Dr Ernest Addison, BoG Governor
Those who have the rare opportunity of being on air or even writing for newspapers must uphold the sacred principle of truth and indeed the fear of God.
It is inconceivable that literate Ghanaians, some of them representatives of their constituents, would seek to turn facts upside down or even throw dust into the eyes of their compatriots in the name of politics.
Perhaps that is why some decent persons for fear of having their reputations tarnished in the name of politics dread offering their services to the nation.
It is heartbreaking when in their desperate haste to be heard on issues for which really they have nothing to offer, some politicians engage in cheap polemics which do not add value to the public debate on issues.
The action taken by the country’s apex bank has had politicians on the other side of the divide making interventions which lack not only substance but veracity.
Indeed, some of their remarks can pass for insults to the intelligence of the Ghanaians. It is as if businessmen or those who own financial entities should not vie for political office in this country.
The action by the regulator in pursuance of one of its cardinal terms of reference the amalgamation of indigenous banks which have stubbornly breached the banking laws in the past few years since their inception, has come under the verbal attack of NDC elements.
In their rush to hear their own voices, they unwittingly ignore how the actions and inactions of the defaulting banks breach the country’s financial laws vis a vis banking.
The Security And Exchange Commission and other financial initiatives are intended to instill discipline in the management of some aspects of monetary dealings. To seek to draw the Databank into the NDC created circus, is to be reducing a very serious subject to a mere prank.
Databank does not operate under its own regulations but conform to the same regulations as any other bank including the ones recently axed.
These are complex subjects requiring expertise when dealing with them. We feel disappointed therefore when some persons close their eyes to the breaches which contributed to the abysmal state of the economy as they do their politics.
We imagine what could have befallen the banking sector had the apex bank tarried a little longer in cracking the whip as it were. We also wonder what impunity led to those who perpetuated the breaches to maintain that course until the recent action and thought that the status quo would not give way to sanity. Perhaps it all had to do with this erroneous thought that the political order was nowhere near being replaced.
We hereby join those calling for a judicial action against persons who breached the banking laws and benefitted the dirty spoils. We also support the call that such persons be banned from practising as bankers in this country because they are unfit to be entrusted with the rather complex and delicate responsibility of managing the country’s banking sector. The quantum of injury they have inflicted on the banking sector and the economy can only be imagined.
Those who have seen details of the self aggrandizing investments the breaches have attracted for the defaulters will wonder how some professionals can be so criminally minded. The Economic And Organised Crime Office (EOCO) have something to do and it must be pronto while the iron is hot.