I read with considerable dismay a recent article by Mr. Ekow Duncan in the popular US-based Ghanaian website, http://www.ghanavotes2008.com/, entitled: "INVESTMENT OF $750MILLION SOVEREIGN GUARANTEED CREDIT" . Although in many respects a brilliant, positive and intellectual piece, he spoils it, after making sensible suggestions about some of the areas a CPP government could focus on, with an unfortunate example of the fawning tone, which many of those who have prospered under the NPP regime adopt publicly, when discussing national issues.He poses a rhetorical question asking if the hard-of-hearing regime, which refused to heed the concerns of patriotic Ghanaians, who warned it about the infamous IFC loan and the absurd attempt to source money for Ghana's development, from a Chinese hairdressing salon, in the backstreets of the seedier parts of London, is open for discussion, about the spending of the US $750 million, which was realised by Ghana's highly irresponsible foray, into the piranha-infested capital markets of the West! Incredible.
It is time we spoke bluntly to those Nkrumaists who think nothing of flirting with this regime. If there are any politicians who claim to be Nkrumaists, who do not recognise that China, with hundreds of billions of dollars available to it, and looking for investment opportunities, represents a better option for Ghana, going forward, as a source of investment for infrastructural development, than the capital markets of the West, then perhaps it is time we purged the CPP of those who think that flirting with a political party like the New Patriotic Party (NPP), which is the very antithesis of everything Nkrumah stood for, is in the interest of ordinary people.
It is typical of the kind of fuzzy-minded fence-sitting, so beloved of Ghana's well-connected middle classes. This desire to always play safe and never be openly critical of our inept rulers, is what has led to the huge disparities in wealth that we see today: and which threatens the very foundations of today's unjust society. Politeness to the enemies of the poor, whose greed and corruption literally kills their fellow human beings, is most definitely not the way to fight for a better quality of life, for ordinary Ghanaians. Ghana urgently needs social transformation - not more of the same ghastly music accompanying the musical chairs game of politics, entilted: "Unfathomable greed, Nepotism and Tribalism." Period.
Mr. Duncan writes (inter alia):"...prudent macro- economic management by the Government that has lifted the credit rating of the nation on the international financial and capital markets and the competition of China and India in our financial market." Perhaps it has not occurred to Mr. Duncan that it is only a relatively few Ghanaians, who have benefited from the "prudent macro-economic management by the government"?For the information of the well-heeled Nkrumaists in our midst in our homeland Ghana, there actually exists another Ghana, whose citizens face an entirely different reality.Away from the haze of the smoke and mirrors economics, the so-called "prudent management of the macro-economy", which blinds the privileged few within the air-conditioned cocoon of the resultant Alice-in-wonderland Ghanaian version of Hollywood society: with their high-spending lifestyles of expensive SUV's, US$1O million hotels, billion-cedi Hollywood-style mansions, as well as the wasting of billions on sundry girlfriends, there actually exists a very different Ghana - the reality known by many as Ogyakrom.
It is a seething cauldron of deprivation, lack of opportunities and endless suffering. Yet Mr. Daniels is proposing that those self-same deprived Ogyakrom Ghanaians are made to underwrite the IOU's given to foreigners in exchange for their money (the so-called sovereign bonds - redeemable in hard currency, and for which in the meantime, regular interest payments will have to be made immediately to those foreigners, till their maturation dates - Because they are buying them simply in order to get regular income: our regular interest payments, on their sovereign bonds, i.e.!), which the government then hands over to banks (some of them foreign-owned!); leasing companies; venture capital firms: the very same fat-cats who have benefited mightily from the "prudent management of the macro-economy"!Why do the Mr. Duncans not ask those entities to go and borrow money themselves from foreigners in the financial markets of the West, to loan out to whom they please, in Ghana, if they were so brilliant - and take the risk themselves? Do we not know how funds similarly handed out to many of Ghana's elite under the Rawlings regime, remain unpaid even as we speak?
There will be no socialisation of private risk under any CPP regime. Period.Mr. Duncan also goes on to say:" The Government has indicated that the credit will be utilised in the provision of major infrastructure development in the road and energy sectors. In effect the sum will be utilised in the public sector by the public sector." I do not know where exactly he has been living all these years, but did he not hear how the too-clever-by-half public sector spin doctors, who talked endlessly about spending the public sector US$ 20 million Golden Jubilee money on "core infrastructures", utilised that sum - and had the effrontery to go to parliament and stonewall, when some MP's demanded that itemised accounts of expenditures pertaining to that sum, be produced? Let us be absolutely clear about this, now we will soon have oil money to make Ogyakrom a more comfortable place for society's Mobrowas: No Nkrumaist must ever think that any CPP regime is going borrow huge sums on foreign capital markets to be given to the banks that grew fat on income from the public debt of the Rawlings era - the treasury bills that made them super-rich, complacent and disrespectful to their customers, until the Nigerian banks ventured here and started focusing on real people's needs: 50,000 or zero cedis to open an account.
Who in this nation of well-educated and apparently respectable swindlers, will monitor the way the US$750 million is "utilised in the public sector by the public sector," I ask, dear reader? Hmmm, aye asem o! Is this not the same nation in which some of the scions of the family clans of our well-heeled and well-connected elite, who previously did not show any extraordinary signs of financial wizardry, suddenly could convince consortia of apparently sensible banks, led by banks in which there is considerable state interest, to stump up a cool US$10 millions, to acquire posh hotels? The people of Ogyakrom are tired of being exploited by those who they elect to serve them.The next CPP regime, will be a self-reliant one that will use Ghana's oil money (after tearing up the current unfavourable agreements and replacing them with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez-like agreements!) to give Ghanaians some of the world's best endowed educational institutions, as well as some of the world's best good quality public housing for renting out at reasonable rental rates, to ordinary people.
And it will also use our oil wealth to provide free education up to secondary school level and set up an educational bank to provide long-term soft loans to those who have the aptitude to continue to tertiary level. The party of the people, has no time to hold discussions on anything, with those whose philosophy of greed has created a dog-eats-dog society, in which people end up believing that to be successful, every one must think only of his or her self. Yet we are all expected to believe that in the midst of all this selfishness, somehow, God will be there for us all. Period. May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana always. Long live Ghana! Long Live freedom! Kofi Thompson can be reached by email at: peakofithompason@yahoo.co.uk and by SMS text message on: (027) 745 3109.
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