESSIONAL LEGAL EDUCATION

We must also emphatically state that the time is ripe to address the root cause of this matter: the inability of the state to provide sufficient facilities to enable law students from the various law faculties and law schools gain access to professional legal education. We cannot, as a people, grant accreditation for several law faculties and law schools to be opened and run, and then maintain the current size of the School of Law for the professional law course, a completely unjustified bottleneck and another evidence of our lack of planning.

It is a fact that the introduction of the entrance examinations and the erstwhile interviews remain a formalised knee-jerk reaction to a problem that has an obvious solution that we refuse to provide. Ghana is not an island. Several other countries have resolved this problem in a manner that allows prospective lawyers to be trained and given the opportunity to write the final bar exam, however often they may write it. There is nothing wrong with learning from others and adapting what we learn to suit our purposes.

The Government cannot absolve itself of blame in this regard. It is statute that created the General Legal Council. That statute gives the Council the power to regulate professional legal education, sometimes with the approval of the Attorney-General. We insist that the same legislative process should be used to fix this problem once and for all.

A country of almost 30 million people cannot be proud that its official roll of lawyers has just about 3,000 lawyers. A ratio of one lawyer to 10,000 citizens is highly anaemic, and any existing or new policy that unduly restricts access to any form of education, especially in a developing economy, is not forward-looking and should be jettisoned. The time for action on this matter is now, and this buck stops at the desk of the Government.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, we demand of the Police Service, the General Legal Council and the Government of Ghana to be guided by the principles outlined in the Ghanaian constitution that all power emanates from the people and not the other way round.

Yours in the service of God and Country

OccupyGhana®

9th November, 2018

OCCUPYGHANA® PRESS STATEMENT

OCCUPYGHANA® PRESENTS IMMEDIATE SOLUTIONS FOR REDUCING THE CARNAGE ON TETTEH QUARSHIE-ADENTA HIGHWAY (N4)

OccupyGhana® is alarmed at the spate of pedestrian deaths on the Tetteh Quarshie-Adenta Highway (N4) in Accra due primarily to the unavailability of safe crossing facilities on the road. The latest accident in which a first-year female student of West Africa Senior High School (WASS) was reported to have been killed becomes the 194th reported death on the Madina-Adentan Highway this year.

OccupyGhana® joins the nation in grieving with the bereaved families of the deceased.

The incident, which caused angry residents to set ablaze car tyres to register their protest to the government, is deeply regrettable and would have been avoidable had government been proactive in arresting the situation sooner.

OccupyGhana® is surprised that after 11 years of the construction of the highway, none of the footbridges have been completed. This has made it unsafe for pedestrians to cross the multiple-lane highway. It is expected that footbridges, which form the integral safety of pedestrians, must be constructed before the commissioning of any highway.

OccupyGhana® is disappointed in the slow reaction of the Ministry of Transportation, Ministry of Roads and Highways, and the Ghana Highways Authority to handling this issue, thus causing the reported loss of 194 lives. These authorities have failed to take the required safety measures to save the lives of innocent Ghanaians who must cross the roads in the conduct of their everyday business.

Although we acknowledge government’s statement in dealing with the situation, and find it unforgivingly belated, we assure the government that we will hold them to it.

In addition to the measures proposed by government, OccupyGhana® calls for the following immediate measures to be implemented in curbing the carnage on the Tetteh Quarshie-Adenta Highway (N4):

1. Specific speed limits should be imposed and enforced on that stretch of road;

2. Rumble strips should be constructed on the long stretch of road beginning from the University of Ghana to the Pantang end of the highway to reduce the unnecessary speeding of drivers;

3. Government should replace all faulty traffic lights with modern, solar-powered lights and provide extra traffic lights with toucan crossing system to allow free flow of traffic;

4. Public education must be extended to the public on safe crossing of the highways, by the National Road Safety Commission;

5. Officials of the MTTD of the Ghana Police must be on duty at all times to control the traffic situation till all works are completed on the repair and installation of the traffic lights and rumble streets;

6. Government must provide adequate road signs and markings along this stretch, fix reflectors on the kerbs and designate and mark crosswalks where pedestrians have priority over vehicular traffic;

7. Government should fix all streetlights along the corridor and ensure they are properly maintained; and

8. Enforce our traffic laws!

OccupyGhana® is concerned about road safety measures on other highways, most especially the N1 highway that is claiming a lot of lives. Government should apply these same measures on the N1 highway.

