President Mahama:"Prioritise anti-corruption campaigns"

President John Dramani Mahama on Monday called on African countries to prioritise anti-corruption campaigns by initiating useful measures that would stem the practice on the continent.    He said: "Corruption knows no borders and it is therefore imperative for the adoption of internal and international measures to fight the practice. This we can also do by strengthening various institutions to deal with it."    President Mahama said this when he addressed the African Association Authorities Conference (AAACA) in Accra.    The conference, which is the second after the one Bujumbura, Burundi in 2011 attracted participants from all the 53 member countries and beyond.    The two-day international conference would also afford the participants the opportunity to share experiences and the measures countries had embarked on to fight corruption.     President Mahama explained that the strengthening of institutions could empower anti-corruption organizations to take up effective responsibilities to change the trend in the coming years.    He said Ghana had already embarked on the strengthening of institutions by providing legal framework to the passage of the Public Procurement Act, Anti-Money laundering Act, Whistle Blowers Act, while Cabinet had also approved the Code of Conduct bill for public officials.    The President said government would soon hold a National Constitutional Conference which would among other things empower anti-corruption institutions, empower Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice to enforce some of their laws on corrupt persons.    He said the conference would also aptly regulate a regime of gifts to public officials and provide a good foundation for a legal framework.    President Mahama said apart from coming out with the legal framework, the government had also developed a national anti-corruption action plan that had enabled the country to sign all the international protocols and conventions that would empower government to mete out appropriate punishments to corrupt persons.    The President said the institution of the Sole Commissioner to adjudicate judgement debts was another means government had adopted to fight corruption and appealed to those who have inputs to avail themselves for the smooth fight against the practice.    President Mahama promised that his administration would closely work with other countries and anti-corruption bodies to reduce or completely eliminate the canker in the coming years.    Dr Jean Baptiste Elias, President of the Interim Steering Committee of the AAACA, said corruption was taking a toll on the entire world, particularly in the last decade, where the practice assumed an alarming status.    To deal with it therefore, he appealed to all member states to sign on to the conventions and protocols that would empower them to effectively fight it.    He said although 53 member states had signed on various conventions,  20 were yet to ratify those protocols and conventions and appealed to them to institute national anti-corruption structures that would help them to compare notes with other member countries at the various regional conferences.    Dr Elias commended the government and people of Ghana for their special interest in anti- corruption programmes in the country and beyond.     GNA

Nana Akufo-Addo Embarking On Thank You Tours?

Ask Nana Akua Tweneboah-Koduah

Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, the NPP’s bitterest defeated ex-flagbearer for the 2012 Presidential Election has started a “Thank You” tour of the 10 regions of the country.

Nana Akufo-Addo is going on this tour because there have been severe wrangling in the NPP concerning who to lead the party in 2016 following the declaration and confirmation by the Supreme Court (SC) that President John Mahama was duly and validly elected in the 2012 Presidential Election.

One wonders why Nana Akufo-Addo will embark on such a tour when he told Ghanaians that he was taking a break in politics on the same day that the SC dismissed his slapdash petition case on all the six pleadings. In case you may have forgotten it is this same Nana Akufo-Addo who told the Central Regional delegation of the NPP last week that he was even cutting out of the country for one month to rest and consult with his God, so why this sudden U-turn to embark on a thank you tour?

By the way, who is Akufo-Addo going to thank? Is it the 5 million supporters who voted for him to lose the 2012 Presidential Election? Does Akufo-Addo believe in those supporters? Or Akufo-Addo is embarking on the tour to thank the Supreme Court?

Nana Akufo-Addo rejected the results declared by the Electoral Commission and went to the Supreme Court. For eight months he kept the whole country under shrouds only for his terrible case to be thrown out on August 29, 2013.  He did not believe in the votes cast by his supporters that was why Akufo-Addo did his own arithmetic on the election results and went to court believing that he was going to become president through the back door.

Therefore, with the issue finally settled by the SC, who is Nana Addo going to thank? Is it those who voted for him or those who did not vote for him or the members of the SC?

