Ordinary Ghanaians must be extremely grateful to Mrs. Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings, for challenging the status quo in her party - by making a bid for the candidacy of the National Democratic Congress' (NDC) for the presidential elections of December 2012.
No doubt, it will become clear why ordinary Ghanaians ought to be grateful to her, in due course, dear reader - as her party renews itself in readiness for the December 2012 presidential and parliamentary elections. Her bid shook her party to the core - and has made it understand that it must take nothing for granted. That is certainly a good mindset for any ruling party to have.
And now that the NDC has finally chosen its candidate for the December 2012 presidential elections (in the person of H. E. President John Fiifi Atta Mills), one hopes, for the sake of the ordinary people of Ghana, and the overall interest of the Ghanaian nation-state, that the opposing factions in the NDC party will unite quickly, going forward.
It is imperative that they do so - as the December 2012 elections will decide the very future of our homeland Ghana. For, that will be when the ordinary people of Ghana, vote to decide, into whose hands the destiny of our nation will be placed (in a fast-changing knowledge-based and globalised world).
That all-important election in December 2012, will also decide who will ultimately benefit the most, from the revenues that accrue from the exploitation of our oil and natural gas deposits - because the world-view of the members of our political class who win power in that watershed election, will have a profound effect on the direction Ghana takes.
That election will decide whether Ghana's most valuable natural resources will be exploited to benefit all Ghanaians - or whether they will be hijacked by a rapacious elite, and benefit a powerful few with greedy ambitions.
By electing politicians, who (as Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah used to do!), always fight for the interests of the ordinary people of Ghana, and that of the Ghanaian nation-state, our oil and natural gas revenues will be utilised to contribute to the realisation of the long-held dream of Progressives in Ghana, that our nation will be transformed into an African equivalent, of the egalitarian societies of Scandinavia.
Unfortunately, ordinary Ghanaians will more or less be condemned to perpetual servitude, on the other hand, if Ghana falls into the grasping hands of those greed-filled stooges for imperialism amongst our ruling elites - whose self-interest makes them the lackeys of foreign oil companies and their overseas shareholders: together with whom most of that wealth will eventually end up with, if given half the chance.
For, alas, their neo- colonialist mentality, dictates that they will always make it easy for our nation's resources to fall into the hands of foreign commercial interests, and under terms so generous, they cannot be found anywhere else on the surface of the planet Earth - and which are invariably detrimental to our nation and inimical to the well-being of its people.
There are classic examples of such pernicious and one-sided agreements, which are the handiwork of the stooges for imperialism and neo-colonialism amongst the membership of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) - all of which were struck during the regime of the perfidious Kufour & Co.
Amongst them are those covering the takeover of Ghana Telecom by Vodafone; that of Ashanti Goldfields by AngloGold; that covering the acquisition of blocs in the jubilee oilfield; ditto the Byzantine Balkan Energy deal and worst of all, the scandalous non-deliverance of a fully-paid up power plant by Zachem.
It is vital that our nation never again falls into the hands of those clever asset-stripping individuals, for whom power is merely a useful tool enabling those who wield it, to cloak the unfathomable greed that drives them, with innocuous and high-sounding phrases that encapsulate neo-liberal economic concepts, such as "free enterprise" and "market forces" - to lend respectability to their goal of successfully exploiting our national economy to enable them increase their personal net worth: as well as that of the members of their family clans and favourite crony-capitalist chums.
If we allow such asset-stripping and tribal-supremacist politicians to come to power again in our homeland Ghana, our country will end up becoming one of those depressing nations that suffer the so-called 'resource curse'.
We must never again allow the intolerable situation, in which corrupt politicians use their crooked business friends as legal fronts, to acquire stakes in blocs in oilfields, which though may sound small when quantified in percentage terms, are actually worth hundreds of millions of dollars - vast sums that could be used to build schools and hospitals for the common good.
Why must we allow such wealth to fall into the hands of a few individuals, simply because they are the friends of those who rule our nation, at a given point in time, in our history - when such revenues coming instead to the government, can be used to improve the living standards of all Ghanaians: by building roads, schools, clinics, hospitals, provide affordable housing nationwide and improve the public transport system countrywide, for example, I ask?
(Incidentally, we must applaud President Mills' refusal to travel down that perilous road of corruption, when offered the opportunity to do so, by an American oil company.
No doubt, a deal similar to the E. O. Group one, would have been the result, if President Mills was your typical corrupt African leader - and grabbed the opportunity offered to him, by the corrupt American oil company, seeking to bribe him. Thank goodness he isn't!)
If we ever allow those who rule our nation to travel along that road again, Ghana's teeming millions of struggling families and hard-up individuals, will be condemned to perpetually live in the sort of depressing African nation-states, which are the subject of the concerns of the Western politicians and other well-meaning high-profile individuals, who were quoted in a Sunday, 20 February, 2011, UK Guardian newspaper article, by Heather Stewart, which is about how developed nations can take steps that can help deal effectively with extractive industries corruption in resource-rich African nations.
I am reproducing virtually all of Heather Stewart's Guardian article - to help me illustrate the end result of giving power in Ghana, to the asset-strippers amongst our ruling elites, who will divvy up our oil and natural gas deposits between themselves and their foreign collaborators, as sure as day follows night, if we are not vigilante always. Heather Stewart's article follows below:
"Britain is throwing its weight behind European efforts to force oil and mining companies to publish details of every penny they pay to governments in poor countries where they operate.
