Why Nana Akufo-Addo & The NPP Do Not Yet Deserve To Come To Power Again

Now that Martin Amidu has raised the honest-stewardship bar for Ghanaian politicians,  in  protecting the national interest at all material times,  and being non-partisan in fighting corruption, we must not allow any group of  politicians to ride to power, merely on the  back of a tide of public disenchantment with a serving regime -  without them showing and proving beyond all  reasonable doubt,  that indeed they do truly  merit the people's mandate. Otherwise, why change?

Yes, there has been a great deal of disenchantment with President Mills' leadership style, and speculation that he is not in charge of his own regime.

Indeed, many are those who believe that  some of the people around the president are arrogating powers to themselves that are ultra vires and unconstitutional.

As an example, one needs look no further,  than the most recent example - the   weasel words of Kokou Anyidoho's confession that President Mills had nothing to do with the  public 'dismissal' of the Ashanti regional director of the Electricity Company of Ghana.

 The fact that that serial-bungler is  still at post, despite this being the umpteenth PR debacle he has been involved in, speaks volumes about Mills' leadership style.

And it  settles that particular  matter finally - so we can all  say with a degree of confidence that President Mills is not really in charge of his own regime, in that sense. That is why the people whose PR genius unfairly destroyed his hard-working regime's image in the eyes of ordinary Ghanaians, still cling to their cushy sinecures at the Osu Castle. Pity.

In the same vein, if anyone doubted the total unsuitability of a still un-reformed and unrepentant New Patriotic Party  (NPP),  being allowed to return to power again, they must look no further than  the NPP's leading-lights' responses to the various acts of omission and commission,  committed by errant members of the Mills administration.

However much  we may be disenchanted with Mills' NDC regime,  it does not follow,  a priori, that we are going to welcome a return of yet another NPP regime with open arms. Those knee-jerk musical-chairs-style regime-change days are gone for good - thank goodness.

There are many  questions that those   sections of  the Ghanaian media, which  are underpinned by ethical journalism,   and take their watchdog role in Ghanaian society seriously,  ought to be asking  and demanding answers to, from Nana Akufo-Addo and the NPP.

Such close scrutiny will  ensure that the corruption we saw during the Kufuor-era does not return with the advent of any  new NPP regime led by Nana Akufo-Addo.

Ghana cannot afford another bout of -  in the words of  one of  its sternest,  independent-minded and patriotic critics I know  - "the  milking  dry of Ghana,  in yet another golden age of business,  for that mostly-greedy, ruthless  and selfish lot". Ouch.

What, for example,  will  Nana Akufo-Addo and the NPP do,   about the leading cause of high-level  corruption in Ghana - the continual refusal of  our political class,  to accept  that publicly publishing the assets of the president and those he appoints to his government, as well as their spouses - immediately before assuming office, and immediately after their tenure -  is a convention that must quickly be established in our nation's politics, if the fight against high-level corruption is to succeed?

Clearly, the deafening silence from  Nana Akufo-Addo and the NPP on this matter,  can only mean that they are accepting of  the totally unacceptable status quo.

That, clearly,  is not a very good sign,  in an oil-rich Ghana  - from a political party with  a murky honest-stewardship past, and at the doorstep of which those inimical oil production agreements Ghana entered into,  much to its detriment, can squarely be laid.

As I have always said, President Kufuor is the greediest,  most dishonest and corrupt individual ever elected to rule Ghana,  thus far, since the overthrow of President Nkrumah in February 1966.

(Incidentally, I am still waiting for Mr. Kufuor  to sue me for regularly  saying that about  him - whereupon he will  promptly  realise that his brilliant friend Kweku Baako,   is not the only journalist in Ghana,  who possesses   secret and highly sensitive documents, as well as  digital forms of incontrovertible evidence,  proving those damning assertions. But I digress.)

Amidst the public outrage about the sale of state lands to politicians and their cronies, under the so-called Accra Re-Development Plan, there has neither been a whimper of  condemnation of that iniquitous self-serving policy initiative, nor  an emphatic declaration of ending the  immorality of what is merely a convenient legal-cloak designed to hide the redistribution of  what belongs to all Ghanaians,  to a well-connected,  powerful and greedy few.

With Jake Obestebi-Lamptey as its chairperson, and President Kufuor as its Godfather, perhaps it will be business as usual on that front too, one wonders?

Alas, dear reader,  clearly,  there is also  nothing thus far, in their  many campaign rally speeches  and endless press conferences, to  indicate that there will not be a repetition of the   incidence of fraud and immorality,  seen during the golden age of business  for the perfidious Kufuor & Co.

The question then is, why has anyone not  yet heard a direct assurance from  either Nana Akufo-Addo  or those silver-tongued dissemblers known collectively as the "NPP Communications Team", that the outrageous Kufuor-era unspeakable frauds  committed against Ghanaians, will not be repeated when they return to power? Just saying Woyomegate will not occur in an NPP regime, is not enough.

