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Former President Jerry Rawlings says late President John Mills� administration helped to �institutionalise� corruption in Ghana. In Rawlings� view, Mills� �failure� to punish previous government officials of the Kufuor administration for, in his opinion, gross acts of graft, contributed to normalising corruption in Ghana. At a memorial service organised by the South African High Commission in Accra Saturday in honour of late South African President Nelson Mandela, Rawlings said: �We missed the chance to deal with [corruption]�in 2000; we missed the chance to correct it when we [NDC] won the office again in 2008�. As far as he is concerned, �That was when we contributed to institutionalising corruption�, adding: �These are some of the things Nelson Mandela was fighting; corruption in various forms; human rights violations and crass acquisition of wealth, etc., to the detriment of the populace�. According to Rawlings: �We�ve institutionalised corruption in such a way that it�s making it difficult for us to lift off, and Ghana is almost in that same alley�. Mr Rawlings, who recently repeated gross corruption allegations against his direct successor, John Kufuor, once again argued that corruption, under the constitutional dispensation of the fourth Republic, begun with Kufuor�s presidency. �Ladies and Gentlemen, today corruption has become so rampant that some of us are turning to forget that this is when it started�. He said: �The following government should have instituted measures to investigate and to punish and refused to do that. That is when, I keep saying, you then begin to destroy the moral fabric of society. That is when we now institutionalised corruption�. Rawlings noted that the current viral and cancerous nature of corruption in Ghana cannot be blamed on President John Mahama, whom he says, is doing his best to contain it. �It�s here now; we can feel it all over the place, so this government is responsible for it? This government is responsible for it to some degree, but the starting point is what I�m trying to draw the country�s attention to, when it started in 2000 in vicious ways. Violent things that happened until the country knocked it off�. Rawlings said Mahama, after Mills� death, represents some hope in the fight against corruption. ��He died before his time was due; hope restored to a younger man, but he�s become pretty much overwhelmed even as he�s doing what he can�. At the memorial service were former first lady Nana Konadu Agyemang-Rawlings; South African High Commissioner to Ghana, Jeanette Thokozile Ndhlovu; Ghana�s foreign Minister Hanna Tetteh; the Convention People�s Party�s Chair Samia Nkrumah and and members of the diplomatic community.