BRANDING GHANA: THE MOTHER OF ALL DAFT IDEAS!

A government that says it wants to cut unnecessary public expenditure must never use public funds for a venture as daft as "branding Ghana". Ghana's already good image globally, will only be further enhanced, if our government does good deeds in the real world - such as the president and his spouse publicly publishing their assets before and after our head of state's tenure.

Have nations like Angola and Nigeria not spent zillions of dollars fostering a good image overseas for themselves in so-called "branding" schemes? Was their collective-folly not terribly exposed when the Nigerian would-be Christmas day airline-bomber was thwarted last December, and Cabindan rebels decided to make a complete nonsense of the Angolan government's massive efforts at boosting their country's overseas image, by shooting at and killing three individuals on the Togolese team's buses, shortly after they exited a Cabinda border post to enter Angola proper, just before the start of the Confederation of African Football (CAF) tournament this month?


If our political class is tolerant and honest on a permanent basis, that will do wonders for our country's image overseas. Did the world not sing our praises to the rafters when the ruling party lost the December elections and handed over power to the then opposition party? Instead of building expensive presidential palace complexes to "dignify" our nation and its presidency (in a cash-strapped nation in which millions go to bed on empty stomachs because they are too poor to have three square meals, what sort of dignity is that?), our nation's image overseas will be boosted when instead of such profligacy, our politicians act to ensure that the living standards of Ghanaians go up: to such an extent that their quality of life is improved to the same level as that of the citizens of nations in Scandinavia. Surely, that is how to sensibly boost Ghana's image abroad without paying the earth for it?

"Branding Ghana" is simply throwing good money down the financial equivalent of a black-hole. It is a pretty daft idea - and not worthy of a regime whose leader never ceases to remind all that he is interested in the well-being of ordinary people. Branding Ghana is a wheeze thought up by clever self-seekers in the NDC regime. Period. President Mills must close down the office in the Osu Castle that was set up to brand Ghana - for, it is his regime's good work in the real world that will enhance our nation's image overseas: not endless clever marketing strategy sessions by world-class prattlers, and expensive advertising campaigns Ghana that can hardly afford! A word to the wise...


Tel (powered by Tigo - the one mobile phone network in Ghana that actually works!): + 233 900 27 745 3109 & the not-so-hot and clueless Vodafone wireless smartphone: + 233 (21) 976238.

DO NOT DISHONOUR THE LATE BAAH-WIREDU'S GOOD NAME!

I was astonished to learn that the former finance minister in the New Patriotic Party (NPP) regime, the late Mr. Baah-Wiredu, is apparently being blamed for the disappearance of the sale and purchase agreement document covering the purchase of Kaiser Aluminum’s stake in the Volta Aluminum Company
Limited (VALCO), by the government of Ghana. How absurd. No one must be allowed to dishonour the good name of a man who is no longer alive to fight to protect his good name. The late Baah-Wiredu was a meticulous gentleman, who was well-known for scrupulously following the rules governing society – so why would he take such an important document out of his office: and presumably arrange for copies of the document to disappear from the surface of the planet Earth as well, I ask, dear reader? Those who have reason to want the said document to disappear permanently must bow their heads in shame for their perfidy.


Perhaps if the president were to quickly order the Serious Fraud Office and the secret services to do an audit of the assets (including the residential properties!) of VALCO, to find out if there has been any asset-stripping there that has led to some of its assets being sold to third parties, that might shed some light on the motivation of those who want that document to be lost till the end of time. Another thing the current government could do to help it unravel this particular mystery, would be to ask the present parliament’s minority leader to outline the processes that led to the railroading through parliament of that mother of all frauds, the sale and purchase agreement for VALCO by the grandly named consortium, International Aluminum Partners (put together by the powerful and greedy crooks who dominated the previous regime). At the time, Mr. Kyei Mensah-Bonsu (who was then the Majority Leader of Parliament), told the media, when it emerged that Norske Hydro and VALE, the two international metals conglomerates that were said to be buying VALCO, were strenuously denying ever agreeing to purchase the company, that the majority benches in parliament had done what was required of them, and that they were not to blame when those who were supposed to “deliver” had "failed to do so.”


