The Executive Secretary of Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII), Mr Yaw Buabeng Asamoa, has stressed the need for ruling governments to pursue what he terms incumbency accountability while they are still in power.
He said incumbency accountability means enforcing existing rules and regulations about anti-corruption and general public sector decisions while the government is still in charge. He said a selective enforcement of such rules against those in authority has always been countered by a wholesale enforcement of the law against officials of past regimes by new governments.
Speaking in an interview in Accra, Mr Asamoa said a look at the country’s history rather points to a system of post-regime accountability, which has held back the country’s development. He explained that new regimes, whether military or civilian, have always resorted to the setting of special investigation teams or commissions of inquiry to investigate past regimes to prosecute them. He said while an incumbent government conducts investigations into past regimes, infractions by its party loyalists and other sympathetic officials go unchecked.
Mr Asamoa said the worst that has ever happened to such identified corrupt officials is dismissal without the government offering any reasons for it. “The effect on the society is that it gives one the confidence that one is above the law since one will only be dismissed,” he said. He said the absence of incumbency accountability breeds indiscipline and contempt for the rule of law. He said “It also damages the political credibility of the party for not taking action against its own people. It also undermines the validity of long-term state commitments as it casts most public decisions into doubt”.
According to Mr Asamoa, the divestiture of state enterprises and agreements with foreign firms remain valid as long as the party is still in power. He said such circumstances, encourage the culture of secrecy about government activities. The executive secretary said post-regime accountability tends to also undermine political stability since those who fed threaten can instigate confusion to protects their interests. He said new regimes will then have to start afresh, since it would not trust anything left behind, be it information, programme or even workers, stressing that “it generates the phenomenon of stop and start policy”.
