A culled Daily Telegraph article, which I am posting here today, dear reader, is a must-read for every one of Ghana's teeming well-educated younger generation.
It is the sudden realisation, after many decades, by a brilliant British conservative writer, that those of us who say that neo-liberalism's claims about freedom, democracy and market forces, are all a sham - hiding the hijacking of power by a greedy, powerful and ruthless few, for their personal enrichment: at the expense of the rest of society - are indeed right in some respects.
To quote Charles Moore: "It turns out – as the Left always claims – that a system purporting to advance the many has been perverted in order to enrich the few."
Alas, here in Ghana, a majority of today's younger generation, like most of their older compatriots, seem to have forgotten so soon, the dreadful economic mess left behind by our local version of the oligarchs and plutocrats who masquerade as democrats and own much of the world: President Kufuor and the tribal-supremacist cabal that helped him dominate the New Patriotic Party (NPP), and enabled them hijack our country for eight long and painful years - abusing the power entrusted to them by Ghanaians in December 2000, to successfully exploit our national economy for themselves; members of their family clans; sundry "bottom-power" girlfriends; their overly-ambitious tribal Chieftain and their small army of crony-capitalist legal-fronts (who according to bush-telegraph sources, hide the bulk of their vast wealth for them: in special purpose offshore entities!).
Every sincere, independent-minded and discerning Ghanaian, knows perfectly well that all the suffering and hardship that ordinary Ghanaians are experiencing today, stem directly from the criminal profligacy of Kufuor & Co., particularly during the later stages of their eight-year tenure.
They also know that Ghanaians would not be better off today, had the NPP been in power now, instead of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) regime of the honest, humble and hard-working President Mills.
The Mills regime ought to be praised by Ghanaians for largely succeeding in clearing up that ghastly mess - and setting our country on a path of growth: instead of being endlessly pilloried, unfairly, for the negative effects of the mismanagement of the national economy, by Kufuor & Co.
For those Ghanaians who are being fooled by the "Enkoyie" propaganda of the NPP, that must-read Daily Telegraph article, by Charles Moore, ought to be a salutary lesson - in why they should not be beguiled by the NPP's false message of hope that the so-called "New Society of Opportunity" apparently awaiting Ghanaians after December 2012, represents.
As many of us are aware, that false message of hope is now being sold to Ghanaians nationwide, in the most assiduous of fashions, by those who are looking to follow in the soiled footsteps of Kufuor & Co., after the next presidential and parliamentary elections.
Incidentally, dear reader, Charles Moore's brilliant article, is entitled: "Is the Left right after all?"
And just as a matter of interest, one ought to stress that most Ghanaian Progressives (just like the great Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah did in his time !), believe in a mixed economy, with the state using its power to actively protect society from crooked businesspeople. Please read on:
"I'm starting to think that the Left might actually be right
What with the phone-hacking scandal, the eurozone crisis and the US economic woes, the greedy few have left people disillusioned with our debased democracies.
It has taken me more than 30 years as a journalist to ask myself this question, but this week I find that I must: is the Left right after all? You see, one of the great arguments of the Left is that what the Right calls “the free market” is actually a set-up.
The rich run a global system that allows them to accumulate capital and pay the lowest possible price for labour. The freedom that results applies only to them. The many simply have to work harder, in conditions that grow ever more insecure, to enrich the few. Democratic politics, which purports to enrich the many, is actually in the pocket of those
bankers, media barons and other moguls who run and own everything.
In the 1970s and 1980s, it was easy to refute this line of reasoning because it was obvious, particularly in Britain, that it was the trade unions that were holding people back. Bad jobs were protected and good ones could not be created. “Industrial action” did not mean producing goods and services that people wanted to buy, it meant going on strike. The most visible form of worker oppression was picketing. The most important thing about Arthur Scargill’s disastrous miners’ strike was that he always refused to hold a ballot on it.
A key symptom of popular disillusionment with the Left was the moment, in the late 1970s, when the circulation of Rupert Murdoch’s Thatcher-supporting Sun overtook that of the ever-Labour Daily Mirror. Working people wanted to throw off the chains that Karl Marx had claimed were shackling them – and join the bourgeoisie which he hated. Their analysis of their situation was essentially correct. The increasing prosperity and freedom of the ensuing 20 years proved them right.
But as we have surveyed the Murdoch scandal of the past fortnight, few could deny that it has revealed how an international company has bullied and bought its way to control of party leaderships, police forces and regulatory processes. David Cameron, escaping skilfully from the tight corner into which he had got himself, admitted as much. Mr Murdoch himself, like a tired old Godfather, told the House of Commons media committee on Tuesday that he was so often courted by prime ministers that he wished they would leave him alone.
The Left was right that the power of Rupert Murdoch had become an anti-social force. The Right (in which, for these purposes, one must include the New Labour of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown) was too slow to see this, partly because it confused populism and democracy. One of Mr Murdoch’s biggest arguments for getting what he wanted in the expansion of his multi-media empire was the backing of “our readers”. But the News of the World and the Sun went out of the way in recent years to give their readers far too little information to form political judgments. His papers were tools for his power, not for that of his readers. When they learnt at last the methods by which the News of the World operated, they withdrew their support.
