If the powerful tribal-supremacist crooks who have dominated the New Patriotic Party (NPP), in the eight years they have been in power for, think that they are going to get away with their crimes against Ghana, by bribing the electorate, they had better revise their notes quickly.
A young taxi driver’s comment about the NPP‘s amazing apologies to Ghanaians, and the government’s incredible u-turns in making a number of sudden policy reverses, ought to be food for thought for all those in the NPP, who are so desperate to hang on to power at all costs.
The young man (and his friends!) wondered aloud just what it was that the NPP was so desperate to hide, that it was even prepared to reduce fuel prices all of a sudden; let imprisoned commercial drivers out of jail; refund fines imposed by the law courts to errant commercial drivers; allow banned wax prints into the country again; etc. etc., in order to win the presidential run-off.
Although he had voted for Nana Akufo-Addo in the first election, he said he thought it prudent to vote for Professor Mills in the run-off - so that the nation would finally discover just what it was that the NPP big-wigs were trying to prevent Ghanaians from discovering: “Hmmm, ayesei ye, djama womu epra yen paa ankasa!” (For those who don’t speak Twi, to paraphrase him: Perhaps they have done a great deal of damage financially to our country!).
As to the rumour now doing the rounds that some of the NPP members were apparently claiming that they could have easily stolen the election if they had wanted to, because they had the support of the high command of the security services, he wondered whether the NPP's big-wigs thought they had the support of the junior ranks in the security services support them too.
He was keen to discover just what is it that they wanted to hide from Ghanaians. To him it was one of the main reasons why so many Ghanaians wanted change – the same reason why they were going to vote for change too in the run-off of the presidential election!).
Whatever happens on 28th December, 2008, the fact of the matter is that since we are not operating a parliamentary system of government, constitutionally, it is the largest single party in parliament, as opposed to which parties can form a coalition of a majority in parliament, that will occupy the majority benches and choose the speaker, the first deputy speaker, as well as all the chairpersons of the various parliamentary committees.
Thus, in that sense, change has already occurred in Ghanaian politics, as it happens – and the National Democratic Congress (NDC), will play the oversight role of the legislature in our democracy, and protect the national interest at all times, going forward into the future!
The powerful tribal-supremacist crooks who have wielded such power in the presidency under President Kufuor, had better get used to the idea that they will never be able to steal the election on 28th December 2008.
And if they want some free advice, let them resign themselves to their fate and prepare mentally for longish spells in jail, as they are held to account by a nation totally fed up with their Kokofu-football politricks.
Ditto fed up with the NPP's leaders' arrogance; their sophistry; the unfathomable greed they have constantly displayed throughout their tenure; and their engaging in grand larceny on a scale we have seldom seen in our country’s chequered history, thus far.
Hmm, Ghana – enti yeawiaye paa, enia? Asem ebaba debi ankasa! May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
Sunday, 21 December 2008
Monday, 15 December 2008
Re: "Minority presidential candidates call for financial support for political parties"
As regards the question of state funding for political parties, we must simply go back to basics – and remember that this country is largely divided into two political groups. Consequently, we must be creative – and use what we have to move forward as a nation that is more or less a two-party constitutional democracy.
There are those in Ghanaian politics, who buy into Nkrumah's vision of creating an African equivalent of the egalitarian societies of Scandinavia, and those who like Dr. Busia and Dr. Danquah, believe that we must focus on developing a system that devolves power and funnels resources from the centre to the progeny of the ruling elites of the traditional feudal tribal states of the pre-colonial era (i.e. rule by Chiefs, their relations, their sycophantic acolytes and appointees!).
Since the state has limited resources, we must cut our coat according to the size of our cloth in the matter of state funding for political parties in Ghana. If we accept the fact that Ghanaians are largely divided into Busia-Danquaists and their political opponents, Ghana’s left-of-centre progressives, who call themselves Nkrumaists (which incidentally includes a majority of the members of the National Democratic Congress – [NDC]), why do we not simply resort to state funding for just those two traditional groups in Ghanaian politics?
Would it not be possible to get all the left-of-centre political parties including the NDC to regroup and reverse into a suitably restructured Convention Peoples Party (CPP) and choose a new leadership - ditto all the right-of-centre parties such as Dr. Obed Asamoah’s Democratic Freedom Party (DFP) and other such parties to reverse into the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and choose their new joint-leadership too?
A creative way to fund political parties in Ghana would be for the two newly-restructured parties to be allocated offices in District Assembly properties across the country. Ditto allocated an agreed number of vehicles every five years – and given free airtime by the state print and electronic media during election campaign periods, too.
However, we must draw the line somewhere – and decide that going forward, if men with giant egos who use the vehicle of political parties to try and make money, insist on fanning their egos by setting up political parties, well, we must let them use their own private resources to operate their creations: whenever they see fit to embark on such expensive ego trips.
A nation like ours with limited resources cannot possibly satisfy the self-indulgence of such larger-than-life characters who suffer from the dangerous virus known as “political megalomania”. Period.
Incidentally, for the benefit of the younger generation of Ghanaians who do not know much about the original philosophies that underpin the two traditional “political traditions” in our history, below is a very brief description of their worldviews.
The Busia-Danquah group adheres to the philosophy of the English philosopher Edmund Burke. Like their founding fathers, they believe that society ought to be ruled by “pre-ordained” elites. Another distinguishing factor of Busia-Danqaists, is that they place a premium on foreign ideas and collaboration with foreigners. Dr. Danquah as we all know was a super-quisling who was on the payroll of the CIA!
The Danquah-Busiasts are also the stooges for neocolonialism and the lackeys of foreign commercial interests in our country. That is why they are busy asset-stripping Ghana for the benefit of foreign interests. They also believe that an important aspect of the ideal society is one that is a “property-owning democracy”: that is, one in which only people who own property or can prove that they earn a regular wage, qualify to vote in elections.
Another cherished tenet of their party is that the state must concentrate on creating the conditions for individuals to create wealth – and must ideally not interfere in the wealth-creation activities of individuals, at all.
That is why today, their political progeny in the New Patriotic Party (NPP) are busy turning Ghana into an African version of early 20 century American capitalism of the “robber baron” era - in which powerful crooks made money at the expense of the well-being of American society.
An example is the unsanitary conditions that prevailed in the Chicago meatpacking industry and the ruthless exploitation of workers in the industry, whom the plant owners literally worked to death. The US federal government finally stepped in as soon as the nation discovered the horrors in the industry - when Upton Sinclair’s novel ”The Jungle” was published. The federal government immediately passed the Food and Drug Act!
That is also why, today, under the NPP, a small group of politically well-connected and powerful Ghanaians have succeeded in ending up owning more wealth than the combined wealth of the vast majority of the population of Ghana – whom they denigrate by labeling “lazy” people: forgetting that the marginalized in Ghana do not have the same opportunities that sundry regime-crony tycoons have because of their political connections.
Yet, what number of fools in this country, dear reader, cannot build posh hotels along the beaches of Ghana, for example, if, like the scions of the family clans of some of our rulers, they too can inveigle the management of state-owned banks to lead consortia of banks to loan them zillions of dollars to build posh hotels, on generous terms?
For the Nkrumaists, the ideal society for Ghanaians is the creation of an African equivalent of the egalitarian societies of Scandinavia. They believe that because there are not a lot of privately-held large fortunes in the hands of private individuals in nations such as ours, the state must of necessity take a leading role in wealth creation to improve the quality of life of all Ghanaians, through the agency of state-owned enterprises.
Today, we are seeing the wisdom of Nkrumah as Western capitalist nations pour trillions of dollars into even private financial institutions in part-nationalizations – in order to safeguard their national economies. Nkrumah also wanted universal adult suffrage in Ghana – so that all adults of a sound mind could vote to elect their leaders in free and fair elections: not just property owners and wage earners.
Above all, Nkrumah believed in a mixed-economy. However, whiles encouraging private wealth creation, Nkrumah wanted to use the power of the Ghanaian nation-state to regulate that sector’s activities so as to protect society from crooked businesspeople and ensure that they did not grow rich at the expense of the well-being of society: by producing sub-standard or dangerous products and avoiding paying their taxes. He also wanted their wealth creation agenda to fit into the overall national development plan determined by the Ghanaian nation-state as being in the national interest.
The Busia-Danquah group on the other hand wants individuals to be left alone to make their own business decisions with minimum state regulation. In other words, if they prefer to buy waste from Canada to use in a waste-to-energy plant in Kumasi, for example, because they and their Canadian partners will make vast profits from the business of the importation of Canadian waste (instead of using the mountains of waste generated locally here!), the state must not step in to stop them.
It is such inanities that have led to a situation today, in which a nation that is literally being choked to death as it is slowly engulfed by filth, is allowing this nonsense on bamboo stilts to occur – because in the view of the apostles of “private sector-led development” under no circumstances must the state interfere with the greedy and selfish plans of those seeking to go into the lucrative business of the importation of Canadian waste into Ghana - using a waste-to-energy plant in Kumasi, as a perfect cloak to hide their perfidy! Naturally, the ideal for the Busia-Danquaists is for the state to allow them to go ahead with their plans - as it is their private affair.
That is also why, for example, Mr. Maxwell Kofi Jumah, a minster in the present government, was so proud to announce to Ghanaians that the owners of the Kumasi waste-to-energy plant are being allowed to import waste from Canada. Astonishingly, are we in the meantime, not drowning in our own filth? Can anyone doubt that any plan for the Kumasi waste-to-energy plant must have included the use of waste generated locally – and that that must have been an important factor in the environmental protection agency (EPA) granting them permission to build their confounded plant in the first place?
Any surprise then, dear reader, that today we have become a mostly selfish and untruthful people who live in a cruel and brutish “dog-eat-dog” society in which criminals, such as drug barons, are becoming the pillars of society? Are some of these Mafioso not so powerful and influential that a number of them (apart from being the mainstays of numerous charismatic churches up and down our country), are said to even bankroll some of our politicians and political parties (according to the bush telegraph!)?
Hmmm, Ghana – eyeasem oo: enti yeawiaye paa, enia? Asem ebaba debi ankasa! May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
There are those in Ghanaian politics, who buy into Nkrumah's vision of creating an African equivalent of the egalitarian societies of Scandinavia, and those who like Dr. Busia and Dr. Danquah, believe that we must focus on developing a system that devolves power and funnels resources from the centre to the progeny of the ruling elites of the traditional feudal tribal states of the pre-colonial era (i.e. rule by Chiefs, their relations, their sycophantic acolytes and appointees!).
Since the state has limited resources, we must cut our coat according to the size of our cloth in the matter of state funding for political parties in Ghana. If we accept the fact that Ghanaians are largely divided into Busia-Danquaists and their political opponents, Ghana’s left-of-centre progressives, who call themselves Nkrumaists (which incidentally includes a majority of the members of the National Democratic Congress – [NDC]), why do we not simply resort to state funding for just those two traditional groups in Ghanaian politics?
Would it not be possible to get all the left-of-centre political parties including the NDC to regroup and reverse into a suitably restructured Convention Peoples Party (CPP) and choose a new leadership - ditto all the right-of-centre parties such as Dr. Obed Asamoah’s Democratic Freedom Party (DFP) and other such parties to reverse into the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and choose their new joint-leadership too?
A creative way to fund political parties in Ghana would be for the two newly-restructured parties to be allocated offices in District Assembly properties across the country. Ditto allocated an agreed number of vehicles every five years – and given free airtime by the state print and electronic media during election campaign periods, too.
However, we must draw the line somewhere – and decide that going forward, if men with giant egos who use the vehicle of political parties to try and make money, insist on fanning their egos by setting up political parties, well, we must let them use their own private resources to operate their creations: whenever they see fit to embark on such expensive ego trips.
A nation like ours with limited resources cannot possibly satisfy the self-indulgence of such larger-than-life characters who suffer from the dangerous virus known as “political megalomania”. Period.
Incidentally, for the benefit of the younger generation of Ghanaians who do not know much about the original philosophies that underpin the two traditional “political traditions” in our history, below is a very brief description of their worldviews.
The Busia-Danquah group adheres to the philosophy of the English philosopher Edmund Burke. Like their founding fathers, they believe that society ought to be ruled by “pre-ordained” elites. Another distinguishing factor of Busia-Danqaists, is that they place a premium on foreign ideas and collaboration with foreigners. Dr. Danquah as we all know was a super-quisling who was on the payroll of the CIA!
The Danquah-Busiasts are also the stooges for neocolonialism and the lackeys of foreign commercial interests in our country. That is why they are busy asset-stripping Ghana for the benefit of foreign interests. They also believe that an important aspect of the ideal society is one that is a “property-owning democracy”: that is, one in which only people who own property or can prove that they earn a regular wage, qualify to vote in elections.
Another cherished tenet of their party is that the state must concentrate on creating the conditions for individuals to create wealth – and must ideally not interfere in the wealth-creation activities of individuals, at all.
That is why today, their political progeny in the New Patriotic Party (NPP) are busy turning Ghana into an African version of early 20 century American capitalism of the “robber baron” era - in which powerful crooks made money at the expense of the well-being of American society.
An example is the unsanitary conditions that prevailed in the Chicago meatpacking industry and the ruthless exploitation of workers in the industry, whom the plant owners literally worked to death. The US federal government finally stepped in as soon as the nation discovered the horrors in the industry - when Upton Sinclair’s novel ”The Jungle” was published. The federal government immediately passed the Food and Drug Act!
That is also why, today, under the NPP, a small group of politically well-connected and powerful Ghanaians have succeeded in ending up owning more wealth than the combined wealth of the vast majority of the population of Ghana – whom they denigrate by labeling “lazy” people: forgetting that the marginalized in Ghana do not have the same opportunities that sundry regime-crony tycoons have because of their political connections.
Yet, what number of fools in this country, dear reader, cannot build posh hotels along the beaches of Ghana, for example, if, like the scions of the family clans of some of our rulers, they too can inveigle the management of state-owned banks to lead consortia of banks to loan them zillions of dollars to build posh hotels, on generous terms?
For the Nkrumaists, the ideal society for Ghanaians is the creation of an African equivalent of the egalitarian societies of Scandinavia. They believe that because there are not a lot of privately-held large fortunes in the hands of private individuals in nations such as ours, the state must of necessity take a leading role in wealth creation to improve the quality of life of all Ghanaians, through the agency of state-owned enterprises.
Today, we are seeing the wisdom of Nkrumah as Western capitalist nations pour trillions of dollars into even private financial institutions in part-nationalizations – in order to safeguard their national economies. Nkrumah also wanted universal adult suffrage in Ghana – so that all adults of a sound mind could vote to elect their leaders in free and fair elections: not just property owners and wage earners.
