The Chairman of the Commission probing events surrounding the Ghana@50 celebrations has given some DCEs and regional ministers a one week ultimatum to appear before it.

Justice Isaac Duose warned that any District Chief Executive who has been named in the course of the probe who fails to turn up to give evidence will be pursued using the state security agencies.

“Now that it has become absolutely necessary to invite them, we will have to use the security agencies to pursue them,” he charged in his closing remarks after the second day of testimony by the CEO of the Ghana@50 Secretariat, Dr Charles Wereko-Brobby.

The chairman’s caution was however objected to by Mr Kwadwo Mpiani, the Chairman of the National Planning Committee of the Ghana at 50 celebrations which exercised oversight responsibility for the events.

He contended that there would be unintended consequences if the security were involved in the matter given how overly exuberant some of the security personnel could be.

Mr Mpiani who would be giving his testimony Monday next week appealed to Justice Duose to restrict himself to the public call he made on the persons concerned to voluntarily appear as involving the security could defeat the purpose of the Commission.

The Commission Chairman agreed with Mr Mpiani but insisted that some of the persons named during the probe ought to have come before the Commission to offer some clarifications and explanations but had failed to do so.

Indeed some of the DCEs, he noted, had been speaking to the issues in the media, something he thought was not in the right.

He reiterated his call on DCEs who have been cited to voluntarily appear, or face the law after the one week ultimatum.

In an attempt to plead on behalf of the DCEs, Counsel for Mr. Mpiani who is also the immediate past Chief of Staff, Mr Egbert Faibille pleaded with the Chairman to reconsider his decision to use the security agencies to pursue witnesses on the expiration of the one week.

He submitted that some of the persons involved might have either travelled out of the country or genuinely not heard the Chairman’s admonition on them through the media.

To use the security to haul such people to appear before the Commission could therefore be problematic.

Justice Duose agreed again, but stuck to his earlier position.

Consistent with a campaign pledge by President J.E.A. Mills, the Commission, with the powers of a High Court was established and tasked with looking into the activities of the Ghana@50 Secretariat after widespread allegations of malfeasance and claims of unpaid contract sums by businesses that were contracted to provide services.

Apart from the Chairman, Justice Isaac Duose of the Court of Appeal, the Commission has Mr. Osei Tutu Prempeh, a former Auditor General and Ms. Marietta Brew Appiah-Oppong, an Accra-based lawyer as members.

Story by Malik Abass Daabu/Myjoyonline.com/Ghana