Corruption, number one enemy of progress — PPP

The Progressive People’s Party (PPP) has identified corruption as the number one enemy of progress, growth and development in Ghana.

“Until this matter is tackled effectively, seriously and with a sense of urgency, it will not be productive to talk about the true state of anything else,” the party’s National Chairman, Nii Allotey Brew-Hammond, has declared.

Speaking at a press conference at the party headquarters in Accra yesterday, the PPP National Chairman also said: “it is only when President Mahama first walks his pledge to fight corruption by starting with the prosecution and jailing of his own men and women when they engage in corrupt acts that people will take him seriously.”

Responding to President John Mahama’s “State of the Nation Address” which he delivered to Parliament last Thursday, Nii Brew Hammond said “We live in almost perpetual darkness because of corruption; we virtually live in abject poverty because of corruption; the public sector is virtually dead because of corruption; quality of education has hit an all-time low because of corruption; the proverbial Ghanaian value which hitherto was the cynosure of all eyes is gone due to corruption.”

To check the menace of corruption, he said Ghana needed incorruptible leaders.

Corruption

In his view and that of the PPP, “corruption has resulted from waste within the public sector; corruption has spawned under-development in every part of our dear nation; corruption has led to the neglect of various sectors of the Ghanaian economy; corruption has contributed to low living standards and its attendant hardships; and corruption has contributed to the now very visible class distinction in our society.”

Corruption, according to Nii Brew-Hammond, now constituted the illegitimate heartbeat of the current state of the Ghanaian society and therefore stressed that “the President cannot continue to behave like the proverbial vulture, all talk and no action.”

Institutional changes

He pointed out that “President Mahama’s announced fight against corruption appears bound to fail, since Members of the Legislature, who are supposed to serve as a check on the Executive, are themselves members of the Executive. So who watches the watchman?”

“That is why the PPP is still insisting on institutional changes in our governance structure. 

“We reiterate our call for separation of the Attorney-General’s Office from that of the Ministry of Justice to have an independent Prosecutor that would be bold to deal with issues of corruption,” Nii Brew-Hammond said.

According to the PPP Chairman, the current nebulous arrangement of picking majority of ministers of state from Parliament also undermined the ability of Parliament to be an effective check on the Executive.

He said that the citizens’ inability to elect their own chief executives at the district, municipal and metropolitan levels also served to drag local development down under the weight of central government burdened by corruption.

Political will

The PPP National Chairman, demanded that the President must show the political will to fight the menace, which so far is lacking.

“As the lawyers say, anyone advocating equity must first come with clean hands. We must raise a question on the sincerity of the President to decisively deal with corruption. Our standpoint is influenced by the apparent lack of political will on the part of the President to deal with some corrupt officials and companies on whose cases the courts have ruled in favour of the state.”

The PPP national Chairman cited the Supreme Court ruling that the state retrieve millions of cedis illegally paid to Mr Alfred Agbesi Woyome as still pending execution to buttress his arguement.

He also mentioned that a High Court ruling asking for the removal of “ex-refinery differentials” from the prices of most petroleum fuels because they had been smuggled into new prices set by the National Petroleum Authority, was yet to be respected.

Over the last few years, Nii Brew-Hammond said, Ghanaians had been witnesses to the most glaring cases of corruption, in public office, act perpetuated by institutions such as GYEEDA, AZONTABA, SADA and SUBAH and in all these cases legitimate state agencies had investigated and presented copious reports riddled with obvious corruption; so we dare ask what went amiss, he said.

Failure to act

He said that some officials had been indicted, yet the lull in the preparation of cases for court clearly showed that effectively prosecuting these alleged culpable officials seemed to have stalled not because of the often cited allegation of slowness of the legal system, but because the individuals involved either belonged to the political party of the Attorney-General or had proxy relationship with the Flagstaff House.