Yours in the service of occupying minds for God and Country

OccupyGhana®

3^rd JUNE 2018

OCCUPYGHANA® PRESS STATEMENT

OCCUPYGHANA PRESS STATEMENT ON ISSUES ARISING FROM THE “KELNI GVG CONTRACT”

OccupyGhana® has followed the ongoing debate concerning the 27th December 2017 contract between the Ministries of Finance and Communications on the one part, and a company called Kelni GVG on the other part, to provide “a common platform for the purpose of revenue assurance, traffic monitoring, fraud management and mobile money monitoring” (“Contract.”)

DEMANDS

After our review of the Contract, facts available to us and the law, our key demands, as citizens of Ghana, are as follows:

1. The Finance Minister, if he has not done so already, immediately lays before Parliament for passage, the Legislative Instrument required to properly put in place the monthly Communications Service Tax returns required to be filed by the service providers;
2. (i) The deployment of the Revenue Assurance Module under the Contract should be limited to access to the service providers’ billing systems and nothing more or less,

(ii) Detailed investigation and audit by an independent expert, of the mechanism to be deployed under the Contract, particularly the Revenue Assurance, Specific Voice and Geographic Location Modules, to ascertain and ensure that any snoop and tap capability that is prohibited by law, does not exist, and

(iii) Assurance by the Government that the Mobile Money Monitoring Module under the Contract is not a wholly unnecessary replication of a regulatory function that is vested by law in, and is currently being performed by, the Bank of Ghana; and

3. Enforcement of the law on the use of Internally Generated Funds of the Ghana Revenue Authority and the National Communications Authority for their expenses only, and if considered necessary, make the two entities direct parties to the Contract so that they have a legal say in how the Contract is performed, in their own right.

These demands arise from three primary concerns, namely, (1) how the Communications Service Tax is to be collected and paid to the Government, (2) whether the deployment of the monitoring mechanism under the Contract breaches or has the potential to breach the privacy protections under both the law and the Constitution, and (3) whether the payment of contract sums under the Contract, not by the Government (which is the party to the Contract) but, directly by the Ghana Revenue Authority (“GRA”) and the National Communications Authority (“NCA”) also breaches both the law and the Constitution.

COMMUNICATIONS SERVICE TAX

The 2008 Communications Service Tax Act provides that users of electronic communications services should pay a 6% tax. The mode of tax collection is clear: “The tax shall be PAID TOGETHER with the electronic communications service charge payable to the service provider by the user of the service.” This simply means that the user pays tax on the value of the voucher/service at the point of purchase, irrespective of whether the distributor sells or the customer uses or does not use what is purchased. The service provider collects the tax and then pays it to the GRA.

The law then provides two processes for verifying/auditing the tax collection and payment. The first is by the service providers filing monthly CST returns with the GRA. The returns form is to be designed by the Minister for Finance to provide information that the Minister deems necessary for those auditing purposes, by way of regulations under a Legislative Instrument. We are informed that the Legislative Instrument is yet to be passed, ten years after the law was passed. We however understand that in lieu of the LI, the GRA has designed its own returns form that the service providers routinely file.

The second verification/audit process is by way of the service providers giving the Government “physical access” to some “node” in their billing systems or an equivalent point, described by some as “Real Time Monitoring.” While some industry watchers and actors fault the wording of the law in this regard and describe it as “vague,” we believe that the intention of the framers of the law is obvious: the Government must be given access to an equivalent point in the providers’ networks, but ONLY to where the latter’s billing systems are connected. We do not see how this simple understanding presents any problems.

We also note that the Contract has four Modules, namely (i) Revenue Assurance, (ii) Specific Voice, (iii) Geographic Location, and (iv) Mobile Money Monitoring. We think that the Revenue Assurance Module should be easy to implement, which would comply with the law, as long as all that the Government has access to are the billing systems. We are concerned that the Specific Voice Module (“traffic monitoring”) raises questions about the potential to monitor the content of communications in breach of the Constitution and statute. We also need to be convinced that the Geographic Location Module (“fraud management”) is really relevant to the work that the Government has to do, and does not breach the Constitution and statute. And we have doubts that with the launch of the mobile money interoperability platform that is monitored by the Bank of Ghana in real time, a parallel Mobile Money Monitoring Module is really required.

Thus while we appreciate the Government’s probably well-intended aims under these contractual modules, it goes without saying that the modules may only be implemented in accordance with the law. The law as it stands now provides for the filing of monthly returns and giving access to billing systems only. Anything less than this would be in breach of the law. But, more importantly, anything beyond this would also arguably be in breach of the privacy protections afforded by the Constitution and statute.

