‘Relieving public officials of post is vindictive’

SOME leading senior public servants have described the decision by public servants to enter into partisan politics as a desecration of the service.
They have also noted that the government’s decision to relieve public officials from post was vindictive.
They have, therefore, called on public servants who wish to engage in partisan politics to strictly adhere to the provisions of the 1992 Constitution regarding their decisions.
Furthermore, they urged the government to ensure that conditions of service of public servants were improved to make political aspirations unattractive to them.
They made references to constitutional frameworks, and scenarios which they felt were derogatory to the good of the Public Service and what they expected of both public servants and the government in separate addresses at the 2009 Annual Public Lecture organised by the Public Services Commission (PSC), in Accra, and urged public servants to refrain from seeking political appointment, and be apolitical to promote the public interest.
The theme for the lecture was: “Re-enforcing Democratic Governance in Ghana: Public Servants and Partisan Politics”.
The Vice Chancellor of the University of Ghana, Legon, Professor Clifford Nii Boi Tagoe, who chaired the forum said the removal of public servants by successive governments without explanation was counter productive, and described the situation as “putting square pegs in round holes”, to the detriment of the country.
Prof Tagoe noted that appointments should rather be based on merit and transparency and not on political patronage and urged the government to respect the contract and neutrality of public servants, “by not asking people to go on leave is a step in the right direction”.
The Chief Justice, Mrs Justice Theodora Georgina Wood, said the signals of public servants interested in engaging in partisan politics was not a healthy sign for the development of the country.
In an address read on her behalf by Justice Jones Dotse, a Justice of the Supreme Court, she called for a purposive approach to the interpretation of the law and enactments that allowed public servants to engage in active politics, a situation she also described as a recipe for disaster.
The Chief Justice, therefore, called on public servants to respect the sanctity of their office and resign if they had any interest in political appointments.
The Chairman of the PSC, Prof S. N. Woode, urged public servants to remain apolitical, neutral and competent in their advisory roles in the implementation of the policies of the government of the day.
Consequently, he said, civil servants should not engage in partisan politics and that the provision of the code of ethics and conduct of the Ghana Civil Service was to insulate them from partisan politics.
Other provisions which banned public servants from engaging in partisan politics, he said, included the Political Parties Act 2000, which banned public officers from canvassing in support of or against a political party or a candidate and Article 94 (3b) of the 1992 Constitution, which debarred certain members of the services from seeking political appointments.
The reason, he indicated, was that when public and civil servants went into partisan politics it led to the loss of public confidence and trust in the services, devalued them, adding that a country in search of a functioning government and good governance could not afford to have the service devalued.
“The service is a conservative institution and it should be allowed to remain conservative”, he said.
A Political Science lecturer at the University of Ghana, Legon, Professor Joseph R Atsu Ayee, who presented a paper in consonance with the theme, said there was a cause to worry over the growing interest of public servants to engage in partisan politics, the constitutional and legal implications, the challenges.
Prof Ayee said the public service and public servants operated within a highly intense political environment but despite the interconnectedness between the service and the government, it was still possible for public servants to remain neutral by following the rules and regulations within which they operated.
He said a survey conducted from 1993 to 2009 reflected a significant increase in the number of public servants engaged in partisan politics without resigning from their positions. He said from a figure of 32 in 1993 the number rose to a total of 235 in 2009.
To address these incoherences, he called for a review of the appointing power of the president, which was often used to build patronage for himself and his party, by streamlining the modalities for appointments.
Prof Ayee advocated an improvement in the service condition of public servants and urged the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) to expedite action on the Code of Conduct for public officers, which it started sometime ago.