Cleaning the mirror instead of dust on our face

I have been thinking about this. The office of the Special Prosecutor Bill. The Bill has been withdrawn – at least for now. But this is what you need to know about it.

The Bill provides for an office of a prosecutor together with an investigative, administrative and prosecutorial wing. The office is, therefore, a full service entity.

The spin is that the occupant of this position will cure all the troubles and challenges that we have and will ever have with the fight against corruption.

This Prosecutor is going to stay in office for seven years – though his appointment may be renewed for another term. This Bill is accompanied with so much promise that the government is haggling and falling over itself to ensure that it comes to pass.

It is all fine. But for me, it is not the solutions. We are deceiving ourselves into thinking that we can invent an institution that  would overnight deal with our collective character flaws as a nation.

First, what is the argument again about why the Attorney-General cannot fight corruption? Because he is an appointee of the government and specifically of the President. A lot of argument has been made to the effect that since he is an appointee of the government, therefore, he may be compromised.

In sum, he serves at the pleasure of the President and may be fired or reshuffled if the President desires. But here is the problem. Someone has to appoint someone to fill in the position of the special prosecutor.

No one is going to drop from space to serve as the special prosecutor. If the Attorney-General cannot fight corruption because of who appointed her, forget talks of the special prosecutor.

We have a problem. This has nothing to do with an institution. It has everything to do with us as a people.

Take the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ). The promise was that CHRAJ was going to fight corruption. Has it happened? No. Will it ever happen? No. if none of these have happened, what makes anyone on the face of this country think that the situation is going to be any different with a special prosecutor?

What we need right now is bold and fearless individuals who are able to speak truth to power. People who are able to say to the President, “Sir, I am not blind to the fact that you appointed me, but I have made a professional judgement to pursue this matter; and so be it.” Those are the kind of people we need.

We need people who are not scared of being fired or losing their jobs in pursuit of their professional independence.

Someone would say – keep dreaming and being theoretical. My response: if Martin Amidu stood up to President Mills in his bid to recover money stolen from the state, then any other Attorney-General should be able to do so. It is not the Constitution that makes an institution independent,  it’s the occupants of those institutions..

There are so many examples. Take the case of the Federal Bureau of Investigations. In an Economist Article titled “How Independent is the FBI”, the Economist sought to investigate what has made the FBI one of the most independent law enforcement agencies on the face of the world.

The answer to the question was simple. It all depends on the standing of the agency’s director.

The Federal Bureau of Investigations falls under the jurisdiction of the Department of Justice and reports to the Attorney-General, but operates largely independently.

The article noted that “The FBI was at its most independent under J. Edgar Hoover, who was the FBI’s boss for 48 years and built an empire for himself, using his own network of relationships with members of Congress.

He became so powerful that, after his departure, the term in office of FBI bosses was limited to 10 years.”

It is the quality of persons who man the institutions that matter. Not the institution. A fool only makes an institution foolish. A wise person makes an institution respected.

So while we busy ourselves trying to invent institutions which hopefully will take care of the scourge of corruption, we need to remind ourselves of the following:
First, there is no need to invent any more institutions. There are enough. We need to get the right persons in the door. That should suffice.

And secondly, we should recognise that the drawbacks in the fight against corruption is a human problem.

We endorse corruption in so many ways. We applaud it. And, therefore, we must recognise that the dust is on our face and yet we are busy cleaning the mirror. It is a fool’s errand.
 
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