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25.04.2015 Politics

Good intentions don't fight corruption - Pratt

By MyJoyOnline
Good intentions don't fight corruption - Pratt
25.04.2015 LISTEN

Managing Editor of the Insight Newspaper Kwesi Pratt has said a good and genuine intention is insufficient if government wishes to fight corruption.

He said the fight against corruption can only be won if some deliberate action is put in place and executed.

Speaking on Radio Gold’s news analysis programme ‘Alhaji and Alhaji’, the veteran journalist said “so far I am not impressed [with the moves to fight corruption] there may be good intentions but good intentions are not sufficient.”

“There may be many people in government, it may be the President or the Chief of Staff. They may have excellent intentions but some deliberate and well thought out action is needed in order to win this battle”, he added.

In Mr Pratt’s view the fight against corruption must begin from the top, where managers are more predisposed to perpetrating such acts.

“When we are talk about corruption, we are not talking about the peasant farmer who struggles constantly to produce the food that we eat and lives in the thatch-roofed house without windows and is susceptible to snake bites. They are not the people engaged in corruption,” he said.

The society’s most corrupt persons according to him are “the most educated. the mangers of the national economy, people who went to Havard University, the Oxford graduate and those with double honours from the University of Ghana.

“These are the people who are in the position to be corrupt and are indeed most corrupt”, he opined.

Mr Pratt is proposing that government in order to deal with the menace must reduce the authority that these managers exert.

By reducing their influence and giving the ordinary person a say in developmental issues will go a long way to reduce, if not eradicate the problem of corruption.

“Powerless people cannot be corrupt; people are corrupt because they have power. The policeman and the headmaster are in the position to be corrupt because of their position of power.”

He said altering the power relations in society and making it possible for people to achieve their social, political and economic objectives without being subjected to the crude and negative power of authority is the only way to change the system.

He does not support the setting up of offices by the president to investigate corrupt acts because he believes that “in the end nothing happens to the fight against corruption.”

He said the assumption that someone in power must be seen at all times before things are done must be ended.

He advised government to ensure that public administrations are decentralised as a way of dealing with corruption.

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | Naa Sakwaba Akwa | [email protected]

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