Above all, Nkrumah believed in a mixed-economy. However, whiles encouraging private wealth creation, Nkrumah wanted to use the power of the Ghanaian nation-state to regulate that sector’s activities so as to protect society from crooked businesspeople and ensure that they did not grow rich at the expense of the well-being of society: by producing sub-standard or dangerous products and avoiding paying their taxes. He also wanted their wealth creation agenda to fit into the overall national development plan determined by the Ghanaian nation-state as being in the national interest.
The Busia-Danquah group on the other hand wants individuals to be left alone to make their own business decisions with minimum state regulation. In other words, if they prefer to buy waste from Canada to use in a waste-to-energy plant in Kumasi, for example, because they and their Canadian partners will make vast profits from the business of the importation of Canadian waste (instead of using the mountains of waste generated locally here!), the state must not step in to stop them.
It is such inanities that have led to a situation today, in which a nation that is literally being choked to death as it is slowly engulfed by filth, is allowing this nonsense on bamboo stilts to occur – because in the view of the apostles of “private sector-led development” under no circumstances must the state interfere with the greedy and selfish plans of those seeking to go into the lucrative business of the importation of Canadian waste into Ghana - using a waste-to-energy plant in Kumasi, as a perfect cloak to hide their perfidy! Naturally, the ideal for the Busia-Danquaists is for the state to allow them to go ahead with their plans - as it is their private affair.
That is also why, for example, Mr. Maxwell Kofi Jumah, a minster in the present government, was so proud to announce to Ghanaians that the owners of the Kumasi waste-to-energy plant are being allowed to import waste from Canada. Astonishingly, are we in the meantime, not drowning in our own filth? Can anyone doubt that any plan for the Kumasi waste-to-energy plant must have included the use of waste generated locally – and that that must have been an important factor in the environmental protection agency (EPA) granting them permission to build their confounded plant in the first place?
Any surprise then, dear reader, that today we have become a mostly selfish and untruthful people who live in a cruel and brutish “dog-eat-dog” society in which criminals, such as drug barons, are becoming the pillars of society? Are some of these Mafioso not so powerful and influential that a number of them (apart from being the mainstays of numerous charismatic churches up and down our country), are said to even bankroll some of our politicians and political parties (according to the bush telegraph!)?
Hmmm, Ghana – eyeasem oo: enti yeawiaye paa, enia? Asem ebaba debi ankasa! May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
Re: "Minority presidential candidates call for financial support for political parties"
As regards the question of state funding for political parties, we must simply go back to basics – and remember that this country is largely divided into two political groups. Consequently, we must be creative – and use what we have to move forward as a nation that is more or less a two-party constitutional democracy.
There are those in Ghanaian politics, who buy into Nkrumah's vision of creating an African equivalent of the egalitarian societies of Scandinavia, and those who like Dr. Busia and Dr. Danquah, believe that we must focus on developing a system that devolves power and funnels resources from the centre to the progeny of the ruling elites of the traditional feudal tribal states of the pre-colonial era (i.e. rule by Chiefs, their relations, their sycophantic acolytes and appointees!).
Since the state has limited resources, we must cut our coat according to the size of our cloth in the matter of state funding for political parties in Ghana. If we accept the fact that Ghanaians are largely divided into Busia-Danquaists and their political opponents, Ghana’s left-of-centre progressives who call themselves Nkrumaists (which incidentally includes a majority of the members of the National Democratic Congress – [NDC]), why do not simply resort to funding those two traditional groups in Ghanaian politics?
Would it not be possible to get all the left-of-centre political parties including the NDC to regroup and reverse into a suitably restructured Convention Peoples Party (CPP) and choose a new leadership - ditto all the right-of-centre parties such as Dr. Obed Asamoah’s Democratic Freedom Party (DFP) and other such parties to reverse into the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and choose their new joint-leadership too?
A creative way to fund political parties in Ghana would be for the two newly-restructured parties to be allocated offices in District Assembly properties across the country. Ditto allocated an agreed number of vehicles every five years – and given free airtime by the state print and electronic media during election campaign periods, too.
However, we must draw the line somewhere – and decide that going forward, if men with giant egos who use the vehicle of political parties to try and make money, insist on fanning their egos by setting up political parties, well, we must let them use their own private resources to operate their creations: whenever they see fit to embark on such expensive ego trips.
A nation like ours with limited resources cannot possibly satisfy the self-indulgence of such larger-than-life characters who suffer from the dangerous virus known as “political megalomania”. Period.
Incidentally, for the benefit of the younger generation of Ghanaians who do not know much about the original philosophies that underpin the two traditional “political traditions” in our history, below is a very brief description of their worldviews.
The Busia-Danquah group adheres to the philosophy of the English philosopher Edmund Burke. Like their founding fathers, they believe that society ought to be ruled by “pre-ordained” elites. Another distinguishing factor of Busia-Danqaists, is that they place a premium on foreign ideas and collaboration with foreigners. Dr. Danquah as we all know was a super-quisling who was on the payroll of the CIA!
The Danquah-Busiasts are also the stooges for neocolonialism and the lackeys of foreign commercial interests in our country. That is why they are busy asset-stripping Ghana for the benefit of foreign interests. They also believe that an important aspect of the ideal society is one that is a “property-owning democracy”: that is, one in which only people who own property or can prove that they earn a regular wage, qualify to vote in elections.
Another cherished tenet of their party is that the state must concentrate on creating the conditions for individuals to create wealth – and must ideally not interfere in the wealth-creation activities of individuals, at all.
That is why today, their political progeny in the New Patriotic Party (NPP) are busy turning Ghana into an African version of early 20 century American capitalism of the “robber baron” era - in which powerful crooks made money at the expense of the well-being of American society.
An example is the unsanitary conditions that prevailed in the Chicago meatpacking industry and the ruthless exploitation of workers in the industry, whom the plant owners literally worked to death. The US federal government finally stepped in as soon as the nation discovered the horrors in the industry - when Upton Sinclair’s novel ”The Jungle” was published. The federal government immediately passed the Food and Drug Act!
That is also why, today, under the NPP, a small group of politically well-connected and powerful Ghanaians have succeeded in ending up owning more wealth than the combined wealth of the vast majority of the population of Ghana – whom they denigrate by labeling “lazy” people: forgetting that the marginalized in Ghana do not have the same opportunities that sundry regime-crony tycoons have because of their political connections.
Yet, what number of fools in this country, dear reader, cannot build posh hotels along the beaches of Ghana, for example, if, like the scions of the family clans of some of our rulers, they too can inveigle the management of state-owned banks to lead consortia of banks to loan them zillions of dollars to build posh hotels, on generous terms?
For the Nkrumaists, the ideal society for Ghanaians is the creation of an African equivalent of the egalitarian societies of Scandinavia. They believe that because there are not a lot of privately-held large fortunes in the hands of private individuals in nations such as ours, the state must of necessity take a leading role in wealth creation to improve the quality of life of all Ghanaians, through the agency of state-owned enterprises.
Today, we are seeing the wisdom of Nkrumah as Western capitalist nations pour trillions of dollars into even private financial institutions in part-nationalizations – in order to safeguard their national economies. Nkrumah also wanted universal adult suffrage in Ghana – so that all adults of a sound mind could vote to elect their leaders in free and fair elections: not just property owners and wage earners.
Above all, Nkrumah believed in a mixed-economy. However, whiles encouraging private wealth creation, Nkrumah wanted to use the power of the Ghanaian nation-state to regulate that sector’s activities so as to protect society from crooked businesspeople and ensure that they did not grow rich at the expense of the well-being of society: by producing sub-standard or dangerous products and avoiding paying their taxes. He also wanted their wealth creation agenda to fit into the overall national development plan determined by the Ghanaian nation-state as being in the national interest.
The Busia-Danquah group on the other hand wants individuals to be left alone to make their own business decisions with minimum state regulation. In other words, if they prefer to buy waste from Canada to use in a waste-to-energy plant in Kumasi, for example, because they and their Canadian partners will make vast profits from the business of the importation of Canadian waste (instead of using the mountains of waste generated locally here!), the state must not step in to stop them.
It is such inanities that have led to a situation today, in which a nation that is literally being choked to death as it is slowly engulfed by filth, is allowing this nonsense on bamboo stilts to occur – because in the view of the apostles of “private sector-led development” under no circumstances must the state interfere with the greedy and selfish plans of those seeking to go into the lucrative business of the importation of Canadian waste into Ghana - using a waste-to-energy plant in Kumasi, as a perfect cloak to hide their perfidy! Naturally, the ideal for the Busia-Danquaists is for the state to allow them to go ahead with their plans - as it is their private affair.
That is also why, for example, Mr. Maxwell Kofi Jumah, a minster in the present government, was so proud to announce to Ghanaians that the owners of the Kumasi waste-to-energy plant are being allowed to import waste from Canada. Astonishingly, are we in the meantime, not drowning in our own filth? Can anyone doubt that any plan for the Kumasi waste-to-energy plant must have included the use of waste generated locally – and that that must have been an important factor in the environmental protection agency (EPA) granting them permission to build their confounded plant in the first place?
Any surprise then, dear reader, that today we have become a mostly selfish and untruthful people who live in a cruel and brutish “dog-eat-dog” society in which criminals, such as drug barons, are becoming the pillars of society? Are some of these Mafioso not so powerful and influential that a number of them (apart from being the mainstays of numerous charismatic churches up and down our country), are said to even bankroll some of our politicians and political parties (according to the bush telegraph!)?
Hmmm, Ghana – eyeasem oo: enti yeawiaye paa, enia? Asem ebaba debi ankasa! May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
There are those in Ghanaian politics, who buy into Nkrumah's vision of creating an African equivalent of the egalitarian societies of Scandinavia, and those who like Dr. Busia and Dr. Danquah, believe that we must focus on developing a system that devolves power and funnels resources from the centre to the progeny of the ruling elites of the traditional feudal tribal states of the pre-colonial era (i.e. rule by Chiefs, their relations, their sycophantic acolytes and appointees!).
Since the state has limited resources, we must cut our coat according to the size of our cloth in the matter of state funding for political parties in Ghana. If we accept the fact that Ghanaians are largely divided into Busia-Danquaists and their political opponents, Ghana’s left-of-centre progressives who call themselves Nkrumaists (which incidentally includes a majority of the members of the National Democratic Congress – [NDC]), why do not simply resort to funding those two traditional groups in Ghanaian politics?
Would it not be possible to get all the left-of-centre political parties including the NDC to regroup and reverse into a suitably restructured Convention Peoples Party (CPP) and choose a new leadership - ditto all the right-of-centre parties such as Dr. Obed Asamoah’s Democratic Freedom Party (DFP) and other such parties to reverse into the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and choose their new joint-leadership too?
A creative way to fund political parties in Ghana would be for the two newly-restructured parties to be allocated offices in District Assembly properties across the country. Ditto allocated an agreed number of vehicles every five years – and given free airtime by the state print and electronic media during election campaign periods, too.
However, we must draw the line somewhere – and decide that going forward, if men with giant egos who use the vehicle of political parties to try and make money, insist on fanning their egos by setting up political parties, well, we must let them use their own private resources to operate their creations: whenever they see fit to embark on such expensive ego trips.
A nation like ours with limited resources cannot possibly satisfy the self-indulgence of such larger-than-life characters who suffer from the dangerous virus known as “political megalomania”. Period.
Incidentally, for the benefit of the younger generation of Ghanaians who do not know much about the original philosophies that underpin the two traditional “political traditions” in our history, below is a very brief description of their worldviews.
The Busia-Danquah group adheres to the philosophy of the English philosopher Edmund Burke. Like their founding fathers, they believe that society ought to be ruled by “pre-ordained” elites. Another distinguishing factor of Busia-Danqaists, is that they place a premium on foreign ideas and collaboration with foreigners. Dr. Danquah as we all know was a super-quisling who was on the payroll of the CIA!
The Danquah-Busiasts are also the stooges for neocolonialism and the lackeys of foreign commercial interests in our country. That is why they are busy asset-stripping Ghana for the benefit of foreign interests. They also believe that an important aspect of the ideal society is one that is a “property-owning democracy”: that is, one in which only people who own property or can prove that they earn a regular wage, qualify to vote in elections.
Another cherished tenet of their party is that the state must concentrate on creating the conditions for individuals to create wealth – and must ideally not interfere in the wealth-creation activities of individuals, at all.
That is why today, their political progeny in the New Patriotic Party (NPP) are busy turning Ghana into an African version of early 20 century American capitalism of the “robber baron” era - in which powerful crooks made money at the expense of the well-being of American society.
An example is the unsanitary conditions that prevailed in the Chicago meatpacking industry and the ruthless exploitation of workers in the industry, whom the plant owners literally worked to death. The US federal government finally stepped in as soon as the nation discovered the horrors in the industry - when Upton Sinclair’s novel ”The Jungle” was published. The federal government immediately passed the Food and Drug Act!
That is also why, today, under the NPP, a small group of politically well-connected and powerful Ghanaians have succeeded in ending up owning more wealth than the combined wealth of the vast majority of the population of Ghana – whom they denigrate by labeling “lazy” people: forgetting that the marginalized in Ghana do not have the same opportunities that sundry regime-crony tycoons have because of their political connections.
Yet, what number of fools in this country, dear reader, cannot build posh hotels along the beaches of Ghana, for example, if, like the scions of the family clans of some of our rulers, they too can inveigle the management of state-owned banks to lead consortia of banks to loan them zillions of dollars to build posh hotels, on generous terms?
For the Nkrumaists, the ideal society for Ghanaians is the creation of an African equivalent of the egalitarian societies of Scandinavia. They believe that because there are not a lot of privately-held large fortunes in the hands of private individuals in nations such as ours, the state must of necessity take a leading role in wealth creation to improve the quality of life of all Ghanaians, through the agency of state-owned enterprises.
Today, we are seeing the wisdom of Nkrumah as Western capitalist nations pour trillions of dollars into even private financial institutions in part-nationalizations – in order to safeguard their national economies. Nkrumah also wanted universal adult suffrage in Ghana – so that all adults of a sound mind could vote to elect their leaders in free and fair elections: not just property owners and wage earners.
Above all, Nkrumah believed in a mixed-economy. However, whiles encouraging private wealth creation, Nkrumah wanted to use the power of the Ghanaian nation-state to regulate that sector’s activities so as to protect society from crooked businesspeople and ensure that they did not grow rich at the expense of the well-being of society: by producing sub-standard or dangerous products and avoiding paying their taxes. He also wanted their wealth creation agenda to fit into the overall national development plan determined by the Ghanaian nation-state as being in the national interest.
