Executive Director of the Ghana Anti-Corruption Coalition (GACC), Mrs. Beauty Emefa Narteh has called on politicians to not just make general promises on their plans to fight corruption but to be specific about how they plan to achieve this.
Mrs. Nartey, who was speaking with journalists at a workshop organized by GACC to train journalists on anti-corruption reporting on Tuesday, the 19th of August 2024, in Accra, said what GACC wants the political parties to do is to commit to anti-corruption issues. “Our expectation, she said, is that the manifesto should not just be campaign promises, but they should be very specific issues that are set to address when we talk about issues of transparency, integrity, and anti-corruption. “They should be very specific. When you bring broad campaign promises, it’s very difficult for us to even monitor its implementation. We want to see specific issues.” said. Mrs. Beauty Emefa Narteh
She further explained that “the definition of corruption is not as concrete as it should be, and that is why people can easily get away with it. Our laws prescribe issues that we see as corruption. For instance, we see bribery as corruption. We see procurement breaches. We see issues in relation to the public financial management as corruption. But we want to have a robust definition of corruption that aligns with what the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) prescribes, which Ghana is a signatory to so that once we have adopted the UNCAC as our benchmark in terms of fighting corruption, we need to domesticate these things. And that’s why the gaps that we have should be addressed, and we want to see these gaps reflected in the campaign promises.
Madam Beauty went further to mention how the Conduct of Public Officers Bill has not seen daylight in the eight years of the current administration. She said they were hoping that this would be passed before this year’s end so that it wouldn’t become another campaign promise.
The GACC boss also used the opportunity to call on the government and relevant authorities to strengthen the internal audit agency so that they will have some independence to do their work. In her words, “What we currently have is actually contributing to the corruption in terms of our public management and funds management, and also in terms of public funds accountability.”
Source: By Desmond Tinana