Kofi Bentil, Vice President of Imani Africa, has discounted assertions that President Akufo-Addo deliberately sought to belittle Civil Society Organisations (CS0s) at a meeting.
According to him, the President was a Civil Society person before transitioning into being a President. As such, “before he [Akufo-Addo] became President, he occupied the office of the citizen”.
“I honestly genuinely do not think Akufo-Addo intended to denigrate Civil Society Organisations.
“And the President as you know, being President for less than a decade, all of his life that he has not been President, he has been very vocal in the issues of our national development etcetera and he was speaking as a Civil Society person because he was not elected”.
Kofi Bentil
Mr Bentil further revealed that the citizen’s office and its responsibility is more important than the office of the President.
Justifying his stance, he noted that the President is there because we put him there.
“So, I don’t think the President is denigrating Civil Society Organisations”.
Kofi Bentil
The basis for the IMANI’s Vice President’s comments followed President Akufo-Addo’s comments made at a meeting held on August 18, 2021.
The meeting was with members of the Anti-Corruption Coalition, where the President revealed that he cannot overlook the partisan nature of some of the allegations of corruption and the complicity of some of the CSOs.
Political affiliations of CSOs
Commenting on this, Mr Bentil explained that some CSOs are aligned the President’s government with political affiliation to the party.
“Indeed, we all know of CSOs like AFAG which is directly aligned to the NPP, Let My Vote Count Coalition was aligned to the NPP, we have the Danquah Institute which is a CSO aligned to the NPP and there are many like that, which are aligned to the NPP. So, even if he was talking about CSOs which are politically coloured, I still don’t think that it is a problem.
“At IMANI, we actually have had calls at a point to advice each of the political parties to have think-tank’s because development is a thinking intensive thing. So, to that extent, that some Civil Societies Organisations are politically coloured, I don’t see anything strange about that and they have to be listened to because they are citizens.”
Kofi Bentil
President Akuffo Addo’s anti-corruption coalition comment
President Akufo-Addo at the meeting indicated that despite his misgivings about the neutrality of some groups, he is required to listen to all shapes of opinion with the overall objective to deal with the canker of corruption.
He further explained that the line between the CSOs making independent and politically related commentary “is very thin and in most cases, the lines are in fact crossed”
Additionally, President Akufo-Addo explained that since 2017, there has been increased resource allocations to anti-corruption institutions.
The President noted that the issue of fighting corruption would have been in vain without such investments in anti-graft institutions.
The President also concerted to the fact that there is a welcoming scene to political conversations which hitherto did not exist.
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