EX-SPEAKER'S ORDEAL - BIG LESSON FOR ALL (Front page) 28-05-09

Story: Kofi Yeboah & Caroline Boateng

LEADING members of the clergy and anti-corruption campaigners in the country have called on Parliament to learn from the experience of the former Speaker of Parliament, Mr Ebenezer Begyina Sekyi Hughes, and have a policy on the entitlements of leaders of the House crafted.
They said this would help avoid the recurrence of such an incident.
They said the saga had brought the high office of Speaker of Parliament into disrepute and there was the need to redeem the image of the office, which is the third highest of the land after the President and the Vice President.
Those who shared their views with the Daily Graphic in separate interviews were the Catholic Bishop of Cape Coast, Peter Cardinal Appiah Turkson, the acting Commissioner of the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), Ms Anna Bossman, the General Secretary of the Christian Council of Ghana, Rev Dr Fred Deegbe, the Executive Director of the Ghana Integrity Initiative, Mr Vitus Azeem, and a lecturer at the Department of Sociology of the University of Cape Coast, Mr Joseph Kingsley Adjei.
The Parliamentary Service Board (PSB) last Tuesday gave a week’s ultimatum to Mr Hughes to return all items he took away from his official residence upon leaving office.
The directive followed a meeting convened by the leadership of Parliament to consider his response to an earlier report by an ad hoc committee of Parliament that asked him to explain his action.
In his response, Mr Hughes asked the Board to go and retrieve the items from his private residence.
In a letter issued by his solicitors, Zoe, Akyea & Co, and addressed to the Secretary of the Board, he said he was “no longer interested in the items he took away from the Speaker’s official residence, bona fide”.
Cardinal Turkson said he was not happy about what was happening because they tended to distract the work of Parliament and the government.
He, therefore, stressed the need for laid-down rules and procedures in dealing with the entitlements of former Members of Parliament (MPs) and Ministers of State.
Cardinal Turkson said perhaps, there was the need to take a look at the Transitional Bill prepared by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) and see how best it could help address some of the problems because without such a policy framework, everything appeared to be vendetta.
“Politics and governance are not about vengeance. We should move away from that. We should not toy with any conflict situation. It’s like opening a Pandora box; if you open it, you cannot close it,” he advised.
Ms Bossman, speaking on phone from Takoradi, where she is attending the annual conference of the Institute of Chattered Accountants, said former speaker’s issue was one which bothered on integrity, accountability, conflict of interest and the abuse of power.
She described these as ethical dilemas that affected the integrity of public servants in the course of duty.
The fact that the former speaker sat on a committee that superintended over the diposal of state assets to him at a negligible cost raised questions of conflict of interest.
Ms Bossman also pointed out that such state assets were acquired from tax payers, who had to have a say in their disposal.
She expressed disquiet over the fact that the issue portrayed how Ghanaians in general had no regard for state assets and allowed their dissipation without a care.
On suggestions to address such ethical dilemas, Ms Bossman suggested commitment to doing right by all Ghanaians, as well as the adherence to values cherished by society, such as, integrity or accountability.
She said ethics was all about doing things right, but reminded politicians and public servants that sometimes, what they thought was legal was not necesarily right.
For instance, she wondered how one could take away expensive state assets when the majority of the people were poor.
Ms Bossman said CHRAJ with other stakeholders were embarking on various initiatives, including advocacy, sensitisation of the public the elaboration of constitutional provisions on codes of conduct of public servants to prevent a recurrence such issues.
Sharing his thoughts from Lagos, Nigeria, via telephone, Rev Dr Deegbe said the saga should serve as a good lesson to the nation to make amends in the future because “to be forewarned is to be forearmed”.
He said the former Speaker’s experience should inform the building of institutions and practices to prevent the recurrence of such problems in the future, adding that the adoption of clear-cut guidelines would enable everyone to know the rules without subjecting them to anyone’s interpretation.

Rev Dr Deegbe, who is also the Deputy Chairman of the Ghana Anti-Corruption Campaign Coalition, said provisions of the Transitional Bill prepared by the IEA sought to address some of the challenges that Parliament had been bogged down with recently.
For his part, Mr Adjei said the controversy had pierced the aura surrounding the high office of the Speaker of Parliament, adding that it sent a negative signal to the international community that political leaders in Ghana were only interested in owning state property rather than improving the welfare of the people.
He said the decision of the former Speaker to return the items after four months was quite belated because “one would have thought that after the hullabaloo had been raised about him having taken the items, he would have returned them earlier”.
Mr Adjei said the issue bordered largely on morality and suggested that the return of the items should not preclude further investigation into the matter for its comprehensive resolution.
Mr Adjei said instead of giving money to Members of Parliament and Parliamentary Service workers to rent their own accommodation, it was better, as a long-term solution, to construct a Parliamentary village where all MPs and Parliamentary Service workers would be accommodated, and be required to vacate their apartments after leaving office.
Mr Azeem, for his part, proposed an independent body with representation from Parliament, the Judiciary and the Executive to further probe the matter and to send a signal to appease Ghanaians by showing that Parliament itself was endeavouring to keep its hands clean in the matter.
He was of the view that because the former Speaker was no longer in the employment of Parliament, the PSB had no business investigating the matter.
The proposed independent body could also propose policies for future adoption to prevent the repetition of the matter, Mr Azeem added.