A Fellow at the Ghana Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana), Dr John Osae-Kwapong, says it will remain difficult to separate the actions of state institutions from politics as long as their leaders are political appointees.

Speaking on Joy News’ PM Express on Wednesday, he said the issue goes beyond administrative conduct because leadership changes in state institutions often follow changes in government.

Dr Osae-Kwapong said NDC legal team member Abraham Amaliba raises “a good point” about separating the administrative behaviour of state institutions from politics.

“The only challenge there is that the heads of these institutions are politically appointed. When there is a turnover election, you do see some turnover in who is appointed heads of these institutions,” he said.

According to him, the situation becomes even more complicated when investigations or legal actions involve high-profile politicians or politically exposed persons.

“When the cases involve these high-profile or these politically-exposed persons, either a very prominent party official or they may have served in government, all of those things throw in another range and another dynamic that makes it challenging to think of this purely as state administrative behaviour.”

He said consistent patterns of questionable administrative conduct should be addressed. However, he argued that the political context surrounding such cases makes it easy for the public to interpret institutional actions through a political lens.

“It also has that political dimension to it that lends itself easily for bystanders to read political meaning into the actions of these administrative officials in our state institutions.”

Dr Osae-Kwapong described this as a tension Ghana must find a way to reconcile.

“How do we prevent making the appointing authority politically vulnerable to the actions of a state actor that yes he may have appointed, but may not even have sanctioned those behaviors?” he asked.

Responding to questions about accountability within institutions such as the Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO), he said responsibility does not rest with one individual alone.

“I think there are multiple layers of accountability in all of this,” he said.

He explained that appointing authorities have a duty to review their decisions if repeated and verified complaints show that the conduct of a state institution’s head offends the Constitution.

“If I have made someone the head, the administrative head of a state institution, but I’m seeing repeated behaviour of things that offends the Constitution, then as the appointing authority, one of the lines of accountability is to say maybe I need to rethink that decision.”

He added that officials who directly supervise such institutions also have a responsibility to intervene.

“Whoever that institution reports to directly also has a certain level of accountability in pulling the person back to say some of these actions are not proper, or they do offend the Constitution.”

Dr Osae-Kwapong concluded that accountability exists at different levels. Yet, he maintained that public debate will continue to mix politics with administration because such controversies often involve prominent political figures and tend to emerge after changes in government.

“It becomes difficult to separate the administrative issues from the political issues.”