And it is to this that we now turn.

PRIVACY ISSUES

We are very concerned about the privacy issues that this Contract raises. The privacy of communications and correspondence is guaranteed by Article 18(2) of the Constitution, subject only to the qualifications provided in either that Article itself or Article 21(4). It is in the light of these, and following concerns expressed when the idea of ‘monitoring’ international inbound traffic first came up, that the 2008 Electronic Communications Act was amended in 2009 to provide expressly that whatever “mechanisms or measures” are instituted “shall not have the capability to actively or passively record, monitor or tap into the content of any incoming or outgoing electronic communication traffic, including voice, video and data existing discretely or on a coverage platform whether local or international.”

Upon similar concerns being expressed with the introduction of this so-called “Real Time Monitoring” in the 2013 amendment of the 2008 Communications Service Tax Act, Parliament provided again that the “monitoring mechanism” also “shall not have the capability to actively or passively record, monitor, or tap into the content of any incoming or outgoing electronic communications traffic, including voice, video or data existing discretely or on a converged platform whether local or international.”

Parliament, as if to shore these provisions up and being cognisant of the provisions in Article 18(2) of the Constitution, also passed the 2012 Data Protection Act to provide what is arguably the widest privacy protections known to the law, of data, which the Act defines to include information that “is processed by means of equipment operating automatically in response to instructions given for that purpose,” “recorded with the intention that it should be processed by means of such equipment,” “recorded as part of a relevant filing system or with the intention that it should form part of a relevant filing system,” or simply “forms part of an accessible record.”

Our argument is that however laudable the government’s intentions are for entering into the Contract, and whatever assurances and pledges we receive that the government does not intend to snoop on or tap into our communications and correspondence, the law is simply that whatever mechanism is being deployed “SHALL NOT HAVE” snoop or tap capability.

We have seen a Press Statement issued by the Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications dated 1st June 2018, and which says emphatically as follows:

“Our informed position is that the current architecture from the NCA and Kelni GVG does not conform to these design standards. The architecture does not provide our customers the privacy of their communication that the constitution guarantees…”

The said Press Statement then lists the following “challenges”:

“a. the current architecture seeks to connect beyond the equivalent point in the network where the network providers’ billings systems are connected; [and]

1. The monitoring mechanism has the capability to actively or passively record, monitor or tap into the content of any incoming or outgoing electronic communications traffic such as voice. The proposed connection point will risk exposing content of voice traffic.”

If these statements are true, then the deployment of the mechanism with the statutorily prohibited snoop and tap capability, is a breach of the law and the Constitution. Then we would agree with the Chamber that

“The voice transaction damp(sic) for the revenue assurance tool should be enough without risking individual customer privacy. We are minded that the law does not talk about intent but capability, which the current architecture processes (sic).”

Having said that, we must however express our disappointment that the members of the Chamber, with such a strong and informed position on the matter, neglected or failed to commence legal action against the government to have this matter resolved once and for all by the courts within the 7-day limit imposed by law. That was a letdown.

However, moving forward, we must point out that in Ghana, the 2012 Data Protection Act protects both “data” and “metadata,” i.e. data that provides information about other data. This falls under the definition of “personal data” as “data about an individual which can be identified from the data or other information in the possession of or likely to come into the possession of the data controller.” Thus in Ghana, a person’s voice communications as well as the fact that the person communicated with another person from a certain location and for a certain period (which is the kind of information that the “Real Time Monitoring” would have access to), are entitled to the same level of privacy protection under our law.

As a matter of interest, while industry watchers are awaiting a decision of the US Supreme Court on whether the US government’s “acquisition of historical cell-site records created and maintained by a cellular-service provider violates the Fourth Amendment rights of the individual customer to whom the records pertain,” we in Ghana have no such problem.

Accordingly, any system that obtains both data and metadata has to comply with the law.

In this regard, we must register our disappointment also at the profoundly deafening silence of the Data Protection Commission in all of these matters. It is important that when such issues arise, statutory bodies entrusted with responsibility to protect our rights act proactively in investigating them, speaking out and making their relevance felt by educating the public.

PAYMENT OF CONTRACT SUMS

We note that neither the NCA nor the GRA is a party to the Contract. Yet they are “nominated” by the Ministry of Communications and the Ministry of Finance, respectively, as their “implementation agents.” And we are also informed that the money to be paid to Kelni GVG under the Contract (“Contract Sum”) is to be paid by the NCA and GRA in a 40% to 60% divide.