The Busia-Danquah group on the other hand wants individuals to be left alone to make their own business decisions with minimum state regulation. In other words, if they prefer to buy waste from Canada to use in a waste-to-energy plant in Kumasi, for example, because they and their Canadian partners will make vast profits from the business of the importation of Canadian waste (instead of using the mountains of waste generated locally here!), the state must not step in to stop them.
It is such inanities that have led to a situation today, in which a nation that is literally being choked to death as it is slowly engulfed by filth, is allowing this nonsense on bamboo stilts to occur – because in the view of the apostles of “private sector-led development” under no circumstances must the state interfere with the greedy and selfish plans of those seeking to go into the lucrative business of the importation of Canadian waste into Ghana - using a waste-to-energy plant in Kumasi, as a perfect cloak to hide their perfidy! Naturally, the ideal for the Busia-Danquaists is for the state to allow them to go ahead with their plans - as it is their private affair.
That is also why, for example, Mr. Maxwell Kofi Jumah, a minster in the present government, was so proud to announce to Ghanaians that the owners of the Kumasi waste-to-energy plant are being allowed to import waste from Canada. Astonishingly, are we in the meantime, not drowning in our own filth? Can anyone doubt that any plan for the Kumasi waste-to-energy plant must have included the use of waste generated locally – and that that must have been an important factor in the environmental protection agency (EPA) granting them permission to build their confounded plant in the first place?
Any surprise then, dear reader, that today we have become a mostly selfish and untruthful people who live in a cruel and brutish “dog-eat-dog” society in which criminals, such as drug barons, are becoming the pillars of society? Are some of these Mafioso not so powerful and influential that a number of them (apart from being the mainstays of numerous charismatic churches up and down our country), are said to even bankroll some of our politicians and political parties (according to the bush telegraph!)?
Hmmm, Ghana – eyeasem oo: enti yeawiaye paa, enia? Asem ebaba debi ankasa! May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
Sunday, 14 December 2008
GHANAIANS AND THEIR NATION HAVE SIMPLY HAD ENOUGH!
Massa, let me put it in a nutshell – so that it will be short and sweet. Under the NDC, the very lifeblood of our country was being sucked out of it because we had to make regular payments on our unsustainable external debt. Commodity prices were also nowhere near the record levels they have been under this most profligate and incompetent of regimes.
The present regime is one whose members did not have the nous or the gumption to fight for debt cancellation when some of us were doing so publicly in our writing in the 1990’s – because we understood, correctly, that it would give a nation like ours the maneuvering-space to enable us experience growth.
Having become the beneficiaries of the foresight and hard work of others, have they not taken us right back to square one again – by piling up yet more debt: to the extent that today, Ghana is suffering from “debt distress” to use a euphemism much-favoured by the World Bank and the IMF to describe country’s struggling or unable to meet interest payments on their external debt?
Now that the world is going through a recession, and commodity prices have plummeted, we need to have a regime that is not as profligate and above all led by a someone like Professor Mills - whom we all acknowledge, is one of the most honest politicians Ghana has ever had in its history.
Yes, Nana Akufo Add is a fine gentleman - but unfortunately for him, he came to the fore in his party eight years too late, and only after it had succeeded in bringing Ghana to a dead-end. We cannot let a political party, which although is made up of many decent individuals, is however sadly dominated by a few powerful, ruthless, greedy and crooked tribal-supremacist politicians - who in the short space of eight years, have succeeded in dividing a united nation of diverse ethnicity as never before, in our entire history.
Massa, with respect, Ghana cannot possibly survive a MK 11 version of the last eight years of unparalleled greed, incompetence and the nauseating tribal-supremacist nonsense we have had to endure, all this while.
No one would have minded even if our lame-duck “Hypocrite-in-Chief” had left his Kokofu-football politics to simply appointing his fellow tribesmen and women to fill all the top positions in the public sector as long as they were qualified - because they are all Ghanaian citizens too.
However, he did not stop there - he and the ruthless and unprincipled cabal that surrounds him in the presidency, had to go to the extent of hijacking the entire machinery of state to further the outrageous and treasonable ambitions of some of his tribal Chiefs - and offend the sensibilities of the entire nation, for eight long and painful years.
Massa, Ghanaians, are a people who aspire to living in a society that is a meritocracy - not a serfdom. They are unwilling to become the serfs of any traditional rulers - who in the 21st century ICT age, seek to return a democratic nation that had Nkrumah as its first leader, to the pre-colonial feudal era. What perfidy.
The only people who refuse to accept that it is in the long-term interest of our country that Ghanaians turf the NPP out of power, are those insufferable and tiresome “My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong” myrmidon-types – who are too thick to think for themselves and too blind to notice the gang-rape of mother Ghana that has been going on these last eight years. Hopefully, you aren’t one of those, too? Massa, we have had enough!
Hmmm, Ghana – enti yeawiaye paa, enia? Asem ebaba debi ankasa! May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
The present regime is one whose members did not have the nous or the gumption to fight for debt cancellation when some of us were doing so publicly in our writing in the 1990’s – because we understood, correctly, that it would give a nation like ours the maneuvering-space to enable us experience growth.
Having become the beneficiaries of the foresight and hard work of others, have they not taken us right back to square one again – by piling up yet more debt: to the extent that today, Ghana is suffering from “debt distress” to use a euphemism much-favoured by the World Bank and the IMF to describe country’s struggling or unable to meet interest payments on their external debt?
Now that the world is going through a recession, and commodity prices have plummeted, we need to have a regime that is not as profligate and above all led by a someone like Professor Mills - whom we all acknowledge, is one of the most honest politicians Ghana has ever had in its history.
Yes, Nana Akufo Add is a fine gentleman - but unfortunately for him, he came to the fore in his party eight years too late, and only after it had succeeded in bringing Ghana to a dead-end. We cannot let a political party, which although is made up of many decent individuals, is however sadly dominated by a few powerful, ruthless, greedy and crooked tribal-supremacist politicians - who in the short space of eight years, have succeeded in dividing a united nation of diverse ethnicity as never before, in our entire history.
Massa, with respect, Ghana cannot possibly survive a MK 11 version of the last eight years of unparalleled greed, incompetence and the nauseating tribal-supremacist nonsense we have had to endure, all this while.
No one would have minded even if our lame-duck “Hypocrite-in-Chief” had left his Kokofu-football politics to simply appointing his fellow tribesmen and women to fill all the top positions in the public sector as long as they were qualified - because they are all Ghanaian citizens too.
However, he did not stop there - he and the ruthless and unprincipled cabal that surrounds him in the presidency, had to go to the extent of hijacking the entire machinery of state to further the outrageous and treasonable ambitions of some of his tribal Chiefs - and offend the sensibilities of the entire nation, for eight long and painful years.
Massa, Ghanaians, are a people who aspire to living in a society that is a meritocracy - not a serfdom. They are unwilling to become the serfs of any traditional rulers - who in the 21st century ICT age, seek to return a democratic nation that had Nkrumah as its first leader, to the pre-colonial feudal era. What perfidy.
The only people who refuse to accept that it is in the long-term interest of our country that Ghanaians turf the NPP out of power, are those insufferable and tiresome “My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong” myrmidon-types – who are too thick to think for themselves and too blind to notice the gang-rape of mother Ghana that has been going on these last eight years. Hopefully, you aren’t one of those, too? Massa, we have had enough!
Hmmm, Ghana – enti yeawiaye paa, enia? Asem ebaba debi ankasa! May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
Re: “Who did the feasibility studies of our Ghana Black gold?”
This sad story, is a typical example of how in the coming years, future generations of Ghanaians will have to spend all the wealth of their oil-rich country, cleaning up the environmental pollution that our generation, in blind pursuit of GDP growth rates, without ever examining what actually constitute that growth, are allowing to go on in Ghana today.
Today, sundry profit seekers, many of them carpetbaggers without an iota of a sense of social conscience or ethical ethos underpinning their businesses, and who are most definitely not interested in the slightest, in acting responsibly in terms of the impact on the natural environment of their operations either, are getting away with environmental degradation that sometimes amounts to crimes against humanity - for the egregious examples of environmental pollution that they cause whiles chasing maximum profits: at the expense of our country and its people.
A typical example is the harm to the natural environment being caused countrywide, by surface gold mining companies, including "galamsay mining".
Unfortunately, we are saddled with an environmental protection agency (EPA) that is poorly resourced, and whose staff aren’t adequately motivated financially for the crucial role they are meant to play in protecting our natural heritage. The EPA as presently constituted, is virtually unable to prevent much of the degradation of our natural environment - as evidenced by the large swathes of the Ghanaian countryside that have been poisoned by dangerous chemicals, such as arsenic and mercury, leeching into soils.
Sadly, our unimaginative leaders, many of whom haven’t a clue about the frightening rate of the destruction of our natural heritage, particularly the fast rate at which Ghana’s biodiversity is being lost, do not think creatively enough to enable them act to halt this disastrous course.
Yet, all they need do, if we do not have the wherewithal to stand up to those destroying our natural heritage, is to work in partnership with some of the leading international environmental NGO’s such as Green Peace, Conservation International, World Wildlife Fund, and the Rain Forest Alliance. They can work at the grassroots level in private, public partnerships (PPP) between themselves, local communities and all of Ghana’s District Assemblies
As regards the oil deposits that we have (or do not have!), the fact of the matter is that if we do not nationalize that depleting resource by following the example of nations such as Venezuela and Iran, and make the grave error of judgment that the stooges of neocolonialism and the lackeys of foreign commercial entities now running Nkrumah’s Ghana are making today, and rather choose to continue leaving it in the hands of foreign oil and natural gas companies, we will wake up one day, to discover that like our gold, we have not been able to use our oil wealth to transform Ghanaian society into Africa’s equivalent of the egalitarian societies of Scandinavia.
Our leaders must understand that as things stand, our oil and natural gas will only end up mostly enriching the shareholders of the foreign oil companies now drilling for oil off our coast. We must be bold and seize the commanding heights of this burgeoning industry - and choose a business model that enables us to use joint-ventures between the best-resourced of the state-owned Chinese oil companies (with 30 per cent stakes! ) and the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) with 70 per cent shareholding, to exploit it.
We can always pay for our up-front contributions for such joint-ventures by paying the government of China, with Ghana’s sovereign bonds. We can also pay fair compensation to the foreign oil companies when we nationalize our oil and natural gas industries, by paying them the same way too.
Sadly, because of the unfathomable greed that drives some of our leaders, they prefer to have private foreign oil and natural gas companies controlling this important resource - because the powerful crooks amongst them would rather their own private special purpose vehicles (those opaque offshore entities they set up to launder their kickbacks!), secretly partner those foreign oil companies to exploit our oil and natural gas deposits: to ensure their personal gain and enable them send their personal net worth into the stratosphere. Pity.
Hmmm Ghana - entiye awiaye paa, enia? Asem ebeba debi ankasa! May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
Today, sundry profit seekers, many of them carpetbaggers without an iota of a sense of social conscience or ethical ethos underpinning their businesses, and who are most definitely not interested in the slightest, in acting responsibly in terms of the impact on the natural environment of their operations either, are getting away with environmental degradation that sometimes amounts to crimes against humanity - for the egregious examples of environmental pollution that they cause whiles chasing maximum profits: at the expense of our country and its people.
A typical example is the harm to the natural environment being caused countrywide, by surface gold mining companies, including "galamsay mining".
Unfortunately, we are saddled with an environmental protection agency (EPA) that is poorly resourced, and whose staff aren’t adequately motivated financially for the crucial role they are meant to play in protecting our natural heritage. The EPA as presently constituted, is virtually unable to prevent much of the degradation of our natural environment - as evidenced by the large swathes of the Ghanaian countryside that have been poisoned by dangerous chemicals, such as arsenic and mercury, leeching into soils.
Sadly, our unimaginative leaders, many of whom haven’t a clue about the frightening rate of the destruction of our natural heritage, particularly the fast rate at which Ghana’s biodiversity is being lost, do not think creatively enough to enable them act to halt this disastrous course.
Yet, all they need do, if we do not have the wherewithal to stand up to those destroying our natural heritage, is to work in partnership with some of the leading international environmental NGO’s such as Green Peace, Conservation International, World Wildlife Fund, and the Rain Forest Alliance. They can work at the grassroots level in private, public partnerships (PPP) between themselves, local communities and all of Ghana’s District Assemblies
As regards the oil deposits that we have (or do not have!), the fact of the matter is that if we do not nationalize that depleting resource by following the example of nations such as Venezuela and Iran, and make the grave error of judgment that the stooges of neocolonialism and the lackeys of foreign commercial entities now running Nkrumah’s Ghana are making today, and rather choose to continue leaving it in the hands of foreign oil and natural gas companies, we will wake up one day, to discover that like our gold, we have not been able to use our oil wealth to transform Ghanaian society into Africa’s equivalent of the egalitarian societies of Scandinavia.
Our leaders must understand that as things stand, our oil and natural gas will only end up mostly enriching the shareholders of the foreign oil companies now drilling for oil off our coast. We must be bold and seize the commanding heights of this burgeoning industry - and choose a business model that enables us to use joint-ventures between the best-resourced of the state-owned Chinese oil companies (with 30 per cent stakes! ) and the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) with 70 per cent shareholding, to exploit it.
We can always pay for our up-front contributions for such joint-ventures by paying the government of China, with Ghana’s sovereign bonds. We can also pay fair compensation to the foreign oil companies when we nationalize our oil and natural gas industries, by paying them the same way too.
Sadly, because of the unfathomable greed that drives some of our leaders, they prefer to have private foreign oil and natural gas companies controlling this important resource - because the powerful crooks amongst them would rather their own private special purpose vehicles (those opaque offshore entities they set up to launder their kickbacks!), secretly partner those foreign oil companies to exploit our oil and natural gas deposits: to ensure their personal gain and enable them send their personal net worth into the stratosphere. Pity.
Hmmm Ghana - entiye awiaye paa, enia? Asem ebeba debi ankasa! May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
GHANAIANS SIMPLY WANT CHANGE!
Quote: “ "The NDC is now engaged in concerted preparations for the Presidential run-off," Mr Danny Annang, the party's Greater Accra Regional Chairman told newsmen in Accra to commend the region for voting massively for the party in the December 7 Elections. The NDC obtained 52.1 percent of the valid votes cast in the Presidential as against 46.0 percent obtained by the NPP, whiles in the Parliamentary the NDC won 18 out of the 27 parliamentary seats in the region as against nine by the NPP.