Precisely what did he mean? Who were those who had failed to “deliver” and had been unable to inveigle Norske Hydro and VALE into agreeing to the terms offered by the crooks who were seeking to personally benefit from the sale of VALCO to International Aluminum Partners? The question that many of the independent-minded Ghanaians known as “floating voters” would like to ask the Mills regime is: What is a more clear-cut case of criminality waiting for prosecution, than the gigantic fraud against the Ghanaian nation-state by the powerful crooks who dominated the previous NPP regime, that the railroading through parliament of the sale and purchase agreement for the purchase of VALCO by that legal fiction known as International Aluminum Partners, represents? The Mills regime must never forget that those who are behind the disappearance of important documents from sensitive government departments, are driven by the same base motives that drove the ruthless politicians, who happen to be the political forebears of the present NPP – those well-educated and violent disciples of that odious Akan tribal-supremacist organization known as the National Liberation Movement (NLM).


The present regime must never forget the fact that a powerful cabal made up of a few greedy and ruthless individuals, dominated the NPP regime throughout its tenure, and used their period in office to exploit our nation’s economy for their personal benefit. It enabled those callous individuals; the members of their family clans; and their cronies; to increase their net worth to stratospheric heights. Many of them are now using some of that same wealth to frustrate the current government – through a combination of clever manipulation of the legal system to protect their ill-gotten wealth, and winning the sympathy of the Ghanaian public, through the zealous agency of the many mercenaries who people the Ghanaian media world: who sold their individual consciences to them for zillions. President Mills must understand that those types of Ghanaians are ruthless and amoral individuals who are determined to use every weapon available to them to destroy his regime – so that the NPP is returned to power again in 2012. He and the members of his government must be equally ruthless in dealing with the very real threat they pose to his regime. Above all, the president must not be fooled by their hypocritical smiles and the empty platitudes they employ to hide their real intentions from him. He must never allow them to dishonour the good name of the late Baah-Wiredu, who was a good and honest human being who served his homeland Ghana faithfully. A word to the wise…



Tel (powered by Tigo – the one mobile phone network in Ghana that actually works!): + 233 (0) 27 745 3109 & the not-so-hot and clueless Vodafone wireless smartphone: (0) 21 976238.

IN JUDGING OTHERS, ARE THE WORLD’S JIHADISTS AND OTHER SELF-RIGHTEOUS RELIGIONISTS BLASPHEMING, PERHAPS?

As a result of the Jihadist death-wish and foolishness of that wealthy young Nigerian would-be suicide bomber, who flew from Lagos to Detroit last Christmas, Africans will now have to endure further indignities – in addition to the daily humiliations they suffer at the hands of the many racially-prejudiced non-African people they happen to come into contact with, daily. Alas, the rest of humankind wishing to travel to the United States of America, henceforth, will also have to suffer in similar fashion – and have to put up with the indignity of airport security officials worldwide checking them out: by peering at images of their naked bodies on the screens of “full-body” scanning machines. God help us all.


When will those fanatical cretins (who incredibly think that killing their fellow human beings will buy them passage to heaven!) get it into their pea-sized brains that contrary to what that liar, mass-murderer, and blasphemer, Osama bin Laden, and his abominable Al Qaeda terrorist-lieutenants tell them, Allah and the Prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him) actually disapprove of the murder of innocents by suicide-bombers? In the early days, during the lifetime of the Prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him), when Islam and Moslems were being persecuted by pagans in Arabia, perhaps Jihad could be justified – and the killing of ‘infidels’ was, in a very real sense, a necessary and last-resort-end, which ensured the survival of Islam. Now (more so than at any time, since the adoption by the UN on 10 December, 1948 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights) that most of humankind has come round to the view that every human being on the surface of the planet Earth has an inalienable right to enjoy basic human rights, the killing of innocents in the name of religion cannot be justified under any circumstances.


In the supposedly civilized age of the internet, surely, one has to assume that every human being somehow has direct access to Allah/God? Is it not time for true-believers of all the major religions of the world, to stop arrogating the right to judge and punish their fellow human beings to themselves, in the name of religion – and leave such sinners and blasphemers to the wrath of the Almighty Allah/God himself? Surely, if it will bring about peace on earth, ought not the religious world’s many self-righteous Mullahs (and sundry nutcases like the Osama bin Ladens of this world!); ever-wise Eastern Gurus; and the leaders of the various Christian denominations, who seek to punish others for various “sins” committed on this earth, in the name of religion, to trust in Allah/God to deal with such “sinners” himself, and in his own time: either here or in the hereafter? Why, do they not believe in his mighty power, one bit, at all? Surely, no one should presume to speak on Allah/God’s behalf – since that actually is blasphemous? A word to the wise…


Tel (powered by Tigo – the one mobile phone network in Ghana that actually works!): + 233 (0) 27 745 3109 & the not-so-hot and clueless Vodafone wireless smartphone number: + 233 (0) 967238.