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SWIMMING AGAINST THE TIDE: IMPLEMENTING GHANA’S ANTICORRUPTION ACTION PLAN, 2014–2016 SYNOPSIS Tristan Dreisbach drafted this case study In 2014, Ghana began to implement its National Anti- based on interviews conducted with the Corruption Action Plan, adopted a decade after the West assistance of Gordon LaForge in Accra, African country signed the United Nations Convention Ghana, during September 2016, against Corruption. With over 120 goals, the plan’s strategy February 2017, and August 2017. The British Academy-Department for was wide-ranging and ambitious. The goals included International Development Anti- strengthening the public service code of conduct, improving Corruption Evidence (ACE) Progamme the asset declaration system, and expanding freedom of funded the development of this case study. information, as well as adopting many new laws. About 15 Case published September 2017. other countries around the globe had announced similar aims, though few included as many goals in their plans or required as many statutory changes. Ghana’s Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice, which was responsible for translating the strategy into practical accomplishments, faced stiff challenges, including limited coordination capacity, electoral disruption, reluctant legislators, and a few scandals that drew the government’s credibility into doubt. By the early months of 2017, the commission was still struggling to implement important parts of the strategy, but there were a few signs of progress: more public agencies were beginning to report regularly on the actions they had taken to meet their goals, a memorandum of understanding to improve coordination among parts of the anticorruption system was in place, and the Electoral Commission had stepped in to require asset declaration by candidates—even while bigger changes remained mired in the legislature. Ghana’s experience illuminated the challenge of introducing broad anticorruption policies in the face of embedded opposition and the ways that dedicated citizens and officials could take smaller but still significant steps to improve governance. ISS is program of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs: successfulsocieties.princeton.edu. ISS invites readers to share feedback and information on how these cases are being used: [email protected]. © 2017, Trustees of Princeton University. This case study is made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. GLOBAL CHALLENGES: CORRUPTION Ghana INTRODUCTION The headline “Ghana’s Hall of Shame” topped the September 27, 2009, weekly press rundown on GhanaWeb, one of the West African country’s prominent news websites.1 For two months, reporting about the UK trial of a British bridge construction company, Mabey & Johnson, had claimed front- page status in the country’s national media. A UK court convicted the firm of paying bribes totaling 470,000 pounds sterling, or about US$772,400 at the time, to Ghanaian officials, including five persons cited by name.2 Despite calls to try those suspected of crimes, Ghanaian prosecutors never issued charges against any of the five.3 Ghana’s Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ)—the top anticorruption authority in the country—launched an investigation after the news broke in 2009, but eight years later there were still no reports of progress in the investigation. “The case was put in cold storage, along with other cases that were still pending and not vigorously pursued,” said Emile Short, who headed the commission from its creation in 1993 until 2010. The Mabey & Johnson case illuminated the gap between widespread public concern about corruption and officialdom’s reluctance to deal with it. A 2008–09 Afrobarometer survey found that almost three-quarters of Ghanaians said they thought at least some of the people in the central government were corrupt and that they felt the same way about members of parliament and elected local councilors.4 The country ranked 69th out of 180 in the 2009 Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index, next to the Republic of Georgia and Colombia—in other words, not the worst but still in a worrisome zone.5 Prominent citizens, organized through the Ghana Anti-Corruption Coalition, proclaimed the need for change. Continued inaction was not an option. Five years earlier, in 2004, Ghana had signed the UN Convention against Corruption treaty, impelled by media stories about kickbacks to public officials,6 the use of government letterhead to secure private loans,7 and thousands of ghost workers on ministry payrolls.8 Parliament ratified the treaty in 2007, obliging the government to develop “coordinated anti-corruption policies” and to pursue “effective practices aimed at the prevention of corruption.”9 Corruption became a major issue in Ghana’s hotly contested 2008 presidential election, just a few months before the Mabey & Johnson story broke. John Atta Mills, who had won a runoff election by a razor-thin margin, promised to empower anticorruption institutions and put an end to malfeasance by government officials.10 In December 2009, Mills’s vice president, John Mahama, formed a working group to develop an anticorruption strategy as a first step toward bringing the country into compliance with its UN obligation. Mahama assembled leaders from government, the business community, universities, and civil society, putting the CHRAJ and its head, Short, in charge. Two employees of the National Development Planning Commission—Jonathan © 2017, Trustees of Princeton University Terms of use and citation format appear at the end of this document and at successfulsocieties.princeton.edu/about/terms-conditions. 2 GLOBAL CHALLENGES: CORRUPTION Ghana Azasoo and Alice Amekudzie—supported the working group members and helped transform their broad aims into 120 goals organized under four broad headings: building anticorruption capacity; increasing efficiency, accountability, and transparency; engaging citizens, media, and civil society in fighting corruption; and increasing the effectiveness of corruption investigations and prosecutions (See textbox 1). The result was the National Anti-Corruption Action Plan (NACAP), a 10-year agenda that included many prevention-focused proposals. The plan specifically aimed to give legal backing to the existing code of conduct for public officers, to win passage of other enabling legislation, to strengthen the country’s existing asset declaration program, and to create a monitoring system for measuring impact. To build support and credibility, in October 2011 the CHRAJ hosted a National Conference on Integrity, a meeting of about 150 representatives of government agencies, political parties, the private sector, civil society, the Textbox 1: Activities Included in the National Anti-Corruption Action Plan In December 2009, then Ghanaian vice president John Mahama inaugurated an anticorruption strategy working group that consulted broadly with representatives from every economic sector and with people in every part of the country. The resulting plan included about 120 specific objectives or tasks, each categorized as short-term (1 to 2 years), medium-term (3 to 5 years), and long-term (6 to 10 years). The first category focused on building awareness of anticorruption policies and motivating citizens to report violations. The 28 activities listed in that category included organizing public education and awareness programs; strengthening public complaint units in the judicial service and police service; introducing whistle-blowing mechanisms in local government; and simplifying tax procedures. The strategy listed 45 activities in the second category, which focused on institutionalizing efficiency, accountability, and transparency in all sectors of Ghanaian society. Those activities included making sure that government institutions prepared financial statements in time for audits, enacting a law that would set a ceiling on political party financing, passing a code-of-conduct law for public officers, appointing leaders of state institutions through open and competitive processes, and training journalists to investigate corruption. The third category contained 16 activities focused on monitoring and reporting. The activities included enacting a right-to-information law, creating a system for the confidential reporting of cases of corruption, providing legal advice for victims of corruption, and increasing the allocation of resources to audit agencies. The final category included 47 activities related to investigation and prosecution. The activities included amending the definition of corruption in the criminal code, enacting witness protection legislation, training officers of anticorruption institutions and law enforcement agencies in investigation techniques, establishing an independent prosecution authority, and recruiting prosecutors and investigators. These were primarily medium- and long-term objectives, because they were more difficult than preventive measures and built on some of the other actions proposed. © 2017, Trustees of Princeton University Terms of use and citation format appear at the end of this document and at successfulsocieties.princeton.edu/about/terms-conditions. 3 GLOBAL CHALLENGES: CORRUPTION Ghana media, other African anticorruption agencies, the World Bank, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, and the Danish development agency, which funded the conference.11 Although the law did not require him to do so,