It has surprised me to read fellow defenders of the free press saying how sad they are that the News of the World closed. In its stupidity, narrowness and cruelty, and in its methods, the paper was a disgrace to the free press. No one should ever have banned it, of course, but nor should anyone mourn its passing. It is rather as if supporters of parliamentary democracy were to lament the collapse of the BNP. It was a great day for newspapers when, 25 years ago, Mr Murdoch beat the print unions at Wapping, but much of what he chose to print on those presses has been a great disappointment to those of us who believe in free markets because they emancipate people. The Right has done itself harm by covering up for so much brutality.
The credit crunch has exposed a similar process of how emancipation can be hijacked. The greater freedom to borrow which began in the 1980s was good for most people. A society in which credit is very restricted is one in which new people cannot rise. How many small businesses could start or first homes be bought without a loan? But when loans become the means by which millions finance mere consumption, that is different.
And when the banks that look after our money take it away, lose it and then, because of government guarantee, are not punished themselves, something much worse happens. It turns out – as the Left always claims – that a system purporting to advance the many has been perverted in order to enrich the few. The global banking system is an adventure playground for the participants, complete with spongy, health-and-safety approved flooring so that they bounce when they fall off. The role of the rest of us is simply to pay.
This column’s mantra about the credit crunch is that Everything Is Different Now. One thing that is different is that people in general have lost faith in the free-market, Western, democratic order. They have not yet, thank God, transferred their faith, as they did in the 1930s, to totalitarianism. They merely feel gloomy and suspicious. But they ask the simple question, “What's in it for me?”, and they do not hear a good answer.
Last week, I happened to be in America, mainly in the company of intelligent conservatives. Their critique of President Obama’s astonishing spending and record-breaking deficits seemed right. But I was struck by how the optimistic message of the Reagan era has now become a shrill one. On Fox News (another Murdoch property, and one which, while I was there, did not breathe a word of his difficulties), Republicans lined up for hours to threaten to wreck the President’s attempt to raise the debt ceiling. They seemed to take for granted the underlying robustness of their country’s economic and political arrangements. This is a mistake. The greatest capitalist country in history is now dependent on other people’s capital to survive. In such circumstances, Western democracy starts to feel like a threatened luxury. We can wave banners about “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”, but they tend to say, in smaller print, “Made in China”.
As for the plight of the eurozone, this could have been designed by a Left-wing propagandist as a satire of how money-power works. A single currency is created. A single bank controls it. No democratic institution with any authority watches over it, and when the zone’s borrowings run into trouble, elected governments must submit to almost any indignity rather than let bankers get hurt. What about the workers? They must lose their jobs in Porto and Piraeus and Punchestown and Poggibonsi so that bankers in Frankfurt and bureaucrats in Brussels may sleep easily in their beds.
When we look at the Arab Spring, we tend complacently to tell ourselves that the people on the streets all want the freedom we have got. Well, our situation is certainly better than theirs. But I doubt if Western leadership looks to a protester in Tahrir Square as it did to someone knocking down the Berlin Wall in 1989. We are bust – both actually and morally.
One must always pray that conservatism will be saved, as has so often been the case in the past, by the stupidity of the Left. The Left’s blind faith in the state makes its remedies worse than useless. But the first step is to realise how much ground we have lost, and that there may not be much time left to make it up. "
End of culled article from the Daily Telegraph.
Well, there it is, dear reader - the case against a return to power any time soon, by Kufuor & Co.'s NPP. And one certainly need not say anything further, in addition to all that is contained in that brilliant piece.
The right-wing Daily Telegraph's own conservative columnist, Charles Moore, brilliantly puts the case against elitists who hijack democracies around the globe, whiles the rest of society suffer endlessly (so that their exploiters can "sleep easily in their beds"!).
Ordinary Ghanaians must not be beguiled by our local elitist would-be hijackers of the Ghanaian nation-state and our democracy, for personal gain - at society's expense.
We must prevent our homeland Ghana from being dominated by a powerful few with greedy ambitions (to paraphrase Ghana's founding father, Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah!).
They are our local version of those who Charles Moore says have hijacked "democratic politics, which purports to enrich the many" but which he now understands "is actually in the pocket of those bankers, media barons and other moguls who run and own everything".
Well, that may be so in the West today, after the global credit crunch - that epoch-making game-changing moment in humankind's history. However, our local version of the ruthless and greedy global oligarchs, must never be allowed to succeed in their aim.
That is why Ghanaian Progressives must unite, and work hard to prevent Kufuor & Co. and the NPP from returning to power in Ghana again, any time soon.
As Charles Moore's column's mantra puts it: "Everything Is Different Now." The NPP's so-called New Society is based on economic and political assumptions that no longer apply.
We are being sold a sham by those, who like Kufuor & Co., will come to power and grow even richer than they currently are. And together with their tribal Chieftain (no doubt yet another insufferable tribal-supremacist megalomaniac), they too will also come to lord it over ordinary Ghanaians. We must not buy the sham they are attempting to sell us! A word to the wise...
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