A Matter of Trust

Presentation by Mawuli Tse

At the Second InTheHouse Talk Series “Perspectives on Governance”

11 May 2011

British Council Hall, Accra

When Nana Fredua mentioned to me that he wanted me to speak at this session, I responded that I might not have much to contribute. I said there was too much noise out there, and that the public is more excited by militant voices and would not listen to the likes of me. He assured me that at least he would be listening, so I hope he is.

Let me start first of all by saying that I am not that much of a religious person. Much as my submission today may sound religious or moral, but I can assure you that that is not the main inspiration for these thoughts. I am sure there are enough pastors in our midst to take care of that part.

My rationale for this submission is that we have a more fundamental problem than those posed by the organizers of this seminar. Our problem is not so much about governance as it is about us as a society. It is not so much that we have leaders who have failed us, or that we cannot find the right people to write our laws, or even that we have a broken system. Our problem is that we have allowed certain behaviors to persist in our society to the point where they have become the norm. We are insensitive to its effects, and we are actually surprised when one of us shows a behavior different from what we expect.

A nation of dishonest people

Let’s face it – we are a nation of dishonest people. We have chosen a path of dishonesty in our daily lives, work places, government, and social systems. We are teaching our children – by example if not by instruction – the ways of dishonesty, and they are learning fast. In fact, we are breeding a society that will take this culture to the next level.

To illustrate my argument I will pick up a fictitious newspaper from this morning, called the Daily Hatchet. As I flip through the pages I will walk you through some examples of this dishonesty in our daily lives, and hopefully put the seriousness of this predicament in perspective. Let’s call it my own newspaper review.

Front Page: Government to Create 2 million Jobs Next Year

Such a bold promise would be great if it came to pass. We see these promises all the time, and I am sure many of you will agree that they have become mere words. We have stopped querying the basis for such grandiose declarations coming from our governments because we know them to be largely vapor. Spin is one thing – for example, inflating the number of jobs to be created from 200,000 to 500,000 by adding in food sellers and taxi drivers on a construction site. However, our governments have stretched spin beyond the limit of credibility. If one looks closely at many numbers put out for projects, it is difficult to appreciate the analysis that formed their basis. Of course, by giving us projections far into the future, our officials hope that we would have forgotten the details of the promise when their own deadlines come and go.

We have tried to solve this problem by putting new layers of deception on top of the old ones. We have created committees of assurances in parliament, offices of accountability at the presidency, commissions of inquiry, and investigative bodies to look into failed projects. All of these simply multiply the deception because they go through motions of work and deliver little, if at all. A lie times a lie is an even bigger lie. Officials have led themselves to believe that performance or credibility is based on what one promises rather than what one delivers.

Page 3: Pastor in Court for Duping Woman

There are many variations of this headline. Pastors engaged in visa fraud, payment for prayers, defilement, or taking sexual advantage of gullible women. These stories point to a pattern of deceit by some who hide under the cloak of the church. Over the years this news has become no news, and we are no longer shocked at the behaviour of these charlatans. The surprise is that there are still many gullible people out there who fall for these scams.

One may easily dismiss the Pastor headline as the crimes of a few rogues – leaders of mushroom churches that spring up only for business. But let us also take a look at the larger and more established churches. Many of the established churches are busy grabbing lands that do not belong to them, and as institutions they often cover up misdeeds of their pastors and high ranking members.

No donation is too small for our churches – or too dirty. I would be happy to one day read the headline “Church rejects donation from drug dealer.” As a result, the church becomes a good way to clean up one’s ill gotten gains as well as one’s image. Soon after making their large donation, the criminals get front row seats at service, and are hailed as the strong members of the church. The message is that the church will not question how you made your money as long as you give them their 10% cut.

Page 5: Politics: MPs Stripped Naked

There are two stories of interest on the political pages. In one, an MP from the governing political party is quoted as saying that this government has done a wonderful job, considering that the previous government left behind a mountain of debt and a complete mess. The government deserves congratulations for being the first government to weed out the rot.