In Election 2004 the NDC obtained 46.3 percent of the valid votes cast in the Presidential as against 51.9 percent obtained by the NPP whiles in the Parliamentary the NDC won eleven seats as against 16 by the NPP.” End of quotation from Ghana News Agency report, 13/1/08
Yes, Professor Atta Mills will indeed be elected as Ghana’s president on 28th December 2008, God willing - and if the National Democratic Congress (NDC) can act to prevent any rigging taking place on the day.
Their vigilance in all the polling stations across Ghana will ensure that the verdict of the people is not stolen on December 28, 2008 - and ensure their candidate’s victory.
There is no doubt that the New Patriotic Party (NPP) has a fine candidate in Nana Akufo Addo and if they had selected him to be their party’s candidate for the presidency in the December 2000 election, perhaps he would have left a far better legacy for his party than the present incumbent has. Unfortunately for him, Nana Akufo Addo entered the fray, eight years too late.
The ordinary people of Ghana, who are so often taken for granted by the educated urban elites who rule them, have shown clearly that they are very discerning. They are a great deal far more sophisticated politically than Ghana’s political class gives them credit for. In a sense, the National Democratic Congress owes a huge debt of gratitude to Flt Lt. Rawlings, for bringing Professor Mills into their party.
The NPP lost this election because of the stark contrast in the choice the two parties offered the electorate. Ghanaians (the ones who aren’t the “My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong” myrmidon-types - who wear blinkers permanently: and are too thick to think for themselves and too blind to see what has been going on in Ghana since 2000, i.e.!) had a choice between the humbug, arrogance, corruption and the dissimulation of many of the NPP’s leadership, especially the few powerful and incredibly greedy tribal-supremacist politicians in the presidency, and the humble nature of the peace-loving and non-tribalistic nationalist, Professor Mills.
As it happens, Professor Atta Mills is unquestionably one of the most honest politicians in Ghana’s history - and at a time when many Ghanaians feel that corruption in Ghana has reached its apogee under the NPP, his character and reputation for honesty have combined to make the NDC such a formidable force in this particular election.
The NPP is compounding its woes by the many amazing and incredible u-turns it is making all of a sudden: like a wounded elephant thrashing about in desperation - all of which only serve to reinforce the image many Ghanaian have of them as a cynical and dissimulating party full of ruthless and greedy individuals prepared to do anything to hang on to power.
Blatant tribalism is also not something that most Ghanaians, irrespective of where they hail from, are particularly enthused about - as they recognize the danger it poses to the unity and stability of their country. The country is rejecting the clear and present danger tribalism represents, by choosing to make Professor Atta Mills the next president - to ensure that there is no MK11 version of the blatant tribalism of the previous eight years, going forward!
In the year 2000, who would have thought, after hearing the criticism by the NPP of the sale by the NDC regime of a 30 per cent stake in Ghana Telecom to Telecom Malaysia that the NPP would end up asset-stripping Ghana, in one opaque privatization deal after another throughout its tenure?
To top all that it even went ahead and passed a law indemnifying those who set up the GT takeover deal from prosecution for any criminality associated with the deal - even though it is clearly an illegality as our constitution demands that all Ghanaians fight corruption, not protect those who engage in acts of corruption! Who wants leaders like that, I ask?
Who would have believed in 2000 that in what must rank as one of the most egregious examples of fraud in high places ever seen in Ghana, that in 2008 the NPP would railroad a bill through parliament sealing a sale and purchase agreement for VALCO by a “consortium” (grandly named International Aluminum Partners, by the crooks on the make, and on the take, who failed so miserably in putting the deal together!) made up of two foreign companies both of which publicly denied ever agreeing to purchase the company?
Who wants a political part that is full of such shenanigans? Ghanaians have simply had enough - and want change. Above all they want a president from a party other than the NPP who will ensure that all the crooked deals that have gone on in the last eight years are thoroughly investigated and that the perpetrators who sought to enrich themselves at the expense of Ghanaians and their country, are prosecuted and jailed. Period.
Even if the NPP had turned Ghana into paradise, they would have still been voted out of office for that reason alone. Ghanaians do not want their country to be taken for a ride ever again by any group of politicians they elect into office - especially as they want the revenues from oil and natural gas to be used to transform their country into Africa’s equivalent of the egalitarian societies of Scandinavia: not to enrich Ghana’s crooked politicians!
Hmmm, Ghana – enti yeawiaye paa, enia? Asem ebaba debi ankasa! May Go bless and protect our homeland Ghana always. Long live freedom! Log live Ghana!
In Election 2004 the NDC obtained 46.3 percent of the valid votes cast in the Presidential as against 51.9 percent obtained by the NPP whiles in the Parliamentary the NDC won eleven seats as against 16 by the NPP.” End of quotation from Ghana News Agency report, 13/1/08
Yes, Professor Atta Mills will indeed be elected as Ghana’s president on 28th December 2008, God willing - and if the National Democratic Congress (NDC) can act to prevent any rigging taking place on the day.
Their vigilance in all the polling stations across Ghana will ensure that the verdict of the people is not stolen on December 28, 2008 - and ensure their candidate’s victory.
There is no doubt that the New Patriotic Party (NPP) has a fine candidate in Nana Akufo Addo and if they had selected him to be their party’s candidate for the presidency in the December 2000 election, perhaps he would have left a far better legacy for his party than the present incumbent has. Unfortunately for him, Nana Akufo Addo entered the fray, eight years too late.
The ordinary people of Ghana, who are so often taken for granted by the educated urban elites who rule them, have shown clearly that they are very discerning. They are a great deal far more sophisticated politically than Ghana’s political class gives them credit for. In a sense, the National Democratic Congress owes a huge debt of gratitude to Flt Lt. Rawlings, for bringing Professor Mills into their party.
The NPP lost this election because of the stark contrast in the choice the two parties offered the electorate. Ghanaians (the ones who aren’t the “My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong” myrmidon-types - who wear blinkers permanently: and are too thick to think for themselves and too blind to see what has been going on in Ghana since 2000, i.e.!) had a choice between the humbug, arrogance, corruption and the dissimulation of many of the NPP’s leadership, especially the few powerful and incredibly greedy tribal-supremacist politicians in the presidency, and the humble nature of the peace-loving and non-tribalistic nationalist, Professor Mills.
As it happens, Professor Atta Mills is unquestionably one of the most honest politicians in Ghana’s history - and at a time when many Ghanaians feel that corruption in Ghana has reached its apogee under the NPP, his character and reputation for honesty have combined to make the NDC such a formidable force in this particular election.
The NPP is compounding its woes by the many amazing and incredible u-turns it is making all of a sudden: like a wounded elephant thrashing about in desperation - all of which only serve to reinforce the image many Ghanaian have of them as a cynical and dissimulating party full of ruthless and greedy individuals prepared to do anything to hang on to power.
Blatant tribalism is also not something that most Ghanaians, irrespective of where they hail from, are particularly enthused about - as they recognize the danger it poses to the unity and stability of their country. The country is rejecting the clear and present danger tribalism represents, by choosing to make Professor Atta Mills the next president - to ensure that there is no MK11 version of the blatant tribalism of the previous eight years, going forward!
In the year 2000, who would have thought, after hearing the criticism by the NPP of the sale by the NDC regime of a 30 per cent stake in Ghana Telecom to Telecom Malaysia that the NPP would end up asset-stripping Ghana, in one opaque privatization deal after another throughout its tenure?
To top all that it even went ahead and passed a law indemnifying those who set up the GT takeover deal from prosecution for any criminality associated with the deal - even though it is clearly an illegality as our constitution demands that all Ghanaians fight corruption, not protect those who engage in acts of corruption! Who wants leaders like that, I ask?
Who would have believed in 2000 that in what must rank as one of the most egregious examples of fraud in high places ever seen in Ghana, that in 2008 the NPP would railroad a bill through parliament sealing a sale and purchase agreement for VALCO by a “consortium” (grandly named International Aluminum Partners, by the crooks on the make, and on the take, who failed so miserably in putting the deal together!) made up of two foreign companies both of which publicly denied ever agreeing to purchase the company?
Who wants a political part that is full of such shenanigans? Ghanaians have simply had enough - and want change. Above all they want a president from a party other than the NPP who will ensure that all the crooked deals that have gone on in the last eight years are thoroughly investigated and that the perpetrators who sought to enrich themselves at the expense of Ghanaians and their country, are prosecuted and jailed. Period.
Even if the NPP had turned Ghana into paradise, they would have still been voted out of office for that reason alone. Ghanaians do not want their country to be taken for a ride ever again by any group of politicians they elect into office - especially as they want the revenues from oil and natural gas to be used to transform their country into Africa’s equivalent of the egalitarian societies of Scandinavia: not to enrich Ghana’s crooked politicians!
Hmmm, Ghana – enti yeawiaye paa, enia? Asem ebaba debi ankasa! May Go bless and protect our homeland Ghana always. Long live freedom! Log live Ghana!
KWAME NKRUMAH’S CPP CANNOT AND MUST NOT REMAIN NEUTRAL – IT MUST SUPPORT PROFESSOR ATTA MILLS IF IT TRULY CARES ABOUT GHANA AND GHANAIANS!
For a left-of-centre political party, especially Kwame Nkrumah’s Convention Peoples Party (CPP) to state that it will remain neutral at this critical juncture of Ghanaian democracy's path to good governance is tantamount to a betrayal of mother Ghana.
Ghana cannot simply continue being ruled by an incompetent political party that has succeeded in piling up so much debt that today, Ghana, after having virtually all its old external debt cancelled, is again suffering "debt distress" - to use the World Bank and IMF's euphemism for debt that is squeezing the very lifeblood out of a nation crippled by a large and unsustainable external debt.
If, as the statement issued and signed by Mr. Ladi Nylander, the chairperson of the CPP says, the leadership of the party will continue to “explore its options”, then they had better do so quickly - and opt for change: and do so now. Period.
Remaining neutral will amount to giving succour to the incompetent and corrupt New Patriotic Party (NPP) to win the presidency yet again - and continue dividing our country with their outrageous tribalism and short-sighted and destructive policy of asset-stripping Ghana till kingdom come to pay for their life of Riley at the expense of Ghanaians. How can that be? Why, have they too been bought by the NPP?
Is such an outrageous position, adopted by the leadership of a political party that says it seeks the creation of an egalitarian society in Ghana, not a betrayal of the principles of Nkrumah our party's founder? Why, is the CPP leadership planning to sell their supporters and mother Ghana, out?
Some of us will quickly turn against them if they refuse to support Professor Mills - and they had better prepare "well-well" for a future of constantly being at the receiving end of our ire.
Dr. Paa Kwesi Nduom and his colleagues can forget about any future in the party Nkrumah founded, if they refuse to help Ghana change its leadership in the run-off of the presidential election.
They are entitled to make their own choices, but they must not forget that some of us wield pretty mean pens - and we promise that we will make sure that they will never get anywhere in Ghanaian politics if they betray Ghana by remaining neutral in this election, for as long as we live. They had better revise their notes quickly. A word to the wise...
Hmmm Ghana - enti yeawiaye paa, enia? Asem ebaba debi ankasa! May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
Ghana cannot simply continue being ruled by an incompetent political party that has succeeded in piling up so much debt that today, Ghana, after having virtually all its old external debt cancelled, is again suffering "debt distress" - to use the World Bank and IMF's euphemism for debt that is squeezing the very lifeblood out of a nation crippled by a large and unsustainable external debt.
If, as the statement issued and signed by Mr. Ladi Nylander, the chairperson of the CPP says, the leadership of the party will continue to “explore its options”, then they had better do so quickly - and opt for change: and do so now. Period.
Remaining neutral will amount to giving succour to the incompetent and corrupt New Patriotic Party (NPP) to win the presidency yet again - and continue dividing our country with their outrageous tribalism and short-sighted and destructive policy of asset-stripping Ghana till kingdom come to pay for their life of Riley at the expense of Ghanaians. How can that be? Why, have they too been bought by the NPP?
Is such an outrageous position, adopted by the leadership of a political party that says it seeks the creation of an egalitarian society in Ghana, not a betrayal of the principles of Nkrumah our party's founder? Why, is the CPP leadership planning to sell their supporters and mother Ghana, out?
Some of us will quickly turn against them if they refuse to support Professor Mills - and they had better prepare "well-well" for a future of constantly being at the receiving end of our ire.
Dr. Paa Kwesi Nduom and his colleagues can forget about any future in the party Nkrumah founded, if they refuse to help Ghana change its leadership in the run-off of the presidential election.
They are entitled to make their own choices, but they must not forget that some of us wield pretty mean pens - and we promise that we will make sure that they will never get anywhere in Ghanaian politics if they betray Ghana by remaining neutral in this election, for as long as we live. They had better revise their notes quickly. A word to the wise...
Hmmm Ghana - enti yeawiaye paa, enia? Asem ebaba debi ankasa! May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
Saturday, 13 December 2008
Re: “Kufour Is Almost Done Destroying The NPP Temporarily!”
What a brilliant article, Nii Okunka Bannerman! Massa, believe me, even if the NPP had succeeded in turning Ghana into paradise by now (which they most certainly have not!), ordinary Ghanaians will still vote them out of office on 28th December 2008, regardless.
Massa, Ghanaians, who aren't the "My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong" myrmidon-types (who wear blinkers permanently and are too thick to think for themselves and too blind to see what is going on in Ghana. today!!), simply want a new regime that will probe the NPP regime thoroughly - because they understand that that is the only way they will end corruption amongst Ghana's educated urban elites: some of whose greed knows no bounds!
As for the NPP propaganda designed to evoke fear in Ghanaians about any possible role that JJ Rawlings will play in an Atta Mills regime, well, who doesn't know what happened to President Chiluba, when he handpicked a man he thought was going to become his puppet?
Discerning Ghanaians understand that a President Atta-Mills will not be anyone's "poodle" (as some frightfully "meh" hack once had the effrontery to label him!). As President Kufuor's unremitting and unchallenged Kokofu-football politics has clearly shown, under our constitution, the position of president is a pretty powerful one. Anyone occupying the position of President of the Republic of Ghana, will never be the puppet of any Ghanaian – not even a J.J. Rawlings. Period.
In any case what stops a President Atta Mills from appointing Nana Kunadu Agyemang Rawlings as Ghana's ambassador to China - and delighting the Chinese leaders with being honoured with our former first couple as envoys of Ghana's new left-of-centre president?
Massa, as you so clearly point out, Ghanaians are no fools - and they will reject the dream some NPP members have of creating a MK11 version of President Kufuor's eight years of unremitting tribal-supremacist maneuvering and dictatorship by stealth, on 28th December 2008.
