<<Print>>

A law lecturer and expert on constitutional law, Professor Kwesi Prempeh, has urged the electorate to not neglect the role of keeping government accountable after voting it into power. According to him, it had become the norm for Ghanaians to ceremonially cast their votes on election day and thereafter recoil, caring less about how the country was governed. A citizen in a democracy, he said, was one that remained active in the period between elections and held the government accountable for its actions and inaction. Prof. Prempeh who was speaking at a public lecture organised by OccupyGhana (OG), a pressure group, with a focus on public accountability, said, "to do less is to abdicate your responsibility as a Ghanaian citizen". He said it was unfortunate that with the growing religiosity of Ghanaians, corruption had also assumed an alarming proportion, noting that the religious people were the same people engaging in corrupt acts. "We are serving God and Mammon with no pang of conscience," he said. Politics Politics, Prof. Prempeh said, had become a low-risk but a high-reward enterprise with a quick payback period and that all a politician had to do was to get into political office and within a few months, solve all personal problems while the needs of the ordinary person remained unsolved. For him, the political class capture political power, which had become a business where people made heavy investments with the view to reaping huge returns on assumption of power. It was critical, he said, for the country to take a serious look at the way political parties were funded and pointed out that the parties would not take contributions from the ordinary person for fear that that would give them a voice in the running of the affairs of the party. He, therefore, urged Ghanaians to seize control of what it meant to be a citizen, saying that "we must not be deluded. Let's rise up and reclaim our citizenship". Justice A veteran journalist, Ms Elizabeth Ohene, in a contribution, noted that persons who engaged in petty theft were often dealt with more severely but those who stole large sums of money that belonged to the state were rather honoured and extolled by society. And so it seemed the case that "stealing is for small people and corruption is for big people", she added. She also observed the pervasive breach of the Procurement Act by the purchase of 75 per cent of state supplies under sole sourcing in a year and the inflation of contract sums by contractors on the excuse that it took government a long time to pay contractors. Fight against corruption The Bishop of the Accra Diocese of the Catholic Church, Archbishop Gabriel Palmer-Buckle, said in the effort to fight corruption, the human needs of food, shelter, clothing and a modicum of comfort had to be guaranteed by the state at all times. He said the fight against corruption should not be seen to be against any political party but one that was in the interest of national development and called on the clergy to help in that fight, as well all stakeholders, including the family, school, church and the state. The Editor of The New Crusading Guide, Mr Abdul Malik Kwaku Baako, said the timing of what OG was doing was very right and urged them to create a critical mass of affiliates in all educational institutions across the country. He observed that there was an attempt to bastardise the pressure group but encouraged the leadership to remain resolute and undaunted in their quest for a better Ghana. Auditor-General responds to OG A lawyer and leading member of OG, Mr Ace Ankomah, said the government had listened to issues raised by OG and that the Minister of Finance in his budget statement to Parliament, had said that from 2015 the government would implement initiatives to enforce the recommendations of the Auditor-General's Report. He, however, said the government must not wait till next year but had to start that action now.