But wait a minute: Right beside it is an article about an MP from the opposition side. According to her, this government is by far the worst that Ghana has ever seen. Corruption is on the rise, as evidenced by the many uncompleted projects and the misuse of public funds.

Surely, both of these statements cannot be wholly correct. And surely, both of these important people know it. Most importantly, the public has become jaded over time to ignore such dishonest statements. The result is public apathy towards politicians and what they say. The situation is so bad that when the important signs of danger do appear, we ignore them or at best delay action because we stopped taking seriously anything our politicians tell us.

Page 4: Journalists Advised to be Circumspect in Their Reportage

I’ve seen this admonishment so many times I’m beginning to wonder whether it is an English or French phrase. This advice is given freely and received freely by the media but nothing ever changes.

Much better would be for us to accept first of all that it is a meaningless statement, and second of all that the media of today is full of politicians who choose to report or slant the reports such as the ones we saw on the Politics pages. Depending on a journalists sympathies they would spice up the reports of the party they favor and distort completely those from the party they do not want to be in power.

Page 10: Invitation for Tender

By law organizations are now required to advertise their tenders. Of all the pages this is probably the one that comes closest to my pocket. The success of any business is the amount of competitive business that it can generate. Many of us were happy to see the Public Procurement law come into being. It meant that many companies that were previously shut out of the procurement process would now have the opportunity to win good contracts.

Unfortunately this has not completely materialized. Yes, there has been some opening up of the tender processes, but there has also been a sharp rise in creative ways of beating the system. The cronyism has not gone away, and the rules can be applied selectively to favor one preselected bidder. If the person they want is eliminated, no problem – they scrap the tender and start over again with new rules.

Some of us in the private sector have chosen to stay out of the procurement process altogether. This is not because we don’t want the business, but because it is a depressing routine of buying tender documents, paying guarantees, and putting great effort into a strong proposal. At the end of the process a company appears from nowhere and wins the tender. Such Kamikaze bidders are usually not known to those in the industry and often have no track record, yet they win. The result is projects that are prone to failure, particularly so when the guardians of the project have been compromised.

Page 11: Kope Bank vs Kofi Trading Ent. (Order for Substituted Service)

Too often we find banks chasing defaulting customers in their efforts to recover risky loans. There are sometimes good reasons for default: High interest rates, delays in delivery of goods or projects, or market failures. However, these lawsuits appear in the papers so often that one wonders whether those taking the loans had any intention of paying them back in the first place.

Here again we find a web of deceit. Applicants misrepresent themselves on loan applications, and in some cases even put up collateral that they do not own. Many take the money and run away, leaving behind hapless guarantors. The result is more expensive loans, more cumbersome procedures and red tape from the banks, and a slowdown in business for all of us.

Even between businesses the trust is gone. A company might deliver goods or services to a customer in good faith with a promise to pay. But then they spend the next six months or more chasing their payment. Again, this is so common that it is clear the debtor had no intention of paying their debts in the first place. Business becomes a game of chasing your money, and contracts – whether written or unwritten – become worthless.

Page 15: Disclaimer: Kwasi Dodo Has Ceased to be an employee of Kope Bank

Closely related to the Court notices from the banks is the rise in notices about employee dismissals. One often finds as many as four photographs of absconding employees in the same edition of the Daily Hatchet. Often the perpetrators are bank employees, but we also find employees of trading firms, insurance companies, and others. In short, any organization that handles large amounts of cash.

We may put it down to hard times that force people to dip into company coffers, but I suggest it goes deeper than that. It is a reflection of our level of dishonesty to the point where it is okay to steal, and when you are found out you simply run away.

Page 17: Cancellation of Results

This one is a full page ad from a university, with dozens of pictures of young men and women staring sullenly in the camera. They have been dismissed for using fake documents to gain admission to the university, and the university is only taking action more than a year after they entered the school.