Who in this country wants to see another crop of insufferable traditional rulers and their sundry tribal-supremacist acolytes (our local version of the odious white supremacists of the Western world, who look down on any human being who is not white like they are!) with gargantuan egos, and full of overweening ambition, forever offending the sensibilities of a united nation of ethnic diversity, for another eight years - as happened during the tenure of the powerful tribal supremacists who hid behind the presidency to divide our country so badly with their nauseating Kokofu-football politics, under President Kufuor?
Massa, yes, we are all voting for change - to ensure that the last eight years of unbridled corruption are thoroughly investigated by a new regime from a different political party, the NDC. Ghanaians are simply impatient to see that all the powerful crooks who joined President Kufuor and Co. in the brutal gang-rape of mother Ghana, are tried and punished! Period.
Hmmm, Ghana - enti yeawiaye paa, enia? Asem ebaba debi ankasa! May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
Massa, Ghanaians, who aren't the "My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong" myrmidon-types (who wear blinkers permanently and are too thick to think for themselves and too blind to see what is going on in Ghana. today!!), simply want a new regime that will probe the NPP regime thoroughly - because they understand that that is the only way they will end corruption amongst Ghana's educated urban elites: some of whose greed knows no bounds!
As for the NPP propaganda designed to evoke fear in Ghanaians about any possible role that JJ Rawlings will play in an Atta Mills regime, well, who doesn't know what happened to President Chiluba, when he handpicked a man he thought was going to become his puppet?
Discerning Ghanaians understand that a President Atta-Mills will not be anyone's "poodle" (as some frightfully "meh" hack once had the effrontery to label him!). As President Kufuor's unremitting and unchallenged Kokofu-football politics has clearly shown, under our constitution, the position of president is a pretty powerful one. Anyone occupying the position of President of the Republic of Ghana, will never be the puppet of any Ghanaian – not even a J.J. Rawlings. Period.
In any case what stops a President Atta Mills from appointing Nana Kunadu Agyemang Rawlings as Ghana's ambassador to China - and delighting the Chinese leaders with being honoured with our former first couple as envoys of Ghana's new left-of-centre president?
Massa, as you so clearly point out, Ghanaians are no fools - and they will reject the dream some NPP members have of creating a MK11 version of President Kufuor's eight years of unremitting tribal-supremacist maneuvering and dictatorship by stealth, on 28th December 2008.
Who in this country wants to see another crop of insufferable traditional rulers and their sundry tribal-supremacist acolytes (our local version of the odious white supremacists of the Western world, who look down on any human being who is not white like they are!) with gargantuan egos, and full of overweening ambition, forever offending the sensibilities of a united nation of ethnic diversity, for another eight years - as happened during the tenure of the powerful tribal supremacists who hid behind the presidency to divide our country so badly with their nauseating Kokofu-football politics, under President Kufuor?
Massa, yes, we are all voting for change - to ensure that the last eight years of unbridled corruption are thoroughly investigated by a new regime from a different political party, the NDC. Ghanaians are simply impatient to see that all the powerful crooks who joined President Kufuor and Co. in the brutal gang-rape of mother Ghana, are tried and punished! Period.
Hmmm, Ghana - enti yeawiaye paa, enia? Asem ebaba debi ankasa! May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
Friday, 12 December 2008
WARM VISIT FROM THREE AGENTS OF DEATH – A PERFECT ILLUSTRATION OF HOW YESTERDAY’S CULTURE OF SILENCE IS NO DIFFERENT FROM TODAY’S CULTURE OF IMPUNITY?
Last night I heard long bursts of automatic gunfire around the fence-wall that encloses my house, which lasted for about an hour, all told. And I, who had always thought of himself as being exceedingly brave, was reduced to a shaking and frightened emotional wreck. “So much for your bravery,” I kept on telling myself.
Having considered the ordeal in the cold light of day, I have come to the reassuring conclusion that actually, I really am as brave as I had always thought I was. How do you defend yourself from myrmidon killers wielding automatic weapons - if you yourself are an unarmed pacifist?
Prelude to that brief midnight, hell-on-earth experience of mine; I had had two rather odd encounters with three strangers who called at my house, earlier that day.
Yesterday morning, an elderly gentleman wearing sunglasses (yes, what a dead giveaway - the poor clueless soul!), was led to my house, by the local busybody in my neighbourhood - the ever-friendly and ever-helpful kebab-seller, who operates from a popular drinking spot that lies due north, downwards of the part of McCarthy Hill where I live
But I digress, dear reader. I immediately knew something was up, when I asked the old man in dark glasses, who he wanted to see - as I had never set eyes on him before. He adjusted his dark glasses and mumbled something about being a Chief.
Well, to cut a long story short, I asked the kebab seller to take him to a house near Jayees Commercial Institute - where some NDC big shot lives: having ascertained that it was Jerry Nii Acquaye Thompson who he apparently was after. I felt that the NDC big shot would direct him to wherever it was that that Mr. Thompson, whom Mr. Dark Glasses was apparently seeking, lived.
As a parting shot, the dear old soul asked me to come out - so he could see my face: whereupon I promptly told him, I was wary of strangers, because of the constant stream of death threats I receive. “Ah, so you are a reporter, then?” Yet another clue - as I had not told him anything about myself. Perhaps he had been interviewing the ever-friendly kebab seller?
Well, it so happens that the previous day, I also received a message from my broadband internet service provider, Ghana Telecom, informing me that they were coming to change my phone. Naturally, my ears pricked up - and I said that it was better they came to change the phone the next day: as I was on my way to my village.
Well, not too long after the old man in dark glasses had departed, a lady and a gentleman then turned up - with a telephone (which weighed a ton and looked suspiciously like something from the stable of Lorraine Electronic Surveillance - and had the rather odd number: 021 9762238!). So, I welcomed them, by asking them if they were from the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) - which seems to think that critics of the government are enemies of the Ghanaian nation-state, for some extraordinary reason. Incredible.
So, why am I boring you with all this dreary stuff, you might wonder, dear reader? I acknowledge that all the events I have enumerated above, may not be connected - and could be a series of sheer coincidences.
If they are what I think they are - the hirelings of some faceless individuals who are the lackeys of the powerful crooks in the presidency whose greed knows no bounds and think they are invincible, and who are trying to intimidate me because of my outspoken views and refusal to heed the many death threats I receive - then I am outraged and livid at such monstrous impunity. Just who do these cowards think they are?
Perhaps the time has now come for the UN and the EU to put aside political correctness -and take a second look at the notion of sovereignty.
In the 21sth century we must let sovereignty lie in the people who are the citizens of nation-states - not the men and women who make up the government at any given point in time, in any given nation-state: some of whom are mass murderers who commit crimes against humanity, regularly.
The international community must always intervene to protect the citizens of nations around the world when the regimes that rule them, abuse their human rights in such egregious fashion, as is currently occurring in Zimbabwe and eastern DR Congo. Period.
Why should I and others like me be terrorized - simply because some powerful crooks who should be behind prison bars for the gang-rape of mother Ghana, if there wasn’t such a culture of impunity in this country, don’t like what I write and say on radio sometimes?
Why should millions of DR Congo citizens living in the eastern part of their country, today’s forsaken Africans, pitiful human pawns, be sacrificed daily as lambs to the slaughter on the alter of the tribal-supremacist ambitions of that cruel warlord, the self-styled "General" Nkunda, that narcissistic monster, who commits crimes against humanity with impunity, on a daily basis?
Must Africa and the rest of humanity continue to close their eyes to this pogrom because they are afraid to offend the sensibilities of Laurent Nkunda and Rwanda’s ruling elite - ruthless people who have dreams of setting up a Greater Tutsi nation, as a larger successor to the apartheid state they have succeeded in setting up, in that police state masquerading as a democracy and known as Rwanda?
Why should the sovereign people of Zimbabwe end up as slaves of Robert Mugabe and the greedy generals who hide behind him to gang-rape that once-prosperous African nation they have succeeded in destroying with their greed, selfishness and incredible stupidity?
Why should a law-abiding and ordinary Ghanaian be terrorized by agents of some powerful crooks embedded in the government that ought to protect its citizens - in whom sovereignty really ought to lie: just because he criticizes the regime in power today?
What is the difference between those powerful Mafioso embedded in the presidency today, who seek to terrorize law-abiding critics of their regime, such as Kofi Thompson, and the brutes who terrorized us in the days of the "culture of silence"?
Today, are journalists who speak the truth as they see it, as well as those who refuse to sell their conscience and engage in regime praise-singing, not intimidated subtly (as was the case in the firing of automatic weapons outside my house), all the time - and sometimes beaten up, today, too? I am sick and tired of the antics of these bloody fools who tricked their way to power in 2000 and now seek to enslave ordinary people permanently. What perfidy!
Hmmm, Ghana – enti yeawiaye paa, enia? Asem ebaba debi ankasa! May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
Having considered the ordeal in the cold light of day, I have come to the reassuring conclusion that actually, I really am as brave as I had always thought I was. How do you defend yourself from myrmidon killers wielding automatic weapons - if you yourself are an unarmed pacifist?
Prelude to that brief midnight, hell-on-earth experience of mine; I had had two rather odd encounters with three strangers who called at my house, earlier that day.
Yesterday morning, an elderly gentleman wearing sunglasses (yes, what a dead giveaway - the poor clueless soul!), was led to my house, by the local busybody in my neighbourhood - the ever-friendly and ever-helpful kebab-seller, who operates from a popular drinking spot that lies due north, downwards of the part of McCarthy Hill where I live
But I digress, dear reader. I immediately knew something was up, when I asked the old man in dark glasses, who he wanted to see - as I had never set eyes on him before. He adjusted his dark glasses and mumbled something about being a Chief.
Well, to cut a long story short, I asked the kebab seller to take him to a house near Jayees Commercial Institute - where some NDC big shot lives: having ascertained that it was Jerry Nii Acquaye Thompson who he apparently was after. I felt that the NDC big shot would direct him to wherever it was that that Mr. Thompson, whom Mr. Dark Glasses was apparently seeking, lived.
As a parting shot, the dear old soul asked me to come out - so he could see my face: whereupon I promptly told him, I was wary of strangers, because of the constant stream of death threats I receive. “Ah, so you are a reporter, then?” Yet another clue - as I had not told him anything about myself. Perhaps he had been interviewing the ever-friendly kebab seller?
Well, it so happens that the previous day, I also received a message from my broadband internet service provider, Ghana Telecom, informing me that they were coming to change my phone. Naturally, my ears pricked up - and I said that it was better they came to change the phone the next day: as I was on my way to my village.
Well, not too long after the old man in dark glasses had departed, a lady and a gentleman then turned up - with a telephone (which weighed a ton and looked suspiciously like something from the stable of Lorraine Electronic Surveillance - and had the rather odd number: 021 9762238!). So, I welcomed them, by asking them if they were from the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) - which seems to think that critics of the government are enemies of the Ghanaian nation-state, for some extraordinary reason. Incredible.
So, why am I boring you with all this dreary stuff, you might wonder, dear reader? I acknowledge that all the events I have enumerated above, may not be connected - and could be a series of sheer coincidences.
If they are what I think they are - the hirelings of some faceless individuals who are the lackeys of the powerful crooks in the presidency whose greed knows no bounds and think they are invincible, and who are trying to intimidate me because of my outspoken views and refusal to heed the many death threats I receive - then I am outraged and livid at such monstrous impunity. Just who do these cowards think they are?
Perhaps the time has now come for the UN and the EU to put aside political correctness -and take a second look at the notion of sovereignty.
In the 21sth century we must let sovereignty lie in the people who are the citizens of nation-states - not the men and women who make up the government at any given point in time, in any given nation-state: some of whom are mass murderers who commit crimes against humanity, regularly.
The international community must always intervene to protect the citizens of nations around the world when the regimes that rule them, abuse their human rights in such egregious fashion, as is currently occurring in Zimbabwe and eastern DR Congo. Period.
Why should I and others like me be terrorized - simply because some powerful crooks who should be behind prison bars for the gang-rape of mother Ghana, if there wasn’t such a culture of impunity in this country, don’t like what I write and say on radio sometimes?
Why should millions of DR Congo citizens living in the eastern part of their country, today’s forsaken Africans, pitiful human pawns, be sacrificed daily as lambs to the slaughter on the alter of the tribal-supremacist ambitions of that cruel warlord, the self-styled "General" Nkunda, that narcissistic monster, who commits crimes against humanity with impunity, on a daily basis?
Must Africa and the rest of humanity continue to close their eyes to this pogrom because they are afraid to offend the sensibilities of Laurent Nkunda and Rwanda’s ruling elite - ruthless people who have dreams of setting up a Greater Tutsi nation, as a larger successor to the apartheid state they have succeeded in setting up, in that police state masquerading as a democracy and known as Rwanda?
Why should the sovereign people of Zimbabwe end up as slaves of Robert Mugabe and the greedy generals who hide behind him to gang-rape that once-prosperous African nation they have succeeded in destroying with their greed, selfishness and incredible stupidity?
Why should a law-abiding and ordinary Ghanaian be terrorized by agents of some powerful crooks embedded in the government that ought to protect its citizens - in whom sovereignty really ought to lie: just because he criticizes the regime in power today?
What is the difference between those powerful Mafioso embedded in the presidency today, who seek to terrorize law-abiding critics of their regime, such as Kofi Thompson, and the brutes who terrorized us in the days of the "culture of silence"?
Today, are journalists who speak the truth as they see it, as well as those who refuse to sell their conscience and engage in regime praise-singing, not intimidated subtly (as was the case in the firing of automatic weapons outside my house), all the time - and sometimes beaten up, today, too? I am sick and tired of the antics of these bloody fools who tricked their way to power in 2000 and now seek to enslave ordinary people permanently. What perfidy!
Hmmm, Ghana – enti yeawiaye paa, enia? Asem ebaba debi ankasa! May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
Thursday, 11 December 2008
SHOULD THE CPP GET OFF ITS FENCE OF POLITICAL CONVENIENCE - AND SUPPORT PROFESSOR ATTA -MILLS?
One certainly hopes that all those in the Convention Peoples Party (CPP) whose task it will be to decide which of the two candidates their party ought to back in the run-off for the presidential election on the 28th December 2008, will take the national interest into account - and consequently opt for the National Democratic Congress’ candidate, Professor Mills.
Clearly, Ghanaians want a change of government. For, when Ghanaians voted for the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in December 2000, they were full of hope that the party would set new standards of morality in our public life. Sadly, they did not deliver. Today, we have all seen the kind of “dog-eat-dog” society that has evolved in our country over the period the NPP has been in power.
