Samson’s Take: Stop criminalising poverty
It is the law in Ghana that vagrancy is a crime. Yes, the kind where the person is jobless, begs in the name of selling handkerchiefs in town; the person is also homeless sleeps rough just anywhere in town. Yes, that makes a criminal who must be flogged by guards or police taking instructions from a mayor.
It is only in a sick country where grand corruption is normalised that people caught stealing are free to walk the streets and possibly dissipate the stolen money or conceal it over a year after they were caught.
In August 2019, a journalist, not the Police, National Security, BNI (now NIB) or EOCO equipped and paid by the state, caught a big thief. The Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) and the Office of Special Prosecutor (OSP) quickly started a probe on the back of Manasseh Azure Awuni’s “Contracts for sale” investigative piece aired on JoyNews.
The Constitution in article 286 prohibits illicit or unexplained wealth by public officers.
It commands forfeiture and confiscation of such assets which cannot be traced to ones’ income, gift, loan, inheritance or other reasonably legitimate sources.
Public officers who complain of earning very little and have no other legitimate sources of income, can afford $140,000 private V8s and build mansions; they or their relations, without known sources of income, establish multimillion businesses within one-term four-year political cycle.
I must sound like a broken record on this subject. But we must keep talking, educating and debating until we get rid of the few reckless guys giving the media profession bad press.
We must not rest until we secure better protection of free speech and media freedoms because there is no democracy without the twin freedoms.
This week I was in court for a journalist. On Monday, I must be in court for four journalists. I defend and fight for journalism and media freedoms.
A viral video of city authority taskforce once again assaulting people including an elderly woman, in the name of enforcing some sanitation rules, breaks my heart. Even if the law did not prohibit such conduct, what upbringing emboldens a young man to whip an elderly woman and in public?
Well, the Regional Minister was applauded supervising similar unconstitutional and criminal conduct where his task force flogged and made people squat in and sweep dusty portions of Madina roads for failing to use the footbridge.
Integrity, the quality of being honest, is how a war on corruption is winnable. It is the only way. On the occasion of this UN day observed on December 9, I invite each one of us to go beyond the finger-pointing and commit to not OFFER or AGREE or ACCEPT a bribe. That is integrity.
It is in the Quran you took to the Mosque yesterday and in the Bible you are taking to Church today or tomorrow. Let’s deliberately seek and procure the EVIDENCE of bribery and corruption and BLOW the whistle on those involved.