As mentioned earlier, we have started breeding this culture into our youth. The list of young people caught engaging in exam malpractice keeps growing longer, even as the schools and examination bodies assure us that they are doing all in their power to stop the practice. Students routinely have access to exam papers before the paper is written, and see nothing wrong with paying for such “apor.” Not too long ago this would have been scandalous but today it is normal. The student who actually studied and goes to write the exam fairly is at a disadvantage. Again we see the pattern where the good becomes bad while the bad becomes acceptable.

Back Page: Sports – Player Transfer Scandal

Let’s turn to the back page. Sports is not immune to our culture of dishonesty. We find stories of match fixing, player transfer scams, age tampering, and mismanagement of clubs. The end result is that good people are turned off participation in sports, and the sports go into a downward spiral: Good players stay away and are replaced by cheats, crooked officials and opportunists. This leads to poor patronage and eventual collapse of the sport. It is no wonder that Ghanaians are turning more to international sports and leaving our domestic sports to die.

…and Many More

I could look at many more stories – of judges who are compromised, of business deals gone bad, of investor scams – the list goes on. The common theme that I want to draw out is that we have come to accept dishonesty as normal. The person who tries to uncover the wrongs or correct them very quickly becomes the villain, with everyone else turning against them.

This suggests it is not a single person affair. There is no white knight, not the president nor the legislators and down to the rest of us – that can singlehandedly solve this problem. The solution lies in a change in culture, a collective effort to choose a path of trust over a path of dishonesty. No nation can progress without trust. Trust in our institutions, trust in our government, and trust of the people in each other. It is this that we must fight, and it is a fight that we can win.

Why are we so dishonest? Dishonesty has woven itself into our social fabric, to the point where one starts to question facts that may be in front of them. Questions of who is making the statement, and how it was said take precedence over the issue itself and the practical problems we face.

It is from this mix that we elect a set of people to rule over us. Unfortunately for us, we expect that once elected, our officials will become something that there were not when they lived amongst us. Clothes being washed cannot be cleaner than the water that washed it.

Religiosity has not helped. The number of churches seems to be directly proportional to the level of dishonesty in our system. A more favorable view might be that the churches are multiplying in response to a rising level of dishonesty. If this were the case then we would find islands of honesty in the churches, while the rest of us outside the churches wallowed in dishonesty, crime, and corruption. But this is not so. At best the churches serve as a balm for our sins; a place where for two or three hours on Sunday we can pretend to be good.

Lest I be accused of digressing too far from the suggested topic, I will answer one question that the organizers posed to the panel. What are my expectations of government? To discharge my obligations to the best of my ability, but otherwise to stay clear of government. I seek no favors from it and expect none in return.

How do we Build Trust?

In our quest for solutions we often hear calls for laws on every social problem. Sometimes parliament obliges and adds yet another law to the books that will not be enforced. We put laws on our problems like plaster, without worrying about what ails us beneath the skin. Of course, once we pass the law we congratulate ourselves that we have taken action and move on to the next law. Here again our dishonesty shows because we never intended for the laws to be enforced in the first place.

As mentioned at the beginning, my submission is made from a pragmatic, rather than a moral or religious standpoint. For that matter we cannot wait for our religious leaders to preach or solve it for us. You and I should take the initiative for our own good, both personally and collectively.

I have often played with the idea of starting a colony – A society of men and women who would draw the line somewhere. A place where two people can shake hands on a deal and it would be done. A place where the community agrees completely on behavior that is acceptable and that which is not, and where the bad nuts are expelled never to return. I still might pursue this venture, but I also think we can all do the same. Each of us can start with a small group that builds trust. New people who demonstrate trustworthiness can be brought in, and those that betray the common trust taken out.

We can, no we must, reduce the level of dishonesty uniformly, and slowly build back trust in society. However, the path to achieving this will not be easy. People have very little incentive to change when it seems that they are wise in lying to everyone around them. With time there will be enough of a momentum for honesty so that people see the benefits of building trust. This will take time, but can be done with determination and using small groups at a time.

Thank you for your attention.