The NPP has been very successful at scrapping the bottom of the pork barrel - and in the process they have created the perfect enabling-environment for the politically well-connected to prosper mightily these last eight years. Men and women, not previously known for their acumen in accumulating wealth, have successfully sent their personal net worth into the stratosphere at a dizzying pace, as they progress from deal to deal.
The nation’s collective jaw dropped not too long ago, for example, when Ghanaians were told of the latest caper pulled by some of the most powerful amongst the country’s influence-peddling and politically well-connected, upwardly-mobile deal-makers (classic examples of the financial equivalent of eager neophytes!): getting parliament to approve a sale and purchase agreement of VALCO by a non-existent consortium said to consist of Norske Hydro and a Brazilian conglomerate.
Sadly, greed has so infected our rulers that some of them can even succeed in getting Ghana’s parliament to approve a sale and purchase agreement for a consortium (grandly christened International Aluminum Partners to give it gravitas: so as to impress the gullible who fill the debating chamber of our supine legislature, to approve the sale of VALCO!) that existed only in the rather vivid imagination of the influence peddlers assigned the task of fronting for the powerful and ruthless crooks who dominate the NPP so completely, and whose offshore special purpose vehicles usually benefit from such privatization deals (according to the bush telegraph - not poor old me!).
Yet another example of the perfidy of some of our rulers these last eight years is the amazing story of Jake Obestebi-Lamptey.
That rather important personage (whom I have a soft spot for, although I loathe his party and all it stands for!) actually led the media to the official residences of ministers of the NDC regime in the early part of 2001, as part of his effort to get them to quit those houses - so that they could be renovated for him and his colleagues!
Incredibly, today, Mr. Obestebi-Lamptey has now ended up trying to acquire the house allocated to him when he was a minister - and on which a great deal of taxpayers’ money was expended: because he demanded that further changes be made to suit his taste, after the initial renovation work on the building was completed. The denouement of the amazing story of the official residences of government ministers, which started with that 2001 media-circus, neatly sums up the ethos that has underpinned this most self-seeking of regimes. Who wants such a political party to govern our country, yet again?
The CPP has no choice but to back the NDC - so that the nation can discover the full extent of the (mostly-secretive!) egregious asset-stripping of the enterprise Ghana that has gone on since the NPP came to power. It is crucial that the good people of Ghana get to know which of the members of this regime have benefitted from that outrageous and short-sighted policy of selling national assets - assets built with the blood, sweat and the tears of Ghanaian workers: just to fund those globetrotting-profligates’ life-of-Riley lifestyles at mother Ghana’s expense!
The question we all ought to ponder, is: when the NPP government finishes selling all of Ghana’s assets to the foreign collaborators with whom some of them are busy gang-raping mother Ghana, what else will they try and sell? Will they try to sell the entire landmass of our country, too, just as they have apparently sold off large tracts of valuable land belonging to the Ghana Armed Forces - or try and sell the ordinary people of Ghana into slavery, too? Such a political party definitely does not deserve to rule our country for another four-year term. Period.
The CPP must get off its fence of convenience immediately - and call on its supporters to vote for Professor Atta Mills: who without doubt is one of the most honest politicians Ghana has ever had in its entire history.
How many of the presidential candidates, apart from Dr Mahama and Professor Mills, showed any willingness to publicly declare the assets of himself as well as that of his spouse before coming to power - and to get all his ministers to do same too? Ditto after leaving office? That is exactly the kind of leader Ghana desperately needs now - after the unfathomable greed we have seen over the eight years that the NPP has been in power.
The NPP’s idea of developing Ghana is no different from that of a shortsighted entrepreneur who aims to grow his company through leveraged buy-outs - at a time the world is experiencing a credit crunch of global proportions. We do not need a regime that boasts of increasing Ghana’s GDP, when in reality all it has done is to simply pile up debt for future generations of our countrymen to pay off.
What sense is there in borrowing money just to build presidential palaces and purchase two luxury presidential jets at the same time - rather than building hundreds of thousands of good quality houses for ordinary people to occupy at affordable rental rates?
The dignity of the people of Ghana is not reflected in luxury presidential palaces - it is reflected in the good quality of life enjoyed by the ordinary people of this country. Period. We will never become Africa’s equivalent of the equalitarian societies of Scandinavia with leaders who have that kind of an elitist mindset. Professor Mills is the perfect president for our country at this juncture of our history. Period.
Hmmm, Ghana - enti yeawiaye paa, enia? Asem ebaba debi ankasa! May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana.
Clearly, Ghanaians want a change of government. For, when Ghanaians voted for the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in December 2000, they were full of hope that the party would set new standards of morality in our public life. Sadly, they did not deliver. Today, we have all seen the kind of “dog-eat-dog” society that has evolved in our country over the period the NPP has been in power.
The NPP has been very successful at scrapping the bottom of the pork barrel - and in the process they have created the perfect enabling-environment for the politically well-connected to prosper mightily these last eight years. Men and women, not previously known for their acumen in accumulating wealth, have successfully sent their personal net worth into the stratosphere at a dizzying pace, as they progress from deal to deal.
The nation’s collective jaw dropped not too long ago, for example, when Ghanaians were told of the latest caper pulled by some of the most powerful amongst the country’s influence-peddling and politically well-connected, upwardly-mobile deal-makers (classic examples of the financial equivalent of eager neophytes!): getting parliament to approve a sale and purchase agreement of VALCO by a non-existent consortium said to consist of Norske Hydro and a Brazilian conglomerate.
Sadly, greed has so infected our rulers that some of them can even succeed in getting Ghana’s parliament to approve a sale and purchase agreement for a consortium (grandly christened International Aluminum Partners to give it gravitas: so as to impress the gullible who fill the debating chamber of our supine legislature, to approve the sale of VALCO!) that existed only in the rather vivid imagination of the influence peddlers assigned the task of fronting for the powerful and ruthless crooks who dominate the NPP so completely, and whose offshore special purpose vehicles usually benefit from such privatization deals (according to the bush telegraph - not poor old me!).
Yet another example of the perfidy of some of our rulers these last eight years is the amazing story of Jake Obestebi-Lamptey.
That rather important personage (whom I have a soft spot for, although I loathe his party and all it stands for!) actually led the media to the official residences of ministers of the NDC regime in the early part of 2001, as part of his effort to get them to quit those houses - so that they could be renovated for him and his colleagues!
Incredibly, today, Mr. Obestebi-Lamptey has now ended up trying to acquire the house allocated to him when he was a minister - and on which a great deal of taxpayers’ money was expended: because he demanded that further changes be made to suit his taste, after the initial renovation work on the building was completed. The denouement of the amazing story of the official residences of government ministers, which started with that 2001 media-circus, neatly sums up the ethos that has underpinned this most self-seeking of regimes. Who wants such a political party to govern our country, yet again?
The CPP has no choice but to back the NDC - so that the nation can discover the full extent of the (mostly-secretive!) egregious asset-stripping of the enterprise Ghana that has gone on since the NPP came to power. It is crucial that the good people of Ghana get to know which of the members of this regime have benefitted from that outrageous and short-sighted policy of selling national assets - assets built with the blood, sweat and the tears of Ghanaian workers: just to fund those globetrotting-profligates’ life-of-Riley lifestyles at mother Ghana’s expense!
The question we all ought to ponder, is: when the NPP government finishes selling all of Ghana’s assets to the foreign collaborators with whom some of them are busy gang-raping mother Ghana, what else will they try and sell? Will they try to sell the entire landmass of our country, too, just as they have apparently sold off large tracts of valuable land belonging to the Ghana Armed Forces - or try and sell the ordinary people of Ghana into slavery, too? Such a political party definitely does not deserve to rule our country for another four-year term. Period.
The CPP must get off its fence of convenience immediately - and call on its supporters to vote for Professor Atta Mills: who without doubt is one of the most honest politicians Ghana has ever had in its entire history.
How many of the presidential candidates, apart from Dr Mahama and Professor Mills, showed any willingness to publicly declare the assets of himself as well as that of his spouse before coming to power - and to get all his ministers to do same too? Ditto after leaving office? That is exactly the kind of leader Ghana desperately needs now - after the unfathomable greed we have seen over the eight years that the NPP has been in power.
The NPP’s idea of developing Ghana is no different from that of a shortsighted entrepreneur who aims to grow his company through leveraged buy-outs - at a time the world is experiencing a credit crunch of global proportions. We do not need a regime that boasts of increasing Ghana’s GDP, when in reality all it has done is to simply pile up debt for future generations of our countrymen to pay off.
What sense is there in borrowing money just to build presidential palaces and purchase two luxury presidential jets at the same time - rather than building hundreds of thousands of good quality houses for ordinary people to occupy at affordable rental rates?
The dignity of the people of Ghana is not reflected in luxury presidential palaces - it is reflected in the good quality of life enjoyed by the ordinary people of this country. Period. We will never become Africa’s equivalent of the equalitarian societies of Scandinavia with leaders who have that kind of an elitist mindset. Professor Mills is the perfect president for our country at this juncture of our history. Period.
Hmmm, Ghana - enti yeawiaye paa, enia? Asem ebaba debi ankasa! May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana.
Wednesday, 10 December 2008
RADIO GOLD FM DID NOT MAKE UP THE EXTRAORDINARY STORY OF THE MIDNIGHT JOURNEY OF THE CONTESTED WEIJA CONSTITUENCY BALLOT BOXES TO AMASSAMAN!
Massa, with respect, do not be absurd - Radio Gold FM did not make up the extraordinary story of the mysterious midnight journey of the contested Weija constituency ballot boxes to Amassaman.
And let us be perfectly clear about this, too: Kofi Thompson is not one of those journalists who have sold their conscience - and is most certainly not in anyone's pocket (from across the spectrum). I am independent-minded in every sense of the word - and guard my independence jealously: because I am exceedingly proud of it. Period.
With respect, I resent your impudent attempt to make out that one is a person without a conscience - simply because one wrote about facts that you find politically unpalatable. I live by the ethics of my profession and never write things that aren't factual.
Talking about the conscience of others, and the lack thereof, I do hope that you have yours - as I certainly have mine, which is clear and is one that I am able to live with comfortably, daily. God and our fellow human beings are the judges of our actions (or inactions in this case!) - yours and mine : so speak for yourself!
Yes, politics is serious business indeed. Massa, do you seriously believe that the people at Radio Gold suddenly got up on the morning of 9th December, 2008, and decided they would write a skit for radio - and forced the EC official and the minister's hirelings : to move those ballot boxes at that ungodly hour; commanded a team of military and policemen to guard it enroute; take a series of dangerous and un-tarred back-roads instead of the main Accra-Kumasi road; stop midway to switch ballot boxes between two vehicles, one of which was awaiting that confounded convoy midway in the journey - and all that, so that it could risk the lives of two of their staff members, just to put out an early-morning tragi-comedy to its listeners, most of whom would be asleep at that unholy hour of the morning? Please!
Massa, the New Patriotic Party has just discovered that Ghanaians aren't fools - as the National Democratic Congress (NDC) regime discovered to its shock too, in December 2000.
Massa, let us be clear about one thing : People like me also fought Mr. Rawlings at the height of his powers, too - but unlike many others who did, I most certainly did not do so only to subsequently close my eyes and block my ears in order to allow a gang of incompetent crooks to come to power and ruin our nation, whiles enriching themselves at mother Ghana’s expense, because they had bought my conscience. I am not for sale to anyone, at any price. Period.
I had hoped that this regime would change our country for the better, by setting new standards of morality in our public life, when it first came to power. Like many other patriotic and nationalistic Ghanaians at the time, in the national interest, I too did all that I could to “cut down the NDC to size” as someone once famously said, when it was initially removed from power. So do not call me names, Massa. I did what I could, in the interest of our country, to enable this regime to find its feet at the beginning of its tenure and to survive its first few years in office.
I pray that you are not one of those tiresome "My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong" myrmidon-types who wear blinkers permanently - and are too thick to think and too blind to see the damage the unfathomable greed of our present rulers has done to our country. Let me humbly suggest that you remove your blinkers - for, this is the dawn of a new beginning that will see our country become a nation that refuses to tolerate unprincipled Kokofu-football politics, under any circumstances, any longer.
Massa, at this point in time in our nation’s life, a regime run by Professor Mills is a far better choice for our country than the present incompetents - so many of whom worship with such blind fervour at the "Cult-of-the-mediocre"!
Perhaps Nana Akufo-Addo would have made a far better president than that Kokofu-football superstar we elected to become our president in December 2000 - our “Hypocrite-in-Chief”, the lame-duck President Kufuor. If only his party had had the good sense to choose him in 2000, perhaps Nana Akufo-Addo would have left a legacy that would have assured his party of victory at this juncture for his successor in the party.
Incidentally, I recall telling him, when I saw him in his law chambers, shortly after Mr. Kufuor defeated him in the election for his party’s candidature for the presidential election of December 2000, that his party had made a terrible mistake it would come to regret. Massa, your party is now paying the ultimate price for that grave error of judgment it made then.
Unfortunately, for our country, President Kufuor has ran the most tribalistc and nepotistic regime ever known in this country's chequered history. Like many other non-tribalistic Ghanaians, if he had left his Kokofu-football tactics to simply favouring his own tribesmen and women, I would not have quibbled, even if he filled all the plum positions in the public sector with his tribesmen and women, as long as they were qualified - because they too are Ghanaians.
However, he rather chose to take to his Kokofu-football politics to the realms of treasonable behaviour : he, a man elected to defend our constitution and the territorial integrity of our nation - and like many Ghanaians, I finally drew the line when he started using the whole machinery of state to promote the monstrous and tribal-supremacist agenda of some of his tribal chiefs; some, men of questionable character, who, incredibly, in the 21sth century ICT age, apparently seek to superimpose the progeny of the ruling élites of the now-defunct tribal nation-states of the pre-colonial feudal era, on a modern African nation-state that has aspirations to become a meritocracy, and which is a nation that is also a unitary republic of diverse ethnicity, by stealth. What perfidy - who does not know that inherited privilege, is the greatest enemy of any meritocracy?
Why exchange our united country in which we are all free citizens, for an unstable one with an ethnically-cleansed state-within-a-state, full of serfs, which is an absolute monarchy run by megalomaniacs - who owe their positions in society to mere inherited privilege, in it? Why, are we fools, I ask?
The fact of the matter is that that is the unfortunate direction in which the few crooked, greedy and powerful tribal-supremacists who dominate the NPP have been steadily moving our homeland Ghana, throughout that party's tenure. Such a political party is just not fit to rule our united country of diverse ethnicity, under any circumstances - no matter what cloak of respectability they use to hide their Kokofu-football politics. Period.
