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Former Executive Director of Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII), Mr. Vitus Azeem has stated that, parliament actions have not met the expectations of most Ghanaians.
He disclosed this in an interview with the host of Pink FM’s ‘Omanbapa Kasa’, Kofi Asamoah Aning on Wednesday.
Mr. Azeem continued by saying that, Parliament’s sole responsibility is to pass laws for the running of this country and such laws will include the Anti-Corruption laws. He further revealed that, there are quite a number of bills pending before Parliament that haven’t been passed yet.
According to him, the Assets Declaration Law which was passed in 1998 still needs some regulation. He emphasized that, “Parliament did not accept the verification of the declaration by the Auditor-General”, that is the more reason why the regulation has been delayed.
With such Acts, a government in power will be questioned about his assets, he or she acquired when leaving office.
“That Act is supposed to be an anti-corruption tool, so that when you are coming to power with three houses, and leave office with six thousand houses, you will be investigated, as to how you acquired the excess houses”, he said.
“The second one, is the Right to Information bill (RTI), which was formally laid before parliament in 2013 and, up to 2016 nothing has happened since National Democratic Congress (NDC) government is not in power anymore. This ruling government took over with a promise to pass this bill NDC did not pass. We are in July, in the second year of this government and parliament has still not passed the law”
Moreover, he touched on “the code of conduct of public officers bill” which was also laid in 2013 and it has been withdrawn till now, due to the fact that, that parliament’s term has expired and the new executive hasn’t brought it back to parliament.
Meanwhile, the Legislature has set up a committee to investigate issues involving allegations of corruption against parliamentarians which does not even include a single outsider.
Mr. Azeem stressed on the fact that Parliament needs to be passing laws since they are role models, and they are supposed to be accountable to Ghanaians but, “the way they have handled the allegation against themselves does not show that they are interested in doing that”, he concluded.
Source: Elizabeth Adomah/ Bernice Amoakoah/ pinkfmonlinegh.com
