Fellow Ghanaians, today it gives me much pleasure to start this new series and a drive to push up, a notch or two higher, our quest for a better democracy. We all know that corruption is such a serious canker in our society and as such, I deem it a very good point to start this series.
It’s instructive at this point to note, at the trial of Socrates, a point he made to the jury. To paraphrase, Socrates told the jury in his final words to them that the jury should take care of his sons. They should correct them if they were interested in material wealth, instead of virtue.
That is the point. Correct Socrates’ sons if they were interested in material wealth instead of virtue. This passage, it’s quite instructive for our march towards a better governance, especially in our quest to stem corruption in the bud.
To give further perspective, just on the 17th of November, 2023, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference came out with a communique in which they complained vehemently about unbridled corruption. The Bishops’ Conference made the point that we actually are in a state of uncontrolled corruption, institutionalized bribery and corruption. Of course, we all acknowledge that it didn’t start today, and we’ll soon go back into history on that.
On the 23rd of August, 2023, Reverend Opuni-Frimpong, former General Secretary of the Christian Council, made the same point. He said we’re living at the mercy of politicians who are so drowned in so much bribery and corruption.
Recently, Kennedy Agyapong also had his own bite. He famously said, and to paraphrase, that government officials of this NPP administration are stealing money and stashing same away abroad, as if there is no tomorrow. Fellow Ghanaians, think about that. He says they are stashing money abroad as if there is no tomorrow.
So, with this brief introduction, you see why it’s important for us to talk about asset declaration and corruption in Ghana? Now you look into the Constitution (1992) and you see that amongst other things, the Constitution tries to put in place practical measures to curb corruption. And here, I’m specifically interested in article 286, clauses 3 and 4.
In actual fact, the whole of 286 is instructive, but I’m going straight for the jugular. 286 (3), talks about the asset declaration law, the circumstances under which assets that have been declared by certain public officials will be made available.
That is to say, in simple terms, on what occasions will the assets declared be disclosed? And that is the heart of the matter when it comes to the asset declaration law as an anti-corruption tool. Straight away, my point is that 286 (3) lists three instances where the assets declared can be disclosed. It’s woefully inadequate.
Once again, to paraphrase, it says that when an officer declares his assets, the only occasions on which those assets be disclosed to the public, will be, one, when a court of law asks for same to be disclosed, meaning that there’s a case in court and when it has been successfully argued, the judge makes an order for the assets of the person of interest to be disclosed to the court.
Two, when a Commission of Inquiry has been set up and it needs the assets disclosed. Three, when you have a case before CHRAJ and CHRAJ is investigating same.
Now, this is woefully inadequate because we’ve said it so many times that in our past, assets of public officers used to be disclosed to the public. We all have the famous Gazette notifications or the Gazette publications where during the PNDC time, Chairman Rawlings, as he then was known, published his assets together with all of his appointees and even former appointees.
I have here one of those publications. So, you have Wednesday, 7th October, 1992, Gazette number 40 and then you see names and details of certain persons, right? So, you will see P.V. Obeng, Commodore Steve Obimpeh cetera, et cetera. All of them, all of them published their assets.
So here you have it. If you went to the Assembly Press today, you could purchase a copy. So, the point is that if in 1992, we could publish the assets, declare the assets and also have them published for all citizens to get copies, why don’t we do so in our next law on asset declaration?
When I say our next law, it is public knowledge that the asset declaration law, Public Office Holders (Declaration of Assets and Disqualification Act, 1998) is under review. So, this Act 550 is under review thanks to the IMF.
You know, President Akufo-Addo had been running away from it. When I say running away from it, it’s public knowledge that Occupy Ghana wrote to the presidency to inquire about the Bill. At a point the president said they were no longer working on that law. So, meaning that efforts to review that law had come to a standstill. But thanks to the IMF programme we had to subscribe to, it’s back on the table. Because it’s been made an IMF conditionality.
