Majority Leader and Minister of Government Business, Dr. Benjamin Kunbuor has bewailed the tagging of politicians as “thieves”.

Contributing to tributes ahead of late President John Mills’ first anniversary on Friday, July 19, 2013 on the floor of Parliament, Dr. Kunbuor said: “once a person enters public life in this country, particularly as a president or a minister, he is automatically converted into a thief”.

He said the trend can deter a lot of “honest and decent” people cast in the mould of the late president from taking political office due to the unsavoury tagging.

Prof. Mills was highly eulogised by both sides of the House as a gentle and intelligent leader who governed with honesty, fairness and openness.

Wednesday July 24, 2013 will be exactly a year of his death.

Describing Prof. Mills as an honest and decent leader, Dr. Kunbuor said Ghana risks losing the services of people of “honour and integrity” if the trend of tagging all politicians as “dishonest” people continues.

“If we continue with that trend, I foresee in the next 15 years that no serious minded-person worth his salt will want to provide political and administrative leadership to this country, and this country will be the worse for it and when I remember the late Professor…he paid a very very high price for sacrificing his academia, for sacrificing his humanness, for sacrificing his sportsmanship to descend into what we found him before the good Lord called him”.

He counseled that the memory of the late president must be a “warning” for the entire country as well as an opportunity for the country to “pick up the pieces and begin to re-orient the politics of this country” and rid of the festering indecency in Ghana’s body politic.

Concurring with Dr. Kunbuor, the Speaker of the House, Edward Doe Adjaho said: “…If we the politicians do not start coming together to identify and correct the perception about all of us as thieves, one day we’ll not see a single person who will want to serve this country”.