Re: ITS THE GOVERNANCE SYSTEM, STUPID!

Opanin, reference your article entitled: "Its the system of governance, stupid!" which was posted on the http://www.ghanaweb/ general news web page of Sunday, 4th August 2008.

When you say, quote: "Since, this system of governance was designed to be run and operated by European expatriates, these home-based Ghanaian "expatriate" elites have not been able to work the system efficiently. Home-based Ghanaian wannabe expatriates have not and will never be able to operate the system efficiently to develop the country because they did not and have not been able to achieve true European "expatriate" status." unquote, what precisely do you seek to convey?

Is your piece a paean for Ghanaians abroad: one meant to create some pride in them to stir them to, quote, "take back our country", unquote? If truth be told, is it the case that as a "Diasporan" you would rather that Ghana was ruled mostly by "returnees" from long sojourns abroad in the Western world?

And when you say, quote: " The good people of Ghana should do whatever it takes to design a system of governance that can be operated by the home-based Ghanaian elites (not wannabe "expatriates")." unquote: well, how about a simple governance idea that draws on our traditions and make them work for a modern African people living in a 21st century ICT age - who want to progress rapidly, and create Africa's equivalent of Scandinavia's egalitarian societies: from the revenues from its nationalised oil and natural gas industries?

I say nationalised, because there are many Ghanaians who feel strongly that if their country actually wants to make the most of its "once-in-a-lifetime" windfall-gift from providence, then Ghana must replace today's daylight-robbery arrangements with private foreign oil companies, with joint ventures in which our state-owned Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) has 80% shareholding with 20% going to the best resourced of the Chinese and Indian state-owned oil and natural gas companies - whom we must insist, ought to provide all the working capital, for that lucrative privilege!

So now to the "new" governance idea: Since we all know that inherited privilege is the biggest enemy of a meritocracy, let us decide that we will swiftly end the "serf-mentality" in the average Ghanaian, which is the continuing result of our insistence on maintaining the iron-grip that our pre-colonial feudal elites still have on Ghanaian society: by doing what the Indians did with their Maharajahs a long time ago - finally make those divisive bloodsuckers and narrow-minded tribal supremacists, history.

We must nationalise all the land held in trust by Ghana's traditional rulers, pay fair compensation to the people they hold the land in trust for - and abolish old-style inherited chieftaincy in Ghana, forever!

It will end the sycophancy that makes so many decent-minded people in Ghana close their eyes to the blatant looting that has taken place over the years since we gained our independence, by the regimes we have had - beginning from that of our great founding father Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah.

Tragically, Nkrumah was unable to find the time and space, to rid the Convention Peoples Party (CPP) of its share of crooks who only got themselves into politics to gain power simply to enrich themselves - and in ridding ourselves of the chieftaincy institution, it will enable us finally see the back of this dreadful miasma: that still envelopes our homeland Ghana from the pre-colonial days with its ghastly negativity.

Singapore has become a success today because it opted to use Nkrumah's visionary formula of public private partnerships (PPP).

It was an economic model that Nkrumah, who was an original thinker who thought outside the box, had fashioned to power Ghana's industrialisation drive (please refer to his 1963 speech at the opening ceremony of the oil refinery at Tema, and his letter of 26th January 1964, to President L.B. Johnson - which is in the Johnson Library and is a declassified U.S. State Department document: and also available in the book published by the Socialist Forum of Ghana, entitled: "The Great Deception"!).

Singapore's luck, was that the Singaporean elite was, and still is, an honest; highly intelligent; extraordinarily creative; and very disciplined one.

Sadly, apart from Nkrumah and a few others, the bigwigs of the CPP, were so unlike the Singaporean elite - most of them being corrupt and undisciplined individuals. Without all those sterling qualities in our ruling elites today, and tomorrow, we will still continue going nowhere fast, as a people.

After we successfully rid ourselves of the remnants of our feudal past, our so-called traditional rulers, why do we not (since we are operating on the assumption that every Ghanaian is a "royal" by virtue of being born in Nkrumah's Ghana), turn Ghana into the world's only democratically elected monarchy?

And instead of electing an executive president every four years, we simply elect one of our number to be our monarch, Ghana's Omanpanin or Omanhemaa, if its a woman, with powers (and limitations on that power!) similar to that of the French president, and who rules with a prime minister - the leader of the majority party in parliament?


Under this new democratic monarchy, the elected equivalent of today's district chief executives (DCE's) will then become elected paramount chiefs of the districts (with clearly defined powers and limitations on those powers too!), which will be the new paramountcy's!

What better means of obtaining a new and thoroughly modern system of governance, which also draws on our yearning to maintain aspects of our "culture" than to have an elected Ghana Omanpanin or Ghana Omanhemaa?

An especially useful development, as pointed out before, is that under the same system, today's unelected district chief executive, will become tomorrow's elected replacement of the arrogant and dissimulating little tin-gods of today: all the numerous divisive and negative tribal supremacist paramount chiefs in our districts - the very royal representatives of our backward feudal past!

Hmm, now I wonder what our many loudmouthed "My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong" myrmidons will say to such modernisation of what is clearly still a superstition-ridden and ritualistic society - the result of our maintaining that ghastly traditional feudal system, in an era we should be aiming to make our fast-developing nation a world-class meritocracy: not the kleptocracy we have sadly allowed it to become.

So the question we should ask ourselves, Amanfuo, is: why should we continue to tolerate a feudal system whose anachronistic nature is illustrated perfectly in its need to keep some people poor and ignorant - so that they will always be amenable to getting a few cedis in return for carrying their fellow human beings aloft in a palanquin? Pure nonsense on bamboo stilts. Period.


Hmm Ghana - ayeasem oo! May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!