By,
Dr. Charles Addo
A recent news report stated that the European Union has decided to withhold its budget support of ?135 million to the Ghana government because of corruption and other financial malfeasance, notably the alleged payroll corruption scandal or salaries paid to fictitious state employees maintained as ?ghost workers? on Ghana’s pub?lic payroll that is currently under investigation. It is very sad that as these donor countries renew their commitments to continue help?ing Ghana meet its economic development goals, Ghana continuously fails to reciprocate those gestures. This has created a huge wage bill for the country that is unsustainable. Some sources claim that this condition was brought about from the 2012 campaign promises of ?votes for jobs,? meaning vote for our party in return for job creation for you.
Unfortunately, Ghana suffers from a deficit of the philosopher-kings or leaders who have true vision for the state and its people and are best suited to guard the laws and customs of a country. The country lacks leaders who have love for truth and spurn or minimize physical pleasures in the interest of the welfare of the state and its citizens. The classical work of Plato suggested that justice involves honesty and consequently enjoins fulfilling one’s appropriate role by giving to the state what is owed to the state, rather than taking from the state what is owed by the state. Former US President Kennedy echoed this sentiment in his famous speech: ?Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.?
Ghana?s leadership is unable to exhibit these attributes because, as in Socrates allegory of the prisoners in the story of the cave: in the cave, men live shackled to the wall, only capable of staring straight ahead. All they can see are the shadows of images carried between a curtain and a dim fire light by some other people, who talk and make noises. The prisoners assume that what they see and hear is reality. If a man were released and forced outside from the cave and into the brilliant outside sunlight, the brilliance would be painful and make everything difficult for him to understand, trying to adjust his vision from a dimmer environment into an environment of brilliant light. Socrates noted that the man would prefer the cave, but as his eyes acclimated he would realize that he had been living a life of illusion in a world where he never knew what reality was.
Similarly, money grabbing has become the order of the day, thinking all there is to life is ruthless money acquisition, not even knowing when one is going to die and leave all that wealth behind. To the money grabbers, reality is all about how much wealth one can pile up at the expense and detriment of unemployment of fellow citizens in Ghana. Plato categorized this money grabbing behavior of such leader as one who capitulates to the anti-social pleasures. To be fair with all, while such behavior may exist within every human being; most people control theirs through the influence of the law and the active intervention of their power of reason and conscience. But the leader who yields to the anti-social pleasures makes no attempt to restrain them, and particularly so when he is the law unto himself.
By indulging in this to extremes, such leaders find they grow insatiable and repeatedly exhaust their funds attempting to satisfy them, completely losing all restraints.
For any group of people to find rare luck and benevolence to enjoy the free use of donor countries taxpayers? money, and to misuse such opportunity for its own economic development; without due consideration to prudence and sense of ramification in the name of corruption, is simply most absurd and sheer stupidity.
Source: By,
Dr. Charles Addo
Lecturer, Catholic University College of Ghana, Fiapre
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