We are concerned that the payment of the Contract Sum is not part of the “expenses” of either the NCA or the GRA, and therefore cannot be paid directly out of the Internally Generated Funds of either entity. Both the GRA and NCA are established by law as bodies corporate “with perpetual succession and a common seal and may sue and be sued in its corporate name.” Granted that they are authorities of the State, they are considered separate and distinct from the Government. Each of them has a Board that is, by law, the “governing body of the Authority.”

Although each of them is statutorily under the supervision of a relevant Minister of state, the law is careful to set out and delineate in specific detail, the extent and bounds of that supervision. The general rule is that the Authorities and their Boards are bound by only written “Policy Directives” issued by the relevant Ministers. And it should be blindingly obvious that those “Policy Directives” cannot contravene the law or the Constitution.

The law is clear on what the moneys that either the GRA or NCA receives are to be used for. They are only to retain specific portions of those moneys specifically for their “expenses” only, and the remainder “SHALL” be paid into the Consolidated Fund. Any use of those moneys on expenditure that does not fall within the “expenses” of the entities is illegal. Any use of the government’s portion of those monies by any person including the Government itself without the moneys first being paid into the Consolidated Fund is a breach of Article 176 of the Constitution. We reiterate that neither the Ministry of Finance nor Ministry of Communications has the power to issue “Policy Directives” that breach these provisions.

We do not think that the Ministries of Finance and Communications “nominating” the GRA and NCA respectively as agents under a contract with a private entity falls under the power to issue “Policy Directives.” We do not think that simply on account of that contractual provision, the GRA and NCA become bound to make the payments of the Contract Sums under the Contract that neither of them is a party to. We do not think that paying the Contract Sums is part of the legitimate “expenses” of the GRA and NCA, non-parties to the Contract. We would add that there is a complete lack of privity of contract, and that the Contract cannot impose obligations arising under it on any person or even an agent, except the parties to it.

It is time to end the situation where successive governments deliberately turn a blind eye to the requirement for the payment into the Consolidated Fund of moneys that particularly the NCA is bound to pay, which then gives to government the illegal opportunity to spend those moneys completely “off-balance sheet,” on the blind side of Parliament and the Auditor-General, and in breach of the Constitution.

We would add that any such spending of monies that properly belongs to the Consolidated Fund, being contrary to law, becomes liable to the disallowance and surcharge powers of the Auditor-General under Article 187 of the Constitution. It must be noted that these powers have been interpreted by the Supreme Court on 14th June 2017 in OccupyGhana v. Attorney-General (Suit No. J1/19/2016) as follows: “the Auditor-General is bound to issue a disallowance or surcharge where there has been any item of expenditure on behalf of the Government that is contrary to law.”

OTHER RELEVANT ISSUES

In this statement, we have limited ourselves to what we perceive to be the legalities of the matter. We do not examine the larger issue of whether any of this is indeed the best practice in countries with more experience and success in telecom regulation. We are still examining that point.

We also do not address the issue of value for money. Although we note a reduction in the total contract sum from the previous or existing contracts, we believe that we can only conduct a fair and accurate review when we have seen and examined the Bill of Quantities and other relevant documents that were submitted by the winning bid. We are therefore applying to the Public Procurement Authority for those and may issue a statement on them after we have reviewed them.

CONCLUSION

It is in the light of the foregoing that we have made our demands, which we consider reasonable under the circumstances. We expect the Government to accede to these demands to forestall any need to resort to court to resolve the issues raised.

Yours in the service of God and Country

OccupyGhana®

9^TH APRIL 2018

OCCUPYGHANA® PRESS STATEMENT

THE DEFENCE COOPERATION AGREEMENT BETWEEN GHANA AND THE USA – MATTERS ARISING

OccupyGhana® has followed the debate over Parliament’s ratification of the Agreement Between the Government of the United States and the Government of Ghana on Defence Cooperation, the Status of United States Forces and Access to and Use of Agreed Facilities and Areas in the Republic of Ghana (“Agreement.”)

We have noted three primary reactions to the Agreement, namely those who (i) object to the Agreement in its entirety, (ii) think that we could have obtained better terms from the United States, and (iii) do not object to the Agreement at all. OccupyGhana respects all of these views.

We would however wish to raise three key issues:

First, we appreciate the fact that this Agreement was properly sent to Parliament for ratification. This is probably only the third time in the history of the Fourth Republic that such an agreement has been sent for parliamentary ratification. The first was the 2003 Bilateral Agreement between the Ghana Government and the Government of the United States Regarding the Surrender of Offenders to the International Criminal Court. The second was the GITMO-2 Agreement, which was only sent to Parliament for ratification after litigation and an order to do so by the Supreme Court.

