Stealing of state resources and increasing corruption perception in Ghana is being boosted by the principles guiding governance in the country, says head of think tank, IMANI Ghana.
Speaking on a discussion on corruption on Joy FM’s Super Morning Show on Tuesday, Mr Franklin Cudjoe said Ghana’s Constitution allows over-centralisation of governance.
According to him, although there are many reasons for the worsening thievery in Ghana, “the Constitution we have is designed for state capture of state resources” — a situation he maintains would make the fight against the canker difficult to tackle.
He said the situation also makes it difficult for private actors to be part of the development process.
Franklin Cudjoe said Ghana, like most advanced countries, must move away from a system that puts management of state resources largely in the hands of the Executive and a few other state agencies.
According to the Founding President of IMANI Ghana, decentralisation efforts are not going on smoothly in the country because the governance framework presents a significant impediment.
“These things [centralisation of governance] allows a lot of resources at the beck and call of the Executive Presidency and with a majoritarian, tyrannical Parliament to boot, then you are done”, he observed.
Mr Cudjoe also said the situation can be dealt with if sanctioning mechanisms for persons caught in the act are made to work.
Ghana scored 48 points to place 61 out of 175 countries in the 2014 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) released by the Transparency International.
Although that was a slight improvement from previous rankings, recent revelations of corrupt acts in the country seriously cast a slur on that progress. Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | George Nyavor | [email protected]
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