Normally people go on thank you tours when they have won something. It is highly odd and unusual for a losing candidate in a major election to embark on a thank you tour. Is Akufo-Addo going to thank his supporters for helping him run a bad political campaign which eventually led to his defeat? Or is he going to thank them for swallowing his lies and deception during SC petition case?

It is strongly believed that Nana Akufo-Addo is being goaded on by some of his supporters in the top hierarchy of the NPP to use the tour to test his popularity and ability and also silence the dissenting voices in the NPP which have become much more pronounced in recent times.

Nana Akufo-Addo still harbours the false impression that he will one day become president of Ghana that is why he is still talking about his one-dimensional free Senior High School education which did not fly with voters who saw it as a political gimmick to deceive them for their votes.

Indeed Akufo-Addo’s refusal to go away from the political turf is going to divide the NPP and what we are currently seeing in the NPP is just the least of their problems. Because if Akufo-Addo, who still commands a sizeable following of the NPP delegates decides to run again for the 2016 election, the NPP will split into two. Just watch my lips, “If Akufo-Addo decides to run in 2016, the NPP will split into two.”

Nana Akufo-Addo is a political spent force. He has no new ideas for the NPP or Ghana but because he still harbours deep hatred for the Ashanti faction within the NPP who did little to get him elected, Nana Akufo-Addo has decided to draw rings around the NPP by staying around and shinning his eyes on everything that goes on in the party.

To say the least, this strange thank you tour by Nana Akufo-Addo is needless and a waste of time. It is rather going to hype tensions in the NPP which is sharply divided and is struggling to find the soul of the party which is currently missing.

The battle to win the heart and soul of the NPP has just begun. We live to see!

nakuakoduah@yahoo.com

Editorial

A VIEW BACK INTO LITERATURE

The Republic desktop dictionary defines literature as: “Written works with artistic value”. Written works, it says include, fiction, poetry, drama and criticism that are recognized as having important or permanent artistic value.

Literature has been used since the beginning of global enlightenment and world civilization. Indeed, from archeology to zoology (A-Z), the literature pieces were used to engender the commonsense nature and its capability to create a world of peace, a world of bountiful and world of security for all God’s creation.

When in the ancient times, the literature were used to educate the living on natures dos and don’ts, the modern world is using the same literature today for self-destruction. The reason why one must pity the current generation is also that all the mentors are no longer around and none was able to inherit their natural legacies that had helped turn the then infant world around.

Sometime literature expedition with its attendant enlightening experience would remind us of the contemporaries of William Shakespeares; Geoffrey Chaucers; John Donne; John Dryden; Jonathan Swift, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and others, who used the literature to persistently educate the emerging England society – in all the Great Britain’s facet of life – in their collective effort of creating just and peaceful world for themselves and posterity.

The Republic is saying all these because, it thinks adopting the right literature path today the current world could sigh at peace with itself.

But who are those to champion the holy crusade and how? The aforementioned literature greats had successfully straightened their society from it’s perishing path, through gatherings and cells where educative poetic dramas were staged; where live stage dramas were performed for the vivid understanding of the then not-so-much-educated society.

Today the well-advanced modern society couldn’t make any meaningful use for the vast opportunity and logistic endowment all around it.

To cut a long story short, this paper has realized recently with dismay that, even the local film and theater stakeholders find it very difficult to hire good editors and hot-on-the-job interpreters, which leaves many literature students and lay viewer and listener in the dark.

In most of the films we watch on the screens, the Africanism in particular has always almost been subjugated by the western cultures; thus making Africa, the first and foremost continent a chorus singer to the western vocalists.

Today by going western all African lifestyle have been westernized including its faith. The continent does nothing for itself, if not western approved: even how to ‘sleep with one’s spouse need to be copied from the west.

And the injurious part of it all was when the continent’s children start behaving the alien way with the wide mouth remaining dips on the continent for hope.

However; the Republic could only end this piece by asking, like an age-old Nigerian novelist, poet, lecturer and playwright thus: Has African A God?