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Opinions of Tuesday, 22 November 2022

Columnist: Alhajj Suleman

The Anas principle vs John Mahama's definition of corruption

Corrupt individuals don't receive commiserate punishments as murderers do in the Anas principle Corrupt individuals don't receive commiserate punishments as murderers do in the Anas principle

If there's one thing I have ever agreed with John Mahama on, it's his definition of corruption as "mass murder". It's however important to point out that corruption was pervasive under his watch too.

Having agreed that corruption is "mass murder" because corruption deprives the masses of good roads which causes accidents and leads to deaths; corruption deprives the masses of access to good healthcare which leads to deaths; corruption deprives the masses of access to good food and nutrition which causes deaths, and so on, shouldn't we be looking at the sanctioning regime for corruption?

If you agree that corruption is equivalent to or probably worse than mass murder, don't you think that we should do to corrupt individuals what we do to murderers?

To that extent, I find the Anas principle not enough, in that, with it, the corrupt individuals don't receive commiserate punishments as murderers do. But, at least, the Anas principle allows us to ridicule and shame the corrupt, which in some cases, could be worse than death.

For me, any method that can be used to uproot mass murderers, I'm all for it. Consequently, I score the Anas principle 90%, but we need to proceed from there as a society to hand down the corrupt what we hand down to mass murderers.