Yet, that is precisely the end-game of what President Kufuor unwittingly (to be charitable!) worked so tirelessly, for, during his tenure - he, the president of the Republic of Ghana: an unwitting tool, of ambitious would-be tyrants. That, Massa, is the sorry pass our country has now come to, today. Why should a freedom-loving people who have no wish to become serfs in any confounded Mickey-mouse kingdoms in today's ICT world, elect a Mk11 version of the last eight years again?
Massa, Ghanaians have spoken out loudly and clearly that they do not want our nation to be run by a regime dominated by tribal-supremacists and an elitist crowd - some of whose unfathomable greed and incompetence has made them believe that asset-stripping Ghana (with the added benefit of sending their personal net worth into the stratosphere, through sundry privatisation kickbacks!) is a state policy worth pursuing: as a panacea to resolving the myriad ills of Ghanaian society.
Massa, with respect, please take this humble piece of advice in good faith - next time do not tread where even angels fear to tread. Mepawu acheaw, eyeaa cheki wohu ansa wa kasa ewo bedwa emu!
Hmm Ghana, eyeasem oo - enti yeawiaye paa enia? Asem ebaba debi ankasa! May God bless our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
And let us be perfectly clear about this, too: Kofi Thompson is not one of those journalists who have sold their conscience - and is most certainly not in anyone's pocket (from across the spectrum). I am independent-minded in every sense of the word - and guard my independence jealously: because I am exceedingly proud of it. Period.
With respect, I resent your impudent attempt to make out that one is a person without a conscience - simply because one wrote about facts that you find politically unpalatable. I live by the ethics of my profession and never write things that aren't factual.
Talking about the conscience of others, and the lack thereof, I do hope that you have yours - as I certainly have mine, which is clear and is one that I am able to live with comfortably, daily. God and our fellow human beings are the judges of our actions (or inactions in this case!) - yours and mine : so speak for yourself!
Yes, politics is serious business indeed. Massa, do you seriously believe that the people at Radio Gold suddenly got up on the morning of 9th December, 2008, and decided they would write a skit for radio - and forced the EC official and the minister's hirelings : to move those ballot boxes at that ungodly hour; commanded a team of military and policemen to guard it enroute; take a series of dangerous and un-tarred back-roads instead of the main Accra-Kumasi road; stop midway to switch ballot boxes between two vehicles, one of which was awaiting that confounded convoy midway in the journey - and all that, so that it could risk the lives of two of their staff members, just to put out an early-morning tragi-comedy to its listeners, most of whom would be asleep at that unholy hour of the morning? Please!
Massa, the New Patriotic Party has just discovered that Ghanaians aren't fools - as the National Democratic Congress (NDC) regime discovered to its shock too, in December 2000.
Massa, let us be clear about one thing : People like me also fought Mr. Rawlings at the height of his powers, too - but unlike many others who did, I most certainly did not do so only to subsequently close my eyes and block my ears in order to allow a gang of incompetent crooks to come to power and ruin our nation, whiles enriching themselves at mother Ghana’s expense, because they had bought my conscience. I am not for sale to anyone, at any price. Period.
I had hoped that this regime would change our country for the better, by setting new standards of morality in our public life, when it first came to power. Like many other patriotic and nationalistic Ghanaians at the time, in the national interest, I too did all that I could to “cut down the NDC to size” as someone once famously said, when it was initially removed from power. So do not call me names, Massa. I did what I could, in the interest of our country, to enable this regime to find its feet at the beginning of its tenure and to survive its first few years in office.
I pray that you are not one of those tiresome "My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong" myrmidon-types who wear blinkers permanently - and are too thick to think and too blind to see the damage the unfathomable greed of our present rulers has done to our country. Let me humbly suggest that you remove your blinkers - for, this is the dawn of a new beginning that will see our country become a nation that refuses to tolerate unprincipled Kokofu-football politics, under any circumstances, any longer.
Massa, at this point in time in our nation’s life, a regime run by Professor Mills is a far better choice for our country than the present incompetents - so many of whom worship with such blind fervour at the "Cult-of-the-mediocre"!
Perhaps Nana Akufo-Addo would have made a far better president than that Kokofu-football superstar we elected to become our president in December 2000 - our “Hypocrite-in-Chief”, the lame-duck President Kufuor. If only his party had had the good sense to choose him in 2000, perhaps Nana Akufo-Addo would have left a legacy that would have assured his party of victory at this juncture for his successor in the party.
Incidentally, I recall telling him, when I saw him in his law chambers, shortly after Mr. Kufuor defeated him in the election for his party’s candidature for the presidential election of December 2000, that his party had made a terrible mistake it would come to regret. Massa, your party is now paying the ultimate price for that grave error of judgment it made then.
Unfortunately, for our country, President Kufuor has ran the most tribalistc and nepotistic regime ever known in this country's chequered history. Like many other non-tribalistic Ghanaians, if he had left his Kokofu-football tactics to simply favouring his own tribesmen and women, I would not have quibbled, even if he filled all the plum positions in the public sector with his tribesmen and women, as long as they were qualified - because they too are Ghanaians.
However, he rather chose to take to his Kokofu-football politics to the realms of treasonable behaviour : he, a man elected to defend our constitution and the territorial integrity of our nation - and like many Ghanaians, I finally drew the line when he started using the whole machinery of state to promote the monstrous and tribal-supremacist agenda of some of his tribal chiefs; some, men of questionable character, who, incredibly, in the 21sth century ICT age, apparently seek to superimpose the progeny of the ruling élites of the now-defunct tribal nation-states of the pre-colonial feudal era, on a modern African nation-state that has aspirations to become a meritocracy, and which is a nation that is also a unitary republic of diverse ethnicity, by stealth. What perfidy - who does not know that inherited privilege, is the greatest enemy of any meritocracy?
Why exchange our united country in which we are all free citizens, for an unstable one with an ethnically-cleansed state-within-a-state, full of serfs, which is an absolute monarchy run by megalomaniacs - who owe their positions in society to mere inherited privilege, in it? Why, are we fools, I ask?
The fact of the matter is that that is the unfortunate direction in which the few crooked, greedy and powerful tribal-supremacists who dominate the NPP have been steadily moving our homeland Ghana, throughout that party's tenure. Such a political party is just not fit to rule our united country of diverse ethnicity, under any circumstances - no matter what cloak of respectability they use to hide their Kokofu-football politics. Period.
Yet, that is precisely the end-game of what President Kufuor unwittingly (to be charitable!) worked so tirelessly, for, during his tenure - he, the president of the Republic of Ghana: an unwitting tool, of ambitious would-be tyrants. That, Massa, is the sorry pass our country has now come to, today. Why should a freedom-loving people who have no wish to become serfs in any confounded Mickey-mouse kingdoms in today's ICT world, elect a Mk11 version of the last eight years again?
Massa, Ghanaians have spoken out loudly and clearly that they do not want our nation to be run by a regime dominated by tribal-supremacists and an elitist crowd - some of whose unfathomable greed and incompetence has made them believe that asset-stripping Ghana (with the added benefit of sending their personal net worth into the stratosphere, through sundry privatisation kickbacks!) is a state policy worth pursuing: as a panacea to resolving the myriad ills of Ghanaian society.
Massa, with respect, please take this humble piece of advice in good faith - next time do not tread where even angels fear to tread. Mepawu acheaw, eyeaa cheki wohu ansa wa kasa ewo bedwa emu!
Hmm Ghana, eyeasem oo - enti yeawiaye paa enia? Asem ebaba debi ankasa! May God bless our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
Tuesday, 9 December 2008
Extraordinary Journey Of Contested Weija Constituency Ballot Boxes To Amassaman After Midnight: Does It Hold Key To Secret Behind A Rigging Plan?
All independent-minded and non-partisan Ghanaians, who are true patriots and nationalists, will have to demand an explanation from Dr. Afari Djan, as soon as his working day starts today, 9th December, 2008 - about the early-morning journey of a number of ballot boxes from Weija to Amassaman, today.
The Electoral Commissioner owes an explanation to those of us who are registered voters of the Weija constituency - and must tell us precisely what the reasons are, for the extraordinary journey, of a number of contested ballot boxes from the Weija constituency, to the offices of the Amassaman District Assembly, in the early hours of the morning of Tuesday 9th December, 2008: escorted by a combined team made up of heavily-armed military personal and the police.
The Electoral Commissioner must ask the police to quickly investigate this particular incident and give a detailed explanation of the incident - which, as it happens (luckily for the residents of Weija), was monitored by correspondents of an Accra FM radio station, Radio Gold (who gave a live running commentary by mobile phone!), to the good people of Ghana.
No one, who heard the dramatic live commentary of those two brave correspondents, Roland Acquah-Stevens and Tweneboah (who risked their lives to keep the world informed of this rather odd early-morning journey of the Weija constituency ballot boxes, during which ballot boxes were even switched between two vehicles midway during the journey!), and is fair-minded, will fail to wonder if that clever ruse was not part of a premeditated plan, conceived to rig the election - and prepared for the express purpose of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat: by the crooks in the ruling party, who are determined to stay in power regardless, no matter what the people of Ghana’s verdict is.
Perhaps the question many fair-minded Ghanaians will be asking themselves, is: Is this the way that those ruling party candidates who have been defeated on the first count after the votes were originally counted in their constituency, succeeded in somehow emerging victorious after several recounts, after initially being defeated?
Ditto the way those who voted for Professor Mills nationwide too were cheated - especially as it was clear that the transfer of ballot boxes between the tipper truck and the vehicle that brought them from Weija originally, was key to enabling any rigging to be effected?
Was it part of the plan that defeated NPP parliamentary candidates (across the country) continue raising objections and demand as many recounts as possible, whiles a tactic similar to that employed to try and alter the vote at Weija, was implemented?
Could that be the reason why a number of polling station officials around the country, such as the Ashanti Region, were reported to have been unable to complete formalities overnight - a few even saying that they needed to sleep?
Are the residents of Weija to conclude, if they now hear that the candidate from the ruling party and the incumbent Member of Parliament for the Weija constituency, Ms. Shirley Ayorkor Botchway, has at last emerged victorious (like the magical way that the notorious Sheik I.C. Quaye too suddenly emerged victorious after several recounts!), that that mysterious journey of the contested ballot boxes, which took a post-midnight joy-ride to Amassaman, guarded by soldiers and police personnel, had something to do with her victory, and that her victory was not because she actually obtained a majority of the votes cast in their constituency: but an extraordinary bit of electoral smoke-and-mirrors magic?
For all we know, perhaps there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for that extraordinary journey of those contested ballot boxes in the inconclusive poll to elect a Member of Parliament for the Weija constituency from the jurisdiction to Amassaman - under the guard of a combined military and police team, in the early hours of 9th December 2008.
However, Dr. Afari Djan does owe the inhabitants of Weija in particular, and the rest of their fellow citizens of Ghana, as well as the rest of Africa too, an explanation, for that incredible episode - especially as there apparently is evidence that the National Democratic Congress's (NDC) seals on the boxes had apparently all been broken, after the mysterious journey to Amassaman at that unholy hour: using those terrible and unpaved back-roads instead of the main road! Where is the fairness in all this, dear reader?
Why, do we all not know that rigging an election, is tantamount to a coup d’état - by stealth? Let those in this regime who wish to deny Ghanaians the change they so clearly want, understand that Ghanaians aren’t fools.
Have they seen the way ordinary citizens followed the ballot boxes in a convoy, even at that ungodly hour of the morning – the convoy that apparently also included an official vehicle belonging to a minister in the government: who also happens to be the selfsame candidate raising objections to the results of the election at the Weija constituency?
Are they not the very ones in Ghanaian politics who never cease claiming to be true democrats? Have they seen how God has intervened so miraculously in this matter - and ensured that an ordinary Ghanaian, a brave taxi driver, Peter, would overhear two fares talking about an "operation" to switch ballot boxes: and had the presence of mind to follow up thereafter?
The voice of the people is indeed the voice of God - and those who seek to deny it from being expressed openly, do so at their own peril! Dr. Afari Djan, is this true democracy? Please act now, to explain the mysterious carryings-on that occurred in the early hours of this morning, to the voters of Weija!
Hmmm, Ghana - enti yeawiaye paa, enia? Asem ebaba dei ankasa! May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
The Electoral Commissioner owes an explanation to those of us who are registered voters of the Weija constituency - and must tell us precisely what the reasons are, for the extraordinary journey, of a number of contested ballot boxes from the Weija constituency, to the offices of the Amassaman District Assembly, in the early hours of the morning of Tuesday 9th December, 2008: escorted by a combined team made up of heavily-armed military personal and the police.
The Electoral Commissioner must ask the police to quickly investigate this particular incident and give a detailed explanation of the incident - which, as it happens (luckily for the residents of Weija), was monitored by correspondents of an Accra FM radio station, Radio Gold (who gave a live running commentary by mobile phone!), to the good people of Ghana.
No one, who heard the dramatic live commentary of those two brave correspondents, Roland Acquah-Stevens and Tweneboah (who risked their lives to keep the world informed of this rather odd early-morning journey of the Weija constituency ballot boxes, during which ballot boxes were even switched between two vehicles midway during the journey!), and is fair-minded, will fail to wonder if that clever ruse was not part of a premeditated plan, conceived to rig the election - and prepared for the express purpose of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat: by the crooks in the ruling party, who are determined to stay in power regardless, no matter what the people of Ghana’s verdict is.
Perhaps the question many fair-minded Ghanaians will be asking themselves, is: Is this the way that those ruling party candidates who have been defeated on the first count after the votes were originally counted in their constituency, succeeded in somehow emerging victorious after several recounts, after initially being defeated?
Ditto the way those who voted for Professor Mills nationwide too were cheated - especially as it was clear that the transfer of ballot boxes between the tipper truck and the vehicle that brought them from Weija originally, was key to enabling any rigging to be effected?
Was it part of the plan that defeated NPP parliamentary candidates (across the country) continue raising objections and demand as many recounts as possible, whiles a tactic similar to that employed to try and alter the vote at Weija, was implemented?
Could that be the reason why a number of polling station officials around the country, such as the Ashanti Region, were reported to have been unable to complete formalities overnight - a few even saying that they needed to sleep?
Are the residents of Weija to conclude, if they now hear that the candidate from the ruling party and the incumbent Member of Parliament for the Weija constituency, Ms. Shirley Ayorkor Botchway, has at last emerged victorious (like the magical way that the notorious Sheik I.C. Quaye too suddenly emerged victorious after several recounts!), that that mysterious journey of the contested ballot boxes, which took a post-midnight joy-ride to Amassaman, guarded by soldiers and police personnel, had something to do with her victory, and that her victory was not because she actually obtained a majority of the votes cast in their constituency: but an extraordinary bit of electoral smoke-and-mirrors magic?
