Corruption is killing Ghana’s soul - PPP

The Progressive People’s Party (PPP) has pointed out that corruption has “become the number one enemy of progress” in Ghana.

“It has been the main contributor of the deplorable conditions the Ghanaian is still tangoing with today,” the PPP chairman Nii Allotey Brew-Hammond said at a press conference, Tuesday.

Responding to President John Mahama’s State of the Nation Address last week, the PPP said: “We live in almost perpetual darkness because of corruption; we virtually live in abject poverty because of corruption; the public sector is virtually dead because of corruption; quality of education has hit an all-time low because of corruption; the proverbial Ghanaian value which hitherto was the cynosure of all eyes, is gone due to corruption.”

“Corruption has resulted from waste within the public sector; corruption has spawned under-development in every part of our dear Nation; corruption has led to the neglect of various sectors of the Ghanaian economy; corruption has contributed to low living standards and its attendant hardships, and; corruption has contributed to the now very visible class distinction in our society.

“So corruption, now constitutes the illegitimate heartbeat of the current state of the Ghanaian society,” Brew-Hammond said.

According to him, President Mahama lacks the political will to fight the menace.

“As the lawyers say, anyone advocating equity must first come with clean hands. We must raise a question on the sincerity of the President to decisively deal with corruption. Our standpoint is influenced by the apparent lack of political will on the part of the President to deal with some corrupt officials and companies on whose cases the courts have ruled in favour of the State.

“The Supreme Court ruling that the state retrieve millions of Cedis illegally (and fraudulently) paid to Ghanaian businessman, Alfred Agbesie Woyome, is still pending execution, and; yet another case is a High court ruling the Mahama administration is yet to respect. And that is the removal of “ex-refinery differentials” from the prices of most petroleum fuels smuggled onto new prices set by the National Petroleum Authority while the prices were on their way to filling stations in 2010. So how do we trust the President for results on his latest-declared crusade?” he asked.