He said corruption, which had permeated the country, was not new in this part of the world, but it had become endemic because the systems intended to check its pervasiveness had become weak.

 

“In Ghana if you want anything to work, the first and foremost is to look for the system, establish it, make it work and our country will move forward,” he stated.

 

He said there were many instances where state officials sacked for exhibiting bad conduct had used emissaries to plead for reinstatement, adding, “We don’t respect our laws. I think the person who breaks the rule must be sacked, and sacked and just sacked.”

 

Prof. Oquaye, who was the main speaker at a Leadership Summit organised by the University of Ghana Students Representative Council (SRC) in collaboration with the KKOR Foundation, said Ghana suffered from two types of corruption.

 

These, he said, were systemic corruption, which is corruption of the system itself which made corruption become endemic, and symptomatic corruption, which is the symptom of the corruption experienced as a result of the first.

 

Prof Oquaye, a former second deputy Speaker of Parliament, also questioned how the legislature which was mandated to check the Executive could do that effectively when the 1992 Constitution mandated the President to appoint most of the ministers from Parliament and when there was no separation of powers between the two.

 

“If you want members of Parliament (MPs) to check the Executive it will not work because of the systemic arrangement, where MPs are chosen for ministerial posts and all the MPs on the Majority side are looking up to the Executive for posts,” he stated.

 

“Systemically, by that kind of arrangement it will not work,” he stressed, adding that today if Parliament could not exercise control over the Executive and ensure accountability, it was due to the country’s systemic arrangement.

 

He cited one of the systemic provisions in the constitution as a clause that said when Parliament passed a vote of no confidence in a minister, that minister may resign, which meant the said minister was under no compulsion to do so.

 

Touching on power sharing, Prof. Oquaye said it did not mean appointing members of the opposition as ministers but indicated a countervailing authority in Ghana to promote good governance.

 

This he explained as other parties other than the incumbent exercising strong and meaningful power within the state. He said Ghana, like Britain, needed very strong institutions to make good governance possible.

 

According to Prof. Oquaye, when the idea of the Council of State was first mooted, it was to have a semblance of a council of chiefs who were not appointed but were already sub-chiefs in their own right, who would advise the President.

 

He said unfortunately, the vast majority of the country’s Council of State membership was appointed by the President instead of elders of the country belonging to the Council by right.

 

Prof Oquaye said the appointment of the Council members compromised their influence on the President.

 

“The President appoints the vast majority of the members of the Council of State and we expect him to be controlled by them. So our systemic arrangements are woefully wrong. No wonder the President doesn’t even benefit from these members of the Council of State,” he stressed, adding that the Council members were mere beneficiaries of the President’s generosity.