In all of man’s striving to be great and attain some level of status in society there’s always that tendency to cut corners if the bone of honesty is lost on the individual.
Society’s description of success, the flamboyant lifestyle of others, equally seems to mount pressure on others to get wealth now.
But wealth attained off the sweat of others cannot bring any form of gratification and rigging the loopholes in the system of governance as well just to live comfortably via hoarding of monies state officials know aren’t theirs is another level of corrupt act.
With the weakening of democracy, corruption is also on the rise, working hand in hand, feeding on weakened institutions, and fundamentally unjust systems of power.
Laws are significantly the tested ways through which some level of sanity can be restored in the activities of man.
People genuinely are convinced in serving their constituents at first glance, but the prospects and open doors that such an enviable office in governance proffers is not for the fainthearted to quickly gloss over and stick with a ‘paltry’ amount when they can ‘loot and keep’ and for the rest of their days off official duties to be glorious.
For Ghana, the Conduct of Public Officers Act “seeks to address current weaknesses in the asset declaration system” which remains vital in today’s discourse on ensuring growth in a struggling economy.
This is critical considering the shocking amount of monies found in the home of former sanitation minister, Cecilia Dapaah, earlier this year.
Although she is not the only one to have such an amount, hers has gained notoriety and intensified calls and need for public officials to declare their assets before and after exiting office.
Timeliness in passage of Conduct of Public Officers Act
During the 2024 budget presentation, finance minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, stated that the new Act will introduce provisions to ensure public officers submit their declarations in a timely manner and that an effective verification system is in place.
He stated that the draft Bill is currently under consideration by Cabinet and will subsequently be submitted to Parliament.
Despite the promises of the finance minister, and although the promise to enact the anti-corruption law was contained in the NPP 2020 Manifesto, it was not until around May 2022 that a draft Bill was submitted to Cabinet.
In light of this, relevant stakeholders in the country, including OccupyGhana in particular, initiated follow-ups in the same month of May 2022 for government to expedite the passage of the bill.
In several months of pressure from the group, they were met with “patchy and deflecting” responses from Cabinet.
Eventually, on 14th February 2023, Cabinet informed it that it had rejected the Bill, based on a “blatantly false claim that the Bill’s provisions already existed in other legislation”.
Owing to this, the group remains “unconvinced” that the Government intends to ensure that the draft Bill is passed into law any time soon, because of the dithering and buck-passing that the Government has engaged in, and the absence of any timelines or a roadmap.
As it stands now, the fate of the country’s coffers and its ‘health’ lies in the very hands of the people who are ‘looting’ from it, which begs the question of whether it will evever be passed.
For anything meaningful to be achieved, and reechoing the sentiments of IMANI Vice President, Kofi Bentil, individuals who are not ready to declare their assets publicly should not take up public service roles.
“Please, if you go into public office, declare. The declaration must be a proper declaration, there must be transparency to it. It must be made public, and everybody must know. If you don’t want that don’t go into public office”
Kofi Bentil
The reluctance of public officers to declare their assets and the failure of the supervising state institutions to hold such persons to account has contributed to the growing corruption with impunity.
Most importantly, Parliament must leave this as a critical legacy of passing the bill to support existing legislations on corruption, strengthening law enforcement and stricter enforcement and prosecution of bribery and corruption offences.
In the upcoming Budget debate, it is of utmost importance that Parliament, demands specific answers from the Government regarding timelines and a roadmap.
Meanwhile, the excruciatingly reluctant and deliberately snail-paced consideration of the draft Bill will do nothing to rectify the anomaly within the state institution and government must act now.
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