The government of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) must not allow itself to be swayed by those who say they believe in press freedom - but deliberately closed their eyes and ears to the perfidy of the Multi-Media Group. Let them leave that biased entity to its own devices.
Why bother with an entity in which there exists a crop of biased, arrogant, smug and third-rate journalists, with an anti-NDC agenda - and determined to help remove the NDC from power?
Let the tiresome sods stew in their own juice. This is nothing more than a case of being hoisted on their own petard - for an arrogant lot who delude themselves into thinking that somehow they are in Komla Dumor's league: and whose anti-NDC agenda does not fool a single discerning and independent-minded Ghanaian patriot.
That is why many of the cynics in our midst insist that the only reason those clamouring for the government to end its politically sensible decision to boycott the Multi-Media Group, is that it negatively impacts the company's collaboration with the BBC - and actually does jeopardise same in the long-term.
Clearly, were the NDC to retain power after the December 2012 elections, and decide to maintain its boycott of the Multi-Media Group, it would be rather difficult for people in the UK, made poor by massive public-sector spending cuts, not to question the point of the tie-up, from the BBC's point of view - if the Multi-Media Group lacked direct access to Ghanaian government members?
Another positive outcome from this fuss-over-nothing, is the shocking revelation that the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) was made to risk pensioners' money, buying Multi-Media Group corporate bonds. When exactly did that happen, I ask, dear reader?
Who was the muppet (apologies to Goldman Sachs!) in the government who came up with that daft idea, one wonders?
One certainly hopes that the new private sector pension companies, will not be lent on, by politicians looking for roundabout ways of helping the wealthy and politically well-connected, to become even richer at the expense of the rest us - using this rip-Mother-Ghana-off model of financial engineering, to fund the private business empire of an arch crony-capitalist: who prospered mightily during the golden age of business for Kufuor & Co.
That daft investment by SSNIT, and the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation's 10 percent stake in the Multi-Media Group, are some of the most outrageous examples of the socialisation of private risk, that I have ever come across.
Naturally, it is a business model much loved by our wealthy business class - who, when it suits them, always say that the private sector ought to be the engine of growth.
Yet, the reality is that they are constantly sponging off the Ghanaian nation-state - and in this particular instance, compared to what they would have forked out servicing a bank loan, more or less accessing interest-free long-term capital.
Above all, over the years, none of them has been known to hesitate to make a beeline for SSNIT's cash - when the opportunity to use it as a bank of last resort, presents itself.
If the purchase by SSNIT of Multi-Media Group corporate bonds isn't a classic example of elite-rip off of Mother Ghana, I don't know what else it is. One wonders what sense it makes, from an investing-for-income point of view, for the Ghanaian nation-state.
That is why it will be an act of kindness for one to sound a note of caution to the boards of SNNIT and the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation.
They must really be alive to their fiduciary duties, in as far as this double-whammy instance of daft public-sector investment in a private undertaking goes - by ensuring that the Multi-Media Group gives their companies a return on their investments.
They must understand clearly that in reality, their companies' investment in the Multi-Media Group, are egregious examples of investment in a private entity (dependent solely on the shifting sands of unpredictable advertising revenues), which financially responsible public bodies should never have allowed themselves to be more or less coerced by politicians, into making.
Indeed they must be very careful. Alas, were a regime that neither encourages nor tolerates elite rip-off to come to power in Ghana tomorrow, they could all end up in the law courts - for playing a role in a case of the wilful causing of financial loss to Ghana, by others.
Finally, I encourage the NDC government to maintain the boycott of the Multi-Media Group - which makes perfect political sense and isn't, by any stretch of the imagination, an anti-democratic gesture.
Those who know what strategy was adopted by the NPP and its "rented press", when they met at Asylum Down's Highgate hotel to plot an NPP return to power in December 2012, shortly after the NDC assumed power in January 2009, say the boycott of the Multi-Media Group, is a political master-stroke - against an arrogant and hypocritical oligarch abusing his power as a press baron. Period. A word to the wise...
Tel (Powered by Tigo - the one mobile phone network in Ghana, which actually works!): + 233 (0) 27 745 3109.
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