General News of Wednesday, 24 November 2021
Source: www.ghanaweb.com
2021-11-24
Kofi Bentil
Kofi Bentil says Rawlings for corruption with conviction
He said successive regimes dealt with the canker but Rawlings supersedes all
He spoke at an event in Accra
Kofi Bentil, Vice President of IMANI Africa, has said the late Jerry John Rawlings fought corruption with the greatest sense of conviction compared to all other presidents.
According to him with the manner successive regimes have dealt with the canker, President JJ Rawlings’ conviction in dealing with corruption supersedes all the others.
“I think in the history of this country, one of the leaders who we generally agree, not everybody, we will generally agree has fought corruption most viscerally is President Rawlings. And he’s the longest-reigning leader we had in this country; and I think that generally, he was genuine in terms of trying to fight against corruption,” Bentil remarked while during a discussion of a report on the risk of corruption to entrepreneurs and businesses in Ghana at the Alisa Hotel on Tuesday.
A participant at the event had questioned the absence of good leadership as the bane of Ghana’s fight against corruption.
According to the participant, many Ghanaian leaders lack the political will to crack the whip on errant individuals, leading to the country’s ineffective fight against corruption.
Kofi Bentil in response said if fighting corruption is about good leadership, [then] Ghana has had leaders who have done well in the fight against corruption, and therefore he doesn’t think bad leadership is the reason for corruption in Ghana.
The programme was under the aegis of the ‘Imani-Giz Reform Dialogue’. It had people from the civil society, the press and other stakeholders participating and sharing ideas on how Ghana can deal decisively with the negative effects of corruption.