Re: “Deception at TOR”

In response to Livingstone Pay Charlie of The Insight’s article entitled “Deception At TOR” that appeared in the Saturday , 10th October 2009, general news web-page of www.ghanaweb.com, may I humbly point it out to him that the rot at TOR is a veritable case-study example of how not to run an emerging economy with aspirations? 

It is an egregious example of Kufuor's crony-capitalism: the result of an economic policy that was our local version of the ruthless Robber Baron capitalism of late 19th and early 20th century American capitalism!

Massa, Kufuor & Co came to power with one big-idea agenda in mind, which they skillfully hid from all of us: the ruthless use of political power to enable them exploit our national economy for themselves; their family clans; and their cronies.

What happened at TOR is a classic example of the socialization of private risk, which was so rampant during Kufour & Co's golden age of business – in which the Ghanaian nation-state and state-owned entities were made to bear the risk, in transaction after transaction: so that well-connected oligarchs of that era could regularly make vast profits at the expense of Ghana's hapless taxpayers.

It was in the nature of the beast, that under such a kleptocratic system, the offspring of our rulers, using insider-knowledge, could set up countless special purpose vehicles (some offshore), to use to obtain contracts from state entities.

In one such infamous case, the Energy Commission gave a contract (for the supply of electricity meters to the Electricity Company of Ghana, ECG), to one of the princes of the crafty and greedy Kufuor's golden age of business: a son of the serving president of Ghana, no less.

That well-connected gentleman made a cool US$2 million profit – in what clearly amounted to a case of profiteering! Massa, TOR was simply seen as a means of creating regime-crony tycoons, from whom kickbacks could be obtained on a regular basis – by letting them obtain endless credit at no risk to themselves: because TOR  was made to bear the risk (sanctioned by the arrogant "I-am-the-monkey-in-the-chair” rogue, appointed as managing director, for the purpose), harming and endangering the very existence of the state-owned Ghana Commercial Bank (GCB): which it was leveraged to gargantuan levels, in the process.

Naturally, all that massive debt was counted as part of Ghana's GDP by the greedy rogues into whose incompetent hands our country had fallen – which is why we had the Kweku-Ananse smoke-and-mirrors booming economy, which did not deliver a good quality of life (and decent living standards!), for the vast majority of Ghanaians, but enabled the few powerful crooks in the Kufuor regime and their regime-crony capitalists to send their individual net-worth into the stratosphere.

That is why we had the amazing situation in which whiles ordinary people were being impoverished by the looting of our national treasury, some of their leaders had the effrontery to insult Ghanaians (on top of their many woes): by labeling a hardworking people - who did not have the opportunities the truly-lazy people in power had - as"lazy" people.

Even the Hypocrite-in-Chief himself had the temerity to sing that monstrous and discordant tune-of-contempt for ordinary people: on top of his booming voice too. Hmm, Ghana- eyeasem o!

So, today, dear reader, we have arrived at the sad situation in which, like a clever and desperate con-man fully aware that his many awful secrets are about to be exposed, Crook-Number-One is lobbying furiously to get as many grand-sounding but useless international appointments as it is possible for him to dupe innocents abroad into giving him.

The idea is to continue impressing the many gullible Ghanaians he relies on to protect him now - those brain-dead “My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong” myrmidon-types, whose endless praise-singing, funds were procured from “National Security” and paid to regularly: to keep in fine fettle for their endless serial-calling in the electronic media!

Incredibly, those poor souls actually believe that Kufuor came to save our homand Ghana just because they got a few crumbs thrown their way  -  whiles Mother Ghana was being brutally gang-raped by the perfidious Kufuor and his many partners-in-crime.

Sadly, today, many discerning and independent-minded Ghanaians insist that he is the most dishonest leader ever elected to lead our nation thus far, in its entire post-independence history. Pity.

Yet, he had a historic opportunity to set high standards of morality in our public life when he first came to power. Hmm Ghana, eyeasem o - esem kesie ebaba debi ankasa!

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