An egregious example of those aforementioned frauds, was  the railroading through Parliament - under the present Minority Leader in Parliament, the Hon. Osei Kyei Mensah-Bosu's active  leadership -  of the   sale and purchase agreement for  the Volta Aluminium Company Limited (VALCO).

That purported sale of VALCO,  was   to a   so-called International Aluminium Partners (IAP),  a non-existent entity,  said to be a joint-venture partnership between VALE of Brazil and Norske-Hydro of Norway -  both of whom yet strenuously denied ever agreeing to purchase VALCO.

 And we are told that vital documents said to be missing,   were last  known to have been in the possession of the late Hon. Baah-Wiredu -  pure slander against an honest man now deceased and unable to defend his honour. Amazing.

The question is, how do we know that such wheezes will not be repeated in an NPP regime,  under Nana Akufo-Addo's leadership - a gentleman whose gargantuan family tree is crowned by a tribal Chieftain and  branch members  a zillion times more sophisticated than that of President Kufuor's? Heaven help us.

In all their many references to the activities of the powerful crooks,  who lurk in the shadows in the corridors of power,  in the Mills administration,  we are  yet to hear what guarantees, if any, Nana Akufo-Addo and the NPP are prepared to give  Ghanaians that similar crimes,  such as high-level insider-dealing and the exploitation of  insider-information for private gain,   will not occur  in an NPP regime under Nana Akufo-Addo,  too.

There has also been a great deal of noise about the so-called "social interventions" initiated by the Kufuor regime - most  of which did not have a sustainable funding source. But they were launched nonetheless to court cheap popularity for his regime.

That is not the sort of 'achievement' likely to impress discerning minds today, is it? The curing of  that   crippling budgetary  equivalent of a viral  illness,  by the Mills regime,  one ought to note, is nothing short of  miraculous.

Yet, instead of acknowledging the hard work involved in  resuscitating  the national economy that  Kufuor & Co. had brought to its knees,  by the end of their regime's tenure, Dr. Bawumia -  apparently the NPP's last-word in economics -   has chosen to bury  his head in the sand,    and more or less implies,   as he goes around the country in Nana Akufo-Addo's company, that  nothing much has been done  thus far,  in the economic sphere,  by the present government. Incredible.

Is that a  sign of sincere and responsible leadership - something that  Ghana desperately needs today,  in an age of austerity?

Given the obvious lack of a clear sustainable source of funding for Nana Akufo-Addo's free high school educational policy, and the astonishing   and brazen decision to fund "Zongo development"  from the consolidated fund (imagine that - how reckless and irresponsible can one get, I ask, dear reader?), how are we to know that a developmental strategy, which is the  economic equivalent of starting to build a house with no income and only a fraction of its cost saved up - and hoping that the building will somehow be completed on a wing-and-a-prayer basis -  will not also become  a regular feature   of  a Nana Akufo-Addo administration?

What are we also to conclude then, when instead of calling for a reform of the outrageous,  pigs-snouts-in-the-trough compensation packages, which are  paid to members of the boards of state-owned entities, for example, Nana Akufo-Addo seems to favour a business-as-usual approach?

Nana Akufo-Addo  merely signals instead that he will use that area of our national life  that desperately needs reforming as a form of  pork-barrel political leverage,  to keep those delegates who elected him to be his party's candidate for the presidential election in check, and prevent them from rocking the boat (presumably before and after the December elections)  - by reminding  them that there are many posts and appointments to public-sector entity  boards, within the gift of a serving president.

No sign there of any  reform agenda  too,  alas, dear reader, is there? Well, if it is  going to be business as usual there too, then  why should we allow members of what many independent-minded and patriotic Ghanaians say was the most corrupt regime ever elected to rule Ghana,  since independence, to be returned to power again,  after the December polls, I ask?

Nana Akufo-Addo and the NPP need to  do better than they have done to date, to convince those in Ghana who can think, and also always take into account the words,  deeds and misdeeds of politicians. To be credible, they must    assure  and convince such Ghanaians that they will carry out a root-and-branch  reform,  of a corrupt and cancerous system. And roll out a detailed plan for same too. Nothing short will do.

That is the only way to proceed,  if they want to win over the sceptical and discerning Ghanaians,  whose   independent-mindedness and sense of   patriotism underpins their   passionate love for  Mother Ghana  - the floating-voters whose crucial swing-votes now decide who becomes Ghana's president.

President Mills and Vice-President Mahama might have failed us as leaders - but that should not mean that Ghanaians must automatically hand power to the NPP,  on a silver platter. That  no longer  makes  sense in the oil-rich Ghana of today.

As things currently stand,  virtually nothing Nana Akufo-Addo and the NPP  have said or done thus far, assures   independent-minded patriots in our country,  that the NPP is  deserving of being returned to power again to rule  Ghana.

The good people of Ghana must not be beguiled by the sugar-coated words  they hear from them, during  stops made in their localities,  by  the NPP's leaders' in their   "restore hope" campaign trips across Ghana. A word to the wise...

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