Now having been made an IMF conditionality, it is the case that, yes, the government is working on a draft. Prior to 2022, there had been previous drafts. Those were the ones that I mentioned earlier that at a point the President said they were no longer interested in. The asset declaration law. Good. But now they are back to it. And so, we are all waiting with bated breath. But we should be making an input; making a serious input because so far, the indications we are getting in the public don’t seem to bode well for a good world class asset declaration law that the President is promising us.
Now, at the 2023 Bar conference, the President addressed the gathering in Cape Coast. He promised that his government was going to deliver a new asset declaration law along the lines of Kenya and the U.S.A. That is what the President said. Now, before I come to Kenya and U.S.A., fast forward, in the 2024 budget, Ken Ofori-Atta in delivering the President’s budget, indicated in paragraph 184 that the government was in the process of presenting a bill to Parliament on the new asset declaration law. Then, Minister Ofori-Atta mentioned that there would be a provision for verification of the assets that are declared.
Now, yes, when Ofori-Atta mentions verification of assets declared, it’s one step forward. Yes, one step forward because currently under the law, there is no express provision for verification once the officers involved as ministers and other senior public officers declare their assets.
But it’s the case that even on the ground, practically, the Auditor-General has started verifying the assets, at least in a way, to a certain extent, as we are told by Mr. Domelevo that when he was in office, when a declaration is made, they open and read through. I’m not saying that’s a state-of-the-art verification, but I’m saying that some efforts have been made. But the point is that, verification of the assets is not the ultimate.
The ultimate in the new law will be publication after the declaration. Publication on the internet. I say on the internet because it’s already clear to us that considering the size of Ghana, the size of the Public Service, right now over 650,000 employees, you look at the ministers, et cetera, yes, it makes sense that the publication can be done online, but it must be made.
So, the point is that so far we are not hearing that publication of the assets, is in the Bill. And that is where our worry should be as fellow Ghanaians, because you remember President Akufo-Addo has told us to rise up as citizens and not be spectators. So, it’s important, it’s very imperative that at this stage, we make an input that we want to see publication of the assets that have been declared because without publication, as Lawyer Samson Anyenini puts it, the Bill is not worth its name.
Yeah, so that is the extent to which publication is important, because once publication is done, somebody can sit in Bawku, look up the list and all the assets declared.He can check that, a minister who comes from Bawku, has declared his assets. Do they match what that person is seeing on the ground? Perhaps there is a certain house he’s been frequenting, perhaps his relatives live in it, and the whole community knows that is his house. Yet it’s not in his online declaration. With this the man in Bawku can lodge a complaint. Another example. Somebody in ‘Fankyeniko’ sits and sees that one of the citizens who is a minister has declared assets but he’s left out a certain famous property in the town. He too will have an opportunity to lodge a complaint.
So, you see that publication will do us a lot of good. And not just a lot of good, actually to bring us at par with certain countries we’ve prided ourselves as being better than. Foremost amongst them is Liberia. Can you imagine? Another example is Central African Republic. As for South Africa, we all know, well, they are ahead of us. So, why would Liberia today allow publication of their assets and we who were doing it in 1992 would throw ours away? It’s common knowledge that we usually, what do you call it, extol ‘sankofa’. So, in this instance, let’s do ‘sankofa’. Right. Now, quite apart from the publication, I think one other instructive point we should be looking at is the calibre of people who enter politics (national governance). That’s before a person enters Public Office. I will come back to this point. Because, by all means, there are other provisions that are instructive, but as I mentioned, I’m looking at the heartbeat, the front and centre of the Bill-publication of assets.
The last word on publication. If you look across civil society, you talk to Mary Awelana Adda of GII, you talk to Kojo Asante of CDD, H. Kwasi Prempeh of CDD, and Ace Ankoma are all in favour of publication. Everybody is in favour of publication. So that is why I’m placing so much emphasis on publication. The other improvements, yes, they are welcome, but no matter the other provisions, if publication doesn’t make it, then forget it. The Bill is not worth its name.
