Dr. EDWARD Mahama, leader of the People’s National Convention (PNC) has accused government of spending public funds unnecessarily.
One such source of waste of funds is the establishment of the new office for accountability at the president’s office which, he said, does not add anything to the anti corruption efforts.
He said the constitution has mandated institutions such as CHRAJ and enacted laws such as 1993 Serious Fraud Office (SFO) acts which give responsibility for curbing corruption and finding causes of losses to government finances to these bodies.
Speaking in an interview with The Chronicle in Accra yesterday, he said setting up an accountability office would cover up rather than expose corruption. He said the SFO needs a legislative instrument to make it fully operational, yet after two and a half years in office, the NPP government has not given that legislature instrument.
“They are making things worse by creating new bureaucracy to spend money” he said, reminding the government that the country is HIPC and therefore must stop spending money unnecessarily.
The PNC leader said the money to be used to provide logistics for the new office could be used to strengthen the SFO, because they have three functions to perform – monitoring, evaluating government expenditure and investigating.
Dr. Mahama also spoke about the need for government to finance political parties in order for democracy to survive.
He said government should ensure that political parties submit their manifestoes and show that they have offices to run their operations.
A regulatory body should also be set up to ensure that each party has offices in all the districts, has audited accounts on how it is operating and how it is being supported and taking the party to congress, which shows the responsibility of the party.
Dr. Mahama urged Ghanaians to vote the NPP out because they have not fulfilled the promise of creating jobs.
