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Topic Discussion II
Building Public Trust
Elections & Legislatures
Room 1
(4 of 21 pages)
Let us go to confidence in the judiciary, in the legislature. Many emerging democracies
question the independence of the judiciary. They question the independence of the judiciary because in many emerging
democracies the judiciary has had to depend on the government for a lot of things. Because of the poverty or because
lack of resources many emerging democracies have allowed judiciary to slip into the arena of government in the
sense that we have had many occasions to quarrel in my country about why this decision or that decision was taken.
People believe that certain decisions are taken because the judiciary is afraid of taking the right decisions.
This has become a point of debate in parliament, outside of parliament and people are united in their opinion that
this has happened because the judiciary is poorly equipped. In my own country for many years the judiciary have
had to write whatever the cases are, they have to write manually and this is not good enough. We can go into all
that later.
Let me also go into the ombudsman. In Ghana we have what we call the Commission on Civil Independence of Independent
Commissions to look after the public is also sometimes undermined.
I think for credibility we also need a total independence legislature because that is what the constitution says
there are these two arms of the government the judiciary and the legislature, which should be independent. Independence
should also mean financial independence otherwise you compromise. We see that we have a lot of problems with that
in Ghana.
Let me also leave it as that and let us discuss it later, but meanwhile let me talk about women.
Women, I think the greatest number in most countries now is highly marginalized. With that when a woman knows that
they can never they cannot improve their positions, then the credibility of the government is also not there.
Access to information is also very important and it suffers in Ghana. Flow of information between government and
the opposition for example in my country has got into a lot of problems. Grass root participation requires the
information flow.
Now let me talk about corruption. We can talk about some other things but this is an old phenomenon we all know.
In my country a family which is a primary product of the country given that the farmers are sometimes very weary
about the government. They see a lot of affluence, big cars and so on when they have nothing. Yet they are the
producers of the wealth of the economy.
I think I am going to end here by saying that the focal point of the emerging democracies is to ensure that there
is credibility in the government and also in the opposition. Ghana is trying to a very large extent but let me
say that I think one thing that is helping us a little bit is the air of hope from South Africa, hope when at the
end we feel that at the end of the tunnel they went through much more than we did and we believe that at the end
of it, or perhaps we can instill public trust when the governments are able to perform. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chair: Thank you very much. Our second presenter is Moses Katjiuongua who is the President of the Democratic
Coalition of Namibia.
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