The guidelines on conflict of interest published by the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) identify three kinds of conflict of interest—actual, potential and apparent (perceived). This means a public official can be found guilty of a conflict of interest even if the conflict is not proven to have occurred.
According to CHRAJ, an actual conflict of interest occurs when a public officer’s private engagements compromise his or her judgment or objectivity in the public office.
In the context of a potential conflict of interest, the present action may not have put the public officer in a conflict of interest, but it creates the conditions for such a conflict to occur.
Here is how the third kind of conflict of interest, apparent or perceived, occurs:
Imagine applying for a mining concession or bidding for a government contract, hoping to win. Unfortunately, you lose. But the person whose company wins the deal is the businessman whose private jet the president of the republic travels on.
The ministers who supervise the procurement process are appointed by the president and may have travelled on the private jet owned by the winner of the government contract.
Even if this businessman won the contract with a superior bid, would it be wrong to tinker with the perception that the government is simply returning the favour done by the private jet owner?
Absolutely not.
Or consider it this way. You’re in a class with the lecturer’s girlfriend. She comes first in the lecturer’s course. She may be the most brilliant student in the class, but how many students would not think that she came first because of her relationship with the lecturer?
That is what is wrong with President John Mahama’s use of his brother Ibrahim Mahama’s private jet for official presidential travels. The president’s spokesperson stated that the president did so to reduce costs.
The alternative would have been to charter a jet for the president’s travel, since the current presidential jet is not airworthy and the new one being procured is not yet ready.
President Mahama’s move may be well-intentioned, but this is governance. He must not be seen to be signalling right and turning left, especially when the president has published a code to govern his appointees’ conduct.
That code of conduct prohibits his appointees from accepting gifts worth more than GHS20,000.
The wisdom here is that if an appointee encounters significant gift-givers in the discharge of an official duty, his or her judgment could be impaired by the gift.
The gift of an aircraft, like the Burkinabe contractor who gifted President Mahama a vehicle in his first term, is definitely more valuable than the president’s threshold of acceptable gifts. Like the Burkinabe contractor, the president’s brother’s companies do business with the state. And it is proper that the president separates the business of the state from his private relationship with his family.
As mentioned, the president may mean well, but his code of conduct will be rendered meaningless if his appointees, like him, begin to give excuses why they cannot adhere to it.
The nation is not bleeding because of legitimate transactions, such as the cost of the president’s travels. Ghana is on its knees because those who oversee the government procurements facilitate deals that cause us to lose hundreds of millions of cedis.
A single compromised procurement deal can cost us more than the entire cost of the president’s travels over his entire term.
Mr President, you have begun well. The optics don’t look good with you in your brother’s jet. The conflict of interest provision is clear. Your code of conduct is unambiguous.
Don’t let these things drain your goodwill. The leaks that sink mighty ships aren’t always gaping holes. Sometimes they are too small to notice until they become serious enough to seal.
By Manasseh Azure Awuni