George Osborne told his fellow G20 finance ministers in Paris on Saturday that the coalition was keen to support an effort by the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, to throw open the operations of the extractive industries in the developing world to public scrutiny.
"As we enter a new decade when the resources of Africa are going to be heavily developed, I strongly believe it's in everyone's interests that mining companies and others operate to the highest standards," said Osborne. "That's the way to ensure some of the world's poorest benefit from the wealth that lies in the ground beneath them."
When multinational resources firms move into African states they often bring the promise of economic development, but campaigners say the result is all too often a bonanza for a tiny elite, while most of the population sees few benefits. In oil-rich Equatorial Guinea, for example, GDP per head is $30,000, equivalent to that of Italy or Spain, but most of the population still live on less than $1 a day. Exports of oil, gas and minerals from Africa were worth $393bn in 2008, while the continent received $44bn in international aid, and natural resources accounted for almost a quarter of Africa's growth between 2000 and 2008.
The long-running Publish What You Pay campaign, supported by a coalition of civil society groups worldwide, argues that if the scale of the payouts to host-country governments were revealed, voters would hold their leaders to account.
Jane Allen, UK co-ordinator for the campaign, said: "Too often the potential for growth and development in countries rich in natural resources is squandered as vast sums of money are misused by governments and individuals.
"By committing to legally binding measures that will make these payments open to scrutiny, the UK and Europe can play a critical role in reversing this 'resource curse' by fighting corruption and poverty."" End of Guardian article by Heather Stewart.
So, finally, dear reader, perhaps in giving the Mills administration a fright, by giving it a deserved kick in the backside, Mrs. Rawlings may very well have helped to prevent all the negatives mentioned above, in Ms Heather Stewards' Guardian article, from occurring in Ghana too.
Her criticism of the Mills administration, before and during her campaign for the election of the NDC's December 2012 presidential candidate, certainly brought about some deep soul-searching within the Mills administration.
And it is precisely that soul-searching, which will now help unite both factions in that party - a sine qua non, without which victory for the party's candidate in the December 2012 presidential election, will well nigh be impossible, alas.
And as is often the case, an NDC regime in power invariably pursues policies that redound to the benefit of ordinary Ghanaians and the Ghanaian nation-state - as opposed to the New Patriotic Party's stock-in-trade: policies that enrich a powerful and selfish few, with greedy ambitions: to paraphrase Ghana's founding father, the great Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nrkumah.
Alas, such elitism in running our country, has been the tendency of all the political descendants of the Akan tribal-supremacist and elitist Dr. J. B. Danquah, who have come to power, since Nkrumah's Convention Peoples Party (CPP) was overthrown in 1966. Pity.
So, we must say thank you, to Mrs. Rawlings - as she has done the ordinary people of Ghana a huge favour. And for their sake, she must now go a step further - and elect to work closely henceforth, with President Mills and his regime - to help make our homeland Ghana a better place for us all.
We thank her, and salute her for her courage and wisdom - and one hopes that now that her bid to become her party's presidential candidate for the December 2012 elections, has come to an end (for now at least - although there is always the one for the December 2016 presidential election to aim for!), she will take a long-term strategic view, and let bygones be bygones: in the interest of Mother Ghana!
So, to her, I say: Ohemaa Awhofe, don't forget that we must all do our bit, to help keep the few powerful, ruthless and hypocritical criminal-types, who form the tribal-supremacist and elitist cabal, which has such a vice-like grip on the NPP, from coming to power again, any time soon.
(Incidentally, not many people know it, dear reader, but some of the cynics amongst us, say that that Akan tribal-supremacist cabal, ultimately controls what some of its harshest critics say is nothing more than a political party, consisting of many decent but innocents abroad - who in a very real sense are like lamb-to-the-slaughter: mere cannon fodder for that cabal of tribal Chieftains and the descendants of the pre-colonial ruling elites. But I digress!)
So, as they say in local parlance: "Madame, humble yourself - and make you work with the Prof!" A word to the wise...
Tel (powered by Tigo - the one mobile phone network in Ghana, which actually works!): + 233 (0) 27 745 3109.
Post Script:
Author's note: I am grateful to all those who read what I thought was going to be my blog's last posting for a while, and telephoned to offer help to enable me overcome my latest life-challenge - and deal with the emergency situation I then faced.
Naturally, I politely refused their help - as I am a fellow who believes that having made one's bed in life, one ought to lie in it, one's self.
I am not about to lie down and die - and I am actively working to overcome the entirety of this particular challenge.
The conspiracy theorist in me detects the long-arm of some of my Akan tribal-supremacist enemies from the NPP, at work - but I shall overcome this little local difficulty: as I have done many others in the past.
Anyhow, as can be seen, dear reader, despite one's real-world absent-mindedness (resulting from the curse of having to live inside one's head for rather lengthy periods of time, when engrossed in one's writing - and also afflicted with an impractical nature, on top of that!), one's bounced right back - having partially overcome one's latest challenge - from the collateral damage from one's real-world absent-mindedness.
As my many enemies amongst our largely-corrupt, mostly-incompetent and criticism-averse members of our ruling elites can see, I am still in fine fettle.
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