Anna Bossman, a former Commissioner at the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), has observed that the nation needs people with strong characters to fight corruption.
However, she disagreed with an assertion that the country needed only strong institutions and rather insisted that “she needs strong characters in the fight against corruption because strong institutions without honest and courageous people, the fight against corruption will not be won.”
Speaking at the launch of the Anti-Corruption and Transparency week, Ms Bossman, who is now Ghana’s Ambassador to France pointed out that “we need strong and robust institutions that withstand the onslaught of democracy and good governance, we need independent institutions that are well resourced that know and can prosecute their mandate without fear or favour.
“You remember when President Obama addressed Parliament during his historic visit, he stressed on the need to have strong institutions of state as being the guarantors of democracy, good governance and the rule of law, he was right, we all believed when he said we need strong institutions and not strong men and we actually do.
“We need strong men and women to steer the strong institutions, we need to have men and women of strong moral character, courageous and of independent mind who are driven not by self-interest but by their interest in public service.
“In other words, good laws, good policies and strong institutions will not get us very far if we do not have people of good character to implement, enforce, take hard decisions which may ultimately and very often make them unpopular,” Ms Bossman intimated. -starrfmonline.com