Now, let’s go back a bit into history and see if we can make some further improvements to this Bill. I’m most interested in SMCD 216. Now, SMCD 216 was made during a military regime. It has a list of 105 citizens who were disqualified from running for public office because they could not account for the assets they had acquired whilst previously in public office. So, when we say SMCD, it means Supreme Military Council Decree. The second one was led by Lt General Akuffo.
Lt General F.W.K. Akufo signed it on the 30th day of December, 1978. This was in preparation for the subsequent elections. So now look, 105 citizens, this is what they did. It meant that if you couldn’t justify your assets, you would not be allowed to hold Public Office and you would not be able to contest in public elections.
Let me mention some of the notable people who were disqualified. Of course, subsequently they were able to come back, but not in the 1979 elections because some of them went to court and lost. Notable among them was J.H. Mensah. Look, number one, you have Reginald Reynolds Amponsah. Number two, Chief S.D. Dombo and so on and so forth. So, you find J.H. Mensah and other popular politicians. This was a law that disqualified them.
And as I said, J.H. Mensah went to court, they lost, and so they were disqualified in the 1979 elections and so on and so forth. So, what I’m talking about is that is it also a time for us to do ‘sankofa’ in line with this SMCD 216? So that now that we all accept that so many people have amassed wealth illegally, we should set up a commission, we should make a law and set up a commission along the lines of the SMCD 216? So that those who want to contest elections would then go before that Commission and justify their assets. Because if at that time we could get 105, who knows, we may well get even more today. And so, through this, we’ll be sanitizing the system.
The point is that we may well get a higher number than the 105 who are captured by this SMCD 216. And in that manner, we would be moving our democracy forward. Because once again, let’s go back to Socrates, he has dire consequences for us if we are not willing to fight corruption in our democracy.
In The Republic, Socrates makes the point that if we don’t fight corruption, what we are going to get is anarchy, then a dissolution of our democracy. Yes. So, and when we talk about Socrates, maybe for the record, let’s repeat. Socrates is reputed as the best philosopher ever. And so, you would find that a lot of his writings have influenced the Western democracies.
Yes, you read the literature, you’re told about how the writings of Socrates have influenced Western democracies. So anytime we cite Socrates, we cite with pride because for a man who has contributed so much to Western democracies, and we have copied large parts of our Constitution from these Western countries, it means that we are also beneficiaries of the ideas of Socrates.
And even apart from democracy, even going to church, they’ll tell you that the ideas of Socrates as written by Plato (the Platonic writings) were used by the church. You know, Socrates never wrote himself. It was Plato who wrote what Socrates said. So, they’ll tell you that these Platonic writings have also largely influenced even the church.
So, you are told about the writings of St. Augustines. And if you’re a Catholic, even if you’re not a Catholic, you read about St. Augustines, you will be told how St. Augustines helped to keep the church afloat after the dark ages. And Augustines was influenced a lot by the Platonic writings. That’s the writings of Plato, etc.
So, when we talk about Socrates, he’s no mean person, right? A man of very great achievement. So, you see Socrates warning us that if you don’t fight corruption and bribery in a democracy, very soon you’ll have anarchy. And that’s not difficult to imagine because people who feel hard done by may want to take a revenge because they sit and they see people, that’s politicians who hardly had vehicles. Some who rode only bicycles come into office and now are in V8s. Those who were in mini cars, mini coopers, etc. Today, they are in a string of V8s, etc.
So, you see that this is a clarion call that we fail to fight corruption at our own peril. So, it means more or less, this is an existential threat. Because for the Catholic Church, once again, to tell us that, look, bribery and corruption have been institutionalized, that we have uncontrolled corruption means, fellow Ghanaians, this is a time for us to sit up. We sit up or we perish.
That is it for this week. Make a date with me next week in our quest for a better governance for Ghana. I am Martin Kpebu.