NDC leading member backs action against officials who abuse office

Apam (C/R), May 24, GNA - Nana Kwame Arhin, Gomoa west Constituency chairman of the National Democratic congress (NDC) has stated that the government will not under any threat or intimidation shirk its responsibility to protect the nation's property. "Protection of state property is part of good governance," he reiterated in an interview with the Ghana News Agency at Apam at the weekend. Nana Arhin said he found it difficult to understand why the government's decision to prosecute people who had abused their offices, had become a problem for New Patriotic Party (NPP) functionaries. "The NPP government professed zero tolerance for corruption as the cornerstone of its administration and yet its functionaries are afraid to go to court," he said.

Nana Arhin recalled that when NPP came to power in 2001, they made Ghanaians to believe that they were people of substance who had established themselves before getting into government. He wondered what had changed so soon to make them to be clamouring for state property such as cars, plots of lands, bungalows and "even furniture".

He appealed to the NPP to stop defending the "defenceless", if they wanted to save their sinking image, citing the cases of the former Speaker of Parliament, who reportedly looted his official bungalow, and the retrieval of state cars from former government functionaries. "The NPP should stop behaving as if there are two laws in this country -- one for NPP functionaries and other for the rest of the citizens," he added.