A CRISIS OF LEGITIMACY

Orangeburg, South Carolina

3rd November, 2013

There are dire warnings about corruption in our society coming from everywhere.

Chief Justice Wood, former President Rawlings, P.C. Appiah Ofori, Hon. Bagbin and the Auditor General have all expressed concerns about the inexorable march of corruption in our country.

Addressing the 18th edition of the Ghana Journalists Awards in Accra, the Chief Justice said “Ghana needs men of integrity, able visionary and decent leaders urgently.” She added that “unhealthy politicization of corruption only breeds equalization.”

In the Auditor-General’s report on 2011, he lamented, according to paragraph 24 that, “The cataloguing of financial irregularities in my report on MDA’s and other agencies have become an annual ritual that seems to have no effect because affected MDA’S are not seen to be taking any effective action to address the basic problems of lack of monitoring and supervision and non-adherence to legislation put in place to provide effective financial management of public resources.” The AG went on to lament “poor cash management practices resulting in failure to pay revenue collected into the Consolidated Fund, tax irregularities and unauthorized payments as well as non-availability of adequate records on revenue collected.” Wow!!!

Speaking during a radio interview recently, anti-corruption crusader P.C. Appiah Ofori stated that “With the exception of first President Nkrumah, no other President made the attempt to completely eradicate corruption.” Finally, former President Rawlings, addressing the Hogbetsotso festival over the week-end called for support “for President Mahama in his quest to efficiently manage the country and rid it of corruption.”

Taken together with threatened strikes all across the labour front and the mood of the public, these pronouncements bespeak, not just a crisis on corruption. It is a crisis of confidence in our nation and our nascent democracy. Things are not working. The centre is not holding. Our democracy is losing credibility in the eyes of the people. Increasingly, it is becoming “the madness of the many for the enjoyment of the few.” Whenever people who are entrusted with power begin wringing their hands helplessly and calling for action by anonymous others, we are in trouble.

To begin with the Chief Justice, while more men with integrity might help, accountability for all beginning now might take us a long way while we wait for those “men of integrity.” Recently, after the panel she set up to settle the election dispute ruled, there were open accusations that the judgment and/or the panel were corrupt. What about investigating whether the highest court in our land adjudicating the most important case in our history was indeed corrupt? To stay on the case of the judiciary, many of the questionable judgment debt payments were approved or supervised by judges. Why did these judges, acting as patriots not stop these corrupt payments on behalf of Ghana?

With apologies to former President Rawlings, maybe what the President needs now is not support but strength. To date the only NDC Minister who lost his job in the whole” Woyome affair” was the man who was trying to stop it, Attorney General Martin Amidu. If President Mahama needed support, he should have stood with Martin Amidu, not against him. Let the President lead the way in an uncompromising assault on corruption and many, including me will follow him through hell. He has no support because he has not led. Too many see him as part of the problem rather than the solution.

As far as the Auditor General’s report is concerned, it bespeaks a gargantuan failure by Parliament to perform their constitutional duty of executive oversight. The truth is that since the beginning of the 4TH Republic our Parliaments have been consistently derelict in supervising the executive.

Too many media practitioners are just as guilty of corruption as the politicians they cover. We must have more of the old-fashioned reporters if the media is to play its proper role of exposing corruption.

Unfortunately, the opposition NPP appears more interested in its own internal politics than the fate of the nation. Sadly, many in the NPP put attacking their own far, far ahead of critiquing the government.

Finally, aside from dealing with corruption in the judiciary, we must reach into our parties to rid them of corruption. Corrupt parties and primary processes can never produce honest governments. The primary processes and internal processes of our parties are the equivalent of the fish’s head. The rot in our society starts from there.

Let us move forward--- together.

Arthur Kobina Kennedy