[ 2014-11-21 ]

Corruption keeping intelligent people from politics – Prof. Prempeh decries
Politics is now business in Ghana, and has
indirectly side-lined persons with intelligence
and ability to govern, and replaced with
substandard leaders, a professor of law, Prof. H.
Kwasi Prempeh has suggested.

Running a country is now a business, he explained,
therefore persons who are appointed into positions
should have contributed financially or through any
unscrupulous means.

Speaking at the second OccupyGhana forum in Accra
Thursday, he said this could probably explain the
quality of persons in ministerial and other
questionable positions.

“So important offices of state, ministerial
positions that should go to men and women of
talent, and of integrity and devotion to the
national project are given as rewards to persons
who made contributions,” he opined.

Therefore, he indicated, instead of public
officers seeing their office as a place of trust
where intelligent people go to serve, Ghanaian
politicians see it as a place to solve their
earthly material problems and opportunity to
correct financial deficit.

The canker of people ascending to political office
to amass wealth could be cured, Prof. Prempeh
said, if Ghanaians become assertive and demand
accountability from politicians who have taken
advantage of their sanctimonious stance to
perpetuate corruption.

Dissecting the issue further, he noted regrettably
that anytime there is an upsurge in corruption, a
growing religiosity of the Ghanaian is witnessed.

He could not understand why some Ghanaians take
religious programmes serious and yet are engulfed
by corruption.

“We have indeed perfected the act of serving God
and mammon,” he said.

SOURCES OF CORRUPTION
He said the larger society appears to accept
corruption in the sense that persons who become
wealthy suddenly and inexplicably are welcomed,
and persons who do not take advantage of their
positions to enrich themselves are rather mocked
and given religious titles, thus turning morality
upside down.

Ghanaians judge success using the standard of the
drug dealer, he remarked. One is not judged by
ones diligent work but how they become financially
successful, stressing the society and
personalities involved in corruption are
“collectively, morally culpable” as all
“contribute to the epidemic that begins to scare
us”.

Unfortunately, he remarked, Ghana’s much touted
democracy has now become an opportunity for
corruption.

He said the popular definition of democracy –
government of the people, by the people and for
the people – has turned into government of the
politician, by the politician and for the
politician.

Source - Joy News

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