Concurring With Joe Ghartey

Hon. Joe Ghartey has called for the telecasting of future high-notched corruption cases. What a fantastic proposal. We could not have agreed more with the position, whose many advantages towards reducing to the barest minimum, the endemic graft threatening our political morality is beyond reproach.

Given the uselessness of the varied interventions so far to reduce graft in public institutions and others outside them, such novelties as giving opportunities to many Ghanaians to simultaneously listen to and watch proceedings about corruption cases in court should not be hushed.

The negative repercussions of graft in any given community are too apparent to be ignored, more so, in a newfound oil-driven economy.

Our economic status as an oil-exporting country predisposes us to corruption, something civil society organisations and politicians claim have started showing up already. When such cases pop up, as they surely will, the courts must deal with them. Being novelties when they occur, the need to give ample opportunity to curious Ghanaians to learn and know the issues at stake should not be overlooked.

We have heard many contributions supporting the Honourable gentleman's position and encourage others who would not see the goodness in the arrangement to remove their political lenses and be objective, for once, about the proposal.

As we advance in experience in our practice of democracy, unknown challenges are bound to emerge and these must be tackled in the best of forms so that questions about bias or objectivity would not rear their heads.

We can bet our last cedi that the advantages inherent in the novelty of opening up the Supreme Court to television cameras far outweigh shutting the bowels of the courtroom to the public.

We recall how some opponents of the novelty, even when it was already operational, sought to give it a bad name and hang it; an undertaking which matched attributes of political machinations. With a general consensus about the goodness of the undertaking, it has survived the intrigues and even waxed stronger with the passing days.

In a similar vein, it is our take that Parliament should, as a matter of urgency, give a legislative backing to the proposal so that Ghanaians would not be victims of propagandists, who would stop at nothing to throw dust into the eyes of their compatriots.

When persons entangled in graft are showed live defending themselves against the facts of the case in full glare of the public as they view the proceedings, the war against corruption would gain an important impetus.

Understanding how corrupt public officials ply their trade is an important way of discouraging others from meddling in graft. Naming and shaming corrupt public officials and their accomplices in the private sector will be enhanced when television cameras are allowed in the courtrooms.