Tema-Ghana, July 24, GNA – “The problem Ghana has with the fight against corruption is that we have failed to relook at the 1992 Constitution, which is the biggest hindrance to the fight against corruption.
“It gives state institutions powers to fight against corruption with the left hand and uses the right hand to take away those powers,” Mr. Emmanuel Wilson Junior, Chief Crusader of the Crusaders Against Corruption, Ghana, has stated.
Mr. Wilson said the fight against corruption was a fight for all and therefore called for a mass movement of citizens to call for a constitutional review to move it from a political one to that of the Development Constitution.
He said too much power is given to the executive through the President who is expected to appoint every head of state-owned institutions, including the institutions mandated to fight corruption.
“If a president or government has all the authority to appoint and ‘disappoint, then it is expected that the appointees, especially those to institutions mandated to fight against corruption, are covertly disarmed,” he said.
He described Ghana’s 1992 Constitution as a political Constitution’ explaining that “it seeks to protect the politicians; that’s why we have an indemnity clause in it, and it gives unreasonable power to the president; with this, every institution that is built from it has the aim of protecting the politician”.
Mr. Wilson indicated that with this, when one engaged in a corrupt act, all you needed was to align with a political party, and that would guarantee your freedom.
Mr. Wilson questioned why both former President John Dramani Mahama and current President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo had yet to make any effort to see to the implementation of the Constitution Review Commission’s Report after the demise of the late President Professor John Evans Atta Mills.
He deduced that politicians would not want an amendment to the constitution because of the power they enjoy when in government, stressing that “till we decide that as a nation we will put pressure on them to let us have an amendment to the constitution, the fight against corruption will be a mirage.”
