President John Mahama is accusing some political leaders in the country and sections of the media of deliberately distorting a recently published corruption perception report by Transparency International, an anti-graft body.
The Global Corruption barometer sought the opinions of citizens in countries across the continent on the fight against corruption over the past twelve months.
[contextly_sidebar id=”jM37K8iYyb14pZqGb0JXL0lNkOH4qTnZ”]76% of Ghanaians according to the report perceive corruption is on the increase.
But speaking at the second high level conference on the national anti-corruption action plan in Accra, President Mahama described as false, accusations that Ghana was ranked as one of the corrupt countries in the survey.
“There was no ranking in that report and it is absolutely false that Ghana is the second most corrupt country in West Africa. We reject it completely.This report was not an index and did not seek to rank countries in order of perception of corruption as the CPI normally does. The simple and straight forward question that respondents to the survey were asked was how has the level of corruption in your country changed over the past year? Has it increased, has it decreased? Or has it stayed the same?Suddenly in our highly charged partisan political environment, this survey was wrongly interpreted as placing Ghana as the second most corrupt country in West Africa.
“Despite all attempts by institutions that sponsored the report to correct this wrong interpretation, leading political figures have continued to spread this false impression. What can be the motivation for a section of our population to be so obsessed with trying to claim such an undignified title for ourselves at the expense of our nation’s dignity and our international image. I leave the matter to the consciences of such persons.”
The President further clarified that the objective of the global corruption barometer was to seek the views of citizens on how corruption has changed in their countries over the past 12 months and not to create the impression that the canker is on the ascendency in Ghana.
“Sad to say many other media networks including our own respected national daily, the Graphic also run along with this falsehood and got the entire nation engage in a conversation that should never have taken place. Not only did the conversation end up misleading the Ghanaian public, it indeed also gave our country an undeserved negative image among the committee of nations and the international community as a whole,” the President added.
He therefore appealed to Ghanaians “to discuss corruption, impartially and devoid of partisan political considerations if we indeed want to succeed as a country in fighting corruption and crime.”
The President made these comments while speaking at the Second High Level Conference on the National anti corruption action plan, NACAP in Accra on the international anti corruption day.
The Office of the President was in February 2015, ranked as the second most corrupt institution in Ghana in a survey by the Institute of Economic Affairs, IEA.
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By: Marian Ansah/citifmonline.com/Ghana
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