The Executive Director of the Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII), Mr Vitus Azeem, has asked the flag bearers of political parties to go beyond rhetoric and demonstrate greater commitment to the fight against corruption.
He said in as much as it was good for political leaders to make pledges to fight corruption, they must be more specific in their commitment and ensure that their followers also make similar pledges.
Assessing the commitments being made by political parties and their flag bearers to fight corruption in the 2012 electioneering in an interview with the Daily Graphic, Mr Azeem said the pronouncements being made by the political leaders on the subject were mere political talk.
While addressing the students and faculty of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi last Wednesday, the flag bearer of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, declared his commitment to make corruption unattractive for everybody under his administration when he became President of the Republic of Ghana.
For his part, the flag bearer of the Progressive People’s Party (PPP), Dr Papa Kwesi Nduom, has waged a strong campaign of providing incorruptible leadership, pledging to publicly declare his assets and tax certificates, as well as source of campaign funding, after filing his nomination.
Mr Azeem said those pledges were good, but they must be taken with a pinch of salt because they fell short of giving concrete benchmarks to measure the sincerity of the flag bearers to the fight against corruption.
He said it was not enough for party leaders to declare their assets; they were also required by law to declare the assets of their political parties.
He said it was important for political leaders to ensure that their ministers or parliamentary candidates also declared their assets publicly and sanction those who failed to comply.
“It’s not for you to say, ‘I’m incorruptible’. Your people should also be clean of corruption,” he insisted.
Mr Azeem said under the erstwhile NPP administration, for instance, former President Kufuor promised zero tolerance for corruption, noting, however, that some of the things Nana Akufo-Addo spoke about in Kumasi, such as judgement debt, resulted from the abrogation of contracts under the Kufuor administration.
He said it was important to make specific commitment to fight corruption, instead of making general pledges.
He said if one pledged to ensure the passage of the Right to Information Bill, for instance, one must give specific time (say 100 days) within which that pledge would be redeemed, so that at the expiration of that time, the people could hold one accountable to one’s words.
“When you make such specific commitments, then when you come to power we can demand that you said you would do this and that,” he noted.