OccupyGhana® believes that no such agreement, if required to be ratified by Parliament, should be assumed to be confidential. While deliberations over matters of defence and national security may require confidentiality, the starting point for agreements between states, which are of the utmost public interest, should be that where such agreements are to be ratified by Parliament, they would be made available to the public. Where confidentiality is genuinely required, we should ensure that firstly, such documents are formally given the requisite status under the State Secrets Act, 1962 (Act 101), and secondly, the security classification of such agreements is specifically agreed upon in negotiations so that the state-parties to them would have a uniform and reciprocal treatment of such documents in their respective jurisdictions.

Second, with the terms of the Agreement having been made public, there was no need for Parliament to have rushed its ratification. The speed to ratify the agreement on the last day of sitting and at a time when the vast majority of Ghanaians were realizing probably for the first time that we have such agreements, was not right. Ghanaians deserved more time to debate and assimilate its terms, which would have better informed our support of or opposition to it. The night time, acrimonious ratification proceedings was unfortunate. In addition, we cannot help but express our disappointment that the Right to Information Bill has not attracted this sense of urgency from this or any Parliament.

Third, we note that the Agreement, although ratified by Parliament, will not immediately come into force. According to article 19 of the Agreement, it will only come into force when the parties to it have exchanged the required diplomatic ‘Notes.’

This third issue raises the question whether the portion(s) of the Agreement that purport to grant diplomatic status, privileges and immunities to the members of the US Military, can come into force simply with parliamentary ratification or whether a Legislative Instrument is required to be laid in and passed by Parliament before the status, privileges and immunities may be applied to members of the US military covered by the Agreement.

Ghana passed the DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITIES ACT, 1962 (ACT 148), according to section 1 of the Act, to give “the force of law” to the receiving state obligations under “[a]rticles 22, 23, 24, and 27 to 40 of the Vienna Convention (which regulate the immunities and privileges, including exemption from taxation, freedom of communication, inviolability of premises and immunity from civil and criminal jurisdiction, to be conferred upon diplomatic agents.)”

These privileges and immunities apply automatically to “diplomatic agents” (which would include military attaches) and not to any other persons or organizations, including members of visiting military forces, who are ordinarily covered by the Visiting Forces Act, 1962 (Act 117). For all such other persons or organizations, section 2 of the Diplomatic Immunities Act demands that “[t]he President may, by legislative instrument, make Regulations extending any or all of the immunities and privileges conferred on diplomatic agents by virtue of this Act to prescribed organisations and prescribed representatives and officials, subject to such conditions and limitations as may be prescribed.” This provision empowers the President to extend the status, privileges and immunities to persons other than diplomats properly so-called. However, once the President elects to exercise this power, he is bound to act by or under a Legislative Instrument, which must be placed before and passed by Parliament under Article 11 of the Constitution.

Consequently, although other portions of the Agreement may come into force in accordance with the terms of the Agreement and after parliamentary ratification, the portions of the Agreement that purport to confer diplomatic status, privileges and immunities on the US Military and its agents would require a formal Legislative Instrument prepared by the President, and which Article 11 of the Constitution requires to be laid before Parliament for passage. That instrument would specifically prescribe the US Military as an organization to which Ghana is extending these rights and may contain conditions and limitations.

Indeed, in 1957 when Ghana passed the International Bank, Fund and Finance Corporation Act, 1957 (No. 17), it provided in section 3 that a Legislative Instrument was required before the officers of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and International Finance Corporation would have the status, privileges and immunities that were agreed upon. Similar provisions exist in section 3 of the International Development Association Act, 1960 (Act 11) and the West African Examinations Council Act, 2006 (Act 719). We would also want to draw attention to the Diplomatic Immunities Instrument, 1978 (LI 1180) which extended certain immunities and privileges to the Science Education Programme for Africa (SEPA).

We do not think that Parliament’s ratification of the Agreement under Article 75 is a substitute for the requirement to pass a Legislative Instrument under Article 11(7) of the Constitution.

It is in the light of these that we call for a draft Legislative Instrument on the status, privileges and immunities provided for under the Agreement to be prepared and then we comply with Article 11 of the Constitution to bring those into force. At the very least it will give Parliament yet another opportunity to consider the relevant and affected portions of the Agreement, and hopefully this time with more soberness and less acrimony.

In service for God and Country.

OccupyGhana®