According to Professor Asare, the president has no such power to exercise over an institution whose absolute independence is guaranteed by the constitution, so he overstepped.
Speaking on Newsfile on Accra-based Joy FM, the legal luminary argued that the Auditor-General is only accountable to parliament by writing reports of his audit works and submitting them to the people’s representative house.
“The Auditor-General is a unique person. He is the commander in chief of the audit service… he has his own office where he is neither accountable to the president nor the board; his accountability is only to parliament; he writes reports and sends them to parliament.
“And even then, you’d see that even when his report goes to parliament, the committee that deals with his reports is structured so that it is headed by the minority in parliament. We haven’t gone through all these processes so that a president can exercise disciplinary control over an auditor general,” Prof Kweku Asare argued.
A letter from the presidency addressed to Daniel Dormelevo directed him to hand over to his deputy and go on leave effective July 1, 2020.
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However, he challenged the president’s directive in a counter letter dated July 3, asking him to reconsider his decision, saying it has the tendency to undermine the independence of the office of the Auditor-General.
In what appeared to be a battle of letters, the presidency also responded to Mr Domelevo’s letter, reiterating the directive and dramatically adding another 44 days which are those of the year 2020 to the 123 accumulated ones to make it 167.