For all we know, perhaps there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for that extraordinary journey of those contested ballot boxes in the inconclusive poll to elect a Member of Parliament for the Weija constituency from the jurisdiction to Amassaman - under the guard of a combined military and police team, in the early hours of 9th December 2008.
However, Dr. Afari Djan does owe the inhabitants of Weija in particular, and the rest of their fellow citizens of Ghana, as well as the rest of Africa too, an explanation, for that incredible episode - especially as there apparently is evidence that the National Democratic Congress's (NDC) seals on the boxes had apparently all been broken, after the mysterious journey to Amassaman at that unholy hour: using those terrible and unpaved back-roads instead of the main road! Where is the fairness in all this, dear reader?
Why, do we all not know that rigging an election, is tantamount to a coup d’état - by stealth? Let those in this regime who wish to deny Ghanaians the change they so clearly want, understand that Ghanaians aren’t fools.
Have they seen the way ordinary citizens followed the ballot boxes in a convoy, even at that ungodly hour of the morning – the convoy that apparently also included an official vehicle belonging to a minister in the government: who also happens to be the selfsame candidate raising objections to the results of the election at the Weija constituency?
Are they not the very ones in Ghanaian politics who never cease claiming to be true democrats? Have they seen how God has intervened so miraculously in this matter - and ensured that an ordinary Ghanaian, a brave taxi driver, Peter, would overhear two fares talking about an "operation" to switch ballot boxes: and had the presence of mind to follow up thereafter?
The voice of the people is indeed the voice of God - and those who seek to deny it from being expressed openly, do so at their own peril! Dr. Afari Djan, is this true democracy? Please act now, to explain the mysterious carryings-on that occurred in the early hours of this morning, to the voters of Weija!
Hmmm, Ghana - enti yeawiaye paa, enia? Asem ebaba dei ankasa! May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
Monday, 8 December 2008
GHANA’S ELECTORAL COMMISSION MUST LET THE PEOPLE’S VOICE BE HEARD QUICKLY - FOR IT IS THE VOICE OF GOD, INDEED!
I live in the Weija constituency, which is represented by the New Patriotic Party’s (NPP) Ms. Ayorkor Botchway. I recall writing an article in The Independent newspaper, supporting her candidature, when she first attempted to stand for parliament - during the primaries to choose her party’s parliamentary candidate to represent the constituency during the general election that year.
Her rivals then, were using underhand methods, including character assassination, to try and derail her campaign to become her party’s parliamentary candidate - and I wasn’t going to sit unconcerned to let a good female candidate be cheated by dubious characters and known male philanderers. As I write this today, there is deadlock at Weija - where we are told something “fishy” is apparently going on. I hope she is turfed out, this time round, by the Weija electorate - for, she has not done much for our part of McCarthy Hill.
Similar stories too are emerging in other areas of the country. Ayawaso Central is a case in point - where the incumbent MP, the notorious Sheik I. C. Quaye's victory, appears to be questionable. The National Democratic Congress (NDC) candidate there must quickly file a case in the law courts to challenge it - so that violence does not eventually break out in parts of the constituency. Ditto all candidates throughout the country who also feel that they have been cheated out of victory. That is a far better way to proceed as a civilized people - than resorting to violence!
Above all the Electoral Commission of Ghana (EC) must move quickly to release the official results within the stipulated period. The law says that it must ensure that the results of the presidential and parliamentary election are made known to the country, within seventy two hours.
Dr. Afari Djan, who deserves his reputation for delivering credible elections, must ensure that his officials act responsibly - and are impartial in their work. Above all, he must ensure that the long delay we experienced in 2004 is not repeated this time, too - for, it could quickly lead to post-electoral violence.
The two major political parties, the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the NDC, must understand that they do not own Ghana – at any given time in our country, the ruling party in power, is a mere tenant in the Osu Castle, the centre of power in our country: with a full-repair lease. It is for Ghanaians, in whom ultimately sovereignty lies, to decide whether to renew that lease or not.
The ruling party must not seek to steal the election if they have actually lost this particular election. The National Democratic Congress too must be willing to accept the results in good faith if they have actually lost, too – and we most certainly do not need arrogant threats, such as the outrageous press release, couched in such intemperate language, which Koku Anyidaho, the spokesperson of the mild-mannered and peace-loving Professor Mills, is reported to have put out early this morning.
Whatever the outcome is, there is no doubt that Ghanaians have spoken clearly - they are fed up with the incompetents into whose hands they entrusted their nation in 2000: and have ruled Ghana since then, thus far: and if it emerges that the NPP has in fact lost this election, then under no circumstances must they try to trick their way back to power again by some sleight of hand. Ghanaians will never accept such an outcome under any circumstances - and there will be painful consequences, were they to attempt to deny the people’s voice from being heard. Period. A word to the wise...
Hmmm, Ghana – enti yeawieye paa, enia? Asem ebaba debi ankasa! May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
Her rivals then, were using underhand methods, including character assassination, to try and derail her campaign to become her party’s parliamentary candidate - and I wasn’t going to sit unconcerned to let a good female candidate be cheated by dubious characters and known male philanderers. As I write this today, there is deadlock at Weija - where we are told something “fishy” is apparently going on. I hope she is turfed out, this time round, by the Weija electorate - for, she has not done much for our part of McCarthy Hill.
Similar stories too are emerging in other areas of the country. Ayawaso Central is a case in point - where the incumbent MP, the notorious Sheik I. C. Quaye's victory, appears to be questionable. The National Democratic Congress (NDC) candidate there must quickly file a case in the law courts to challenge it - so that violence does not eventually break out in parts of the constituency. Ditto all candidates throughout the country who also feel that they have been cheated out of victory. That is a far better way to proceed as a civilized people - than resorting to violence!
Above all the Electoral Commission of Ghana (EC) must move quickly to release the official results within the stipulated period. The law says that it must ensure that the results of the presidential and parliamentary election are made known to the country, within seventy two hours.
Dr. Afari Djan, who deserves his reputation for delivering credible elections, must ensure that his officials act responsibly - and are impartial in their work. Above all, he must ensure that the long delay we experienced in 2004 is not repeated this time, too - for, it could quickly lead to post-electoral violence.
The two major political parties, the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the NDC, must understand that they do not own Ghana – at any given time in our country, the ruling party in power, is a mere tenant in the Osu Castle, the centre of power in our country: with a full-repair lease. It is for Ghanaians, in whom ultimately sovereignty lies, to decide whether to renew that lease or not.
The ruling party must not seek to steal the election if they have actually lost this particular election. The National Democratic Congress too must be willing to accept the results in good faith if they have actually lost, too – and we most certainly do not need arrogant threats, such as the outrageous press release, couched in such intemperate language, which Koku Anyidaho, the spokesperson of the mild-mannered and peace-loving Professor Mills, is reported to have put out early this morning.
Whatever the outcome is, there is no doubt that Ghanaians have spoken clearly - they are fed up with the incompetents into whose hands they entrusted their nation in 2000: and have ruled Ghana since then, thus far: and if it emerges that the NPP has in fact lost this election, then under no circumstances must they try to trick their way back to power again by some sleight of hand. Ghanaians will never accept such an outcome under any circumstances - and there will be painful consequences, were they to attempt to deny the people’s voice from being heard. Period. A word to the wise...
Hmmm, Ghana – enti yeawieye paa, enia? Asem ebaba debi ankasa! May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
Sunday, 7 December 2008
Re: “Akufo-Addo's Fraudulent Indigenous Capitalism.”
Opanin Kwami Agbodza, with respect, the job of the military in our country, is to protect Ghana's territorial integrity - and that is a full time job: not a part-time one. Period.
Massa, being a Ghanaian soldier is not some Micky-mouse job to which such well-trained professionals can return to, from time to time, as and when they take time off, from the rather onerous task of governing the Ghanaian nation-state - which you appear to advocate they should be allowed to participate in. Incredible!
Secondly, Massa, with respect, are you too not putting yourself into precisely the same kind of ideological straightjacket that the Alan Greenspans of the Western world, whom you mention, put themselves into - with such disastrous consequences: the painful results of which we are all witnesses to, today, as virtually the whole world tips into a recession?
Nothing beats the pragmatic and non-ideological approach to nation-building, Massa: Look what the neo-conservative ideologues of America, led by Dick Cheney and Co., have done to their great country today - because they trapped themselves in a straightjacket in becoming ideologues!
May I also humbly suggest that you please leave Nkrumah to rest in peace? He was, above all, a pragmatist who welcomed honest private businesspeople: as long as they were socially and environmentally responsible - be they foreign or local. Massa, Nkrumah was no ideologue. Period.
Please read his speech at the opening of the GAIP oil refinery in 1963 - in which he praised the Italian investors, as the kind of honest businesspeople Africa could work with to develop itself: to our mutual benefit.
Massa, contrary to what many people think (including many of his present-day followers who are so ill-informed about him!), Nkrumah's idea of socialism, in strictly economic terms, is actually more akin to the economic model that the Chinese communists have been using to grow their country so dramatically.
Please read his letter of 26th February, 1964 to US President Johnson (source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Special Head of State Correspondence File, Ghana - Presidential Correspondence). As usual, that pan-Africanist and political genius, whose equal has not yet been born, was far ahead of his time.
Massa, with respect, I suggest that you leave Nkrumah out of your own unique and (as my neighbour, a precocious boy aged 11, commented!) “rather bizarre ideological construct” - which you obviously think is the political equivalent of a Tsunami that no doubt will soon sweep the world: and make the black race, masters of the universe?
Yes, we must have self-belief as Africans - but is talk about world dominance not as arrogant a notion as that held by the odious white supremacists of this world? Ditto brown and yellow supremacists?
Massa, we are all members of the one human race, are we not? Is that not a more peaceful and positive way to proceed - especially at a time of global climate change: when humankind faces the most perilous phase of our existence on the planet Earth, than all that negative black master-race stuff?
As for your opinions about Nana Akufo-Addo, well, I have nothing to say about that - as I loathe the ethos of selfishness and unfathomable greed that underpins the party he belongs to: and which has ruined our country with its unparalleled incompetence in governing Ghana, these last eight years. However, as a fellow human being, I must confess that I rather like him - as his family and mine have had links going back to the 1920’s.
It’s a pity that he did not beat the disastrous President Kufuor for his party’s candidature for the presidency in 2000 - as in my view he would have done far better than Mr. Kufour has. Sadly, he is eight years too late - and I hope his party is voted out of power, today, Sunday 7th December 2008: as any other party will be far better than this regime: one sadly characterized by amorality, dishonesty and the incredible greed we have all been so horrified by.
As Justice Kpegah so pithily puts it, the ruling regime has come to its wit’s end. Long ago, some of us suggested that instead of making forays into the piranha-infested waters of the capital markets of the West (just so that they could get kickbacks from the fat fees their cronies in our financial services companies were earning for doing absolutely nothing!), it was rather in the long-term interest of our country to raise funds to develop our country with, through a strategic partnership with the Chinese.
We suggested that that could be done by issuing them with our sovereign bonds in exchange for the best- resourced Chinese state-owned companies partnering Ghana's own state-owned companies (all structured to give workers a 10 per cent stake, private Ghanaians 40 per cent, purchased from the stock market, and the Ghanaian nation-state 50 per cent - to ensure maximum productivity!) in joint-ventures to build our infrastructure.
An example of such a partnership, could have been used to get one of the best-resourced of the Chinese construction companies to collaborate with our own State Housing Corporation to fund the building of hundreds of thousands of affordable and good quality houses for renting out to ordinary Ghanaians nationwide, at affordable rental rates - to free them from the clutches of the selfish and greedy landlords of Ghana, permanently! It could have been funded by issuing the Chinese government with our sovereign bonds, in exchange for their funding the project.
If those incompetents had listened to us, we would not be back to square one today - suffering from “debt distress” and flat broke!
The outrage, for some of us, in all this, is that having benefitted from debt relief (although they themselves, like the rest of our political class, neither had the nous or the gumption to fight for debt-relief, whiles some of us were fighting for debt-relief in the 1990’s!), these well-educated morons, have piled up yet more debt to the extent that today it is bleeding our country to death, again.
Incredibly, they have succeeded in landing us in exactly the same difficulties we were experiencing during the NDC-era - when interest payments on our unsustainable external debt, then, was sucking the very lifeblood out of our country. Pity.
Surprising though it might be to some, indigenous Ghanaian businesspeople, actually have a role to play in our development, too – but only those amongst them who are socially and environmentally responsible : who will always pay their taxes, pay their workers a fair wage, and will not pollute our natural environment, under any circumstances.
If our political class were imaginative enough, instead of constantly mouthing platitudes about private sector development, they would make Ghana the nation with the lowest corporate tax rate (9 per cent!) and abolish personal income tax for all who live in Ghana - to grow the real econonmy.
If they followed that by undertaking genuine land reform in Ghana, by taking over all land held in trust for their peope by our traditional rulers and redistributing same to landless peasants in rural Ghana, and keeping the rest in a state-owned land bank to be made available to investors in agriculture, which must be made a tax-fee business for all who engage in it (not only cocoa farmers), we will power ahead in spite of the global recession.
Hmmm, Ghana – eyeasem oo: entiye awiayepaa enia? Asem ebaba debi ankasa! May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
Massa, being a Ghanaian soldier is not some Micky-mouse job to which such well-trained professionals can return to, from time to time, as and when they take time off, from the rather onerous task of governing the Ghanaian nation-state - which you appear to advocate they should be allowed to participate in. Incredible!
Secondly, Massa, with respect, are you too not putting yourself into precisely the same kind of ideological straightjacket that the Alan Greenspans of the Western world, whom you mention, put themselves into - with such disastrous consequences: the painful results of which we are all witnesses to, today, as virtually the whole world tips into a recession?
Nothing beats the pragmatic and non-ideological approach to nation-building, Massa: Look what the neo-conservative ideologues of America, led by Dick Cheney and Co., have done to their great country today - because they trapped themselves in a straightjacket in becoming ideologues!
May I also humbly suggest that you please leave Nkrumah to rest in peace? He was, above all, a pragmatist who welcomed honest private businesspeople: as long as they were socially and environmentally responsible - be they foreign or local. Massa, Nkrumah was no ideologue. Period.
Please read his speech at the opening of the GAIP oil refinery in 1963 - in which he praised the Italian investors, as the kind of honest businesspeople Africa could work with to develop itself: to our mutual benefit.
Massa, contrary to what many people think (including many of his present-day followers who are so ill-informed about him!), Nkrumah's idea of socialism, in strