Editorial: Institutions must work to stem corruption

The 2014 Corruption Perception Index (CPI), a leading global indicator of public sector corruption released annually by Transparency International (TI), placed Ghana at the 61st position on a list of 175 countries surveyed.

The people’s perception of corruption has, nonetheless, not waned but has, instead, been on the rise, with the latest exposé by Anas Aremeyaw Anas on some judges taking that perception a notch higher.

Corruption in the Judiciary remained just a perception for a very long time,  with the CPI always listing the Judiciary among the five institutions perceived to be the most corrupt in the country.

Our institutions mandated by law to rein in corrupt public officials have been caught napping, while greed takes centre stage in most of our public institutions.

In the procurement of driver’s licences, roadworthy certificates, passports and birth certificates and in motorists’ encounters with the police, illegal and unauthorised money has always exchanged hands in a cycle of bribes if one wants a job done or desires any of the official documents listed.

The Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO), the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI), the National Security, as well as the courts and other institutions, have been set up by the state to check pervasive corruption which has become systemic.

Nonetheless, all these laws have not been able to stop corruption in public institutions, which is why a private legal practitioner, Mr Ace Anan Ankomah, has called for all the anti-corruption legislation in the nation’s statutory books to be put together into one act to be known as the Bribery and Corruption Act.

A former Commissioner of the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), Mr Justice Emile Short, has also called for an amendment to all the anti-corruption acts.

Another reason the laws are not functioning is that people are not prepared to take on those who have exhibited corrupt tendencies for fear of being branded bad persons. If we allow glaring corruption to pass, we will gradually head for the rule of the jungle, where only the daring and the strong survive.

In 2011, Anas did an exposé on officials of the Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority at the ports and the smuggling of cocoa outside the country. After the initial furore and some cosmetic measures, everything died down.

Is it only a matter of time for the latest revelations on the Judiciary to also go quiet?

If the institutions established to fight corruption are not made to work, then there will be several exposés on corruption and Anas will do his investigations to be greeted with the usual fanfare, but they will still come to nothing.