Impunity is breeding more corruption in Ghana – Emile Short

A former Commissioner at the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), Justice Emile Short says corruption in Ghana was worsening because of lack of commitment to punish offenders.

He said perpetrators of corrupt acts virtually had a carte blanche to do as they please because the authorities were unwilling to hold people accountable for wrong doing in the country.

Some of the brazen acts of corruption witnessed, Justice Short said, were perpetrated with impunity because there is no cost to corruption; people know they will not be punished even if they are caught.

He was speaking on Joy FM’s Super Morning Show Tuesday.

A litany of corruption allegations in the media has rattled many civil society organizations and anti-corruption institutions in the country.

Commenting on the development, Mr. Emile Short said there was so much impunity and lack of accountability in the society coupled with ineffective enforcement of the laws pertaining to.

Mr Short is unhappy that recommendations contained in the National Anti-corruption Action Plan (NACAP), detailing how to effectively fight the canker had largely been ignored by the authorities.

“Nobody seems to be taking about the blueprint for fighting corruption seriously,” he said.

“People want to see action against corruption,” and not committees investigating corruption endlessly and nothing being done, he added.

Executive Director of the Secretariat of the African Parliamentarians Network Against Corruption, Mr. Daniel Batidam, also speaking on the Super Morning Show, said the rhetoric about political commitment to fighting corruption had become empty cacophony.

He said President John Mahama was duty-bound to implement the content of the NACAP because he, as vice-president, commissioned the work that gave birth to the document.

A traditional leader, Nana Asah Kwaw, said there was lack of integrity in public service in the country.

He said he was looking for a day when a public official under whose leadership something untoward happened would resign as a matter of principle.

Nana Ansah Kwaw expressed regret at leadership’s lax attitude towards fighting corruption