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Question:
Ghana’s assets regime is perceived as a farce. What measures will you
take to raise public confidence in the assets declaration process?
Prof. Mills:
Assets declaration, I believe, is quite important. But what end does it
serve? I agree that assets declaration must be publicised; but first of all
we must even verify that the declaration is true. You cannot just list any
assets hoping that when you go into office you will acquire them. Number
two, at the end of the period, you must file your asset declaration form and
again the verification should be done. There was a time when the assets
declaration covered spouses. I will not limit it to spouses, there are surrogates;
there are people who are close enough who also acquire assets on
behalf of office holders.
I believe that we should be able to broaden this out. How practical this will
be is another matter. But on the issue of corruption, I believe that I speak
for a number of Ghanaians when I say that corruption is really breaking
our society. We have this framework that we are all talking about. Clearly,
it is not working; it is not working because people get away with corruption.
People can take money with impunity. The right signals are not being
sent down.
So I think that we must show that we are serious about corruption. When
people are flaunting their obscene wealth, nobody raises an eyebrow. We
should be able to say, “look, enough is enough”. Our people know what
is happening, they know; they’ve been victims of corruption. Leadership
must crack the whip, crack the whip, crack the whip and that is the only
way that we are going to get over the problem.
Follow up question:
I see that none of you has a problem with publicly declaring your assets.
Would each of you be confident enough to tell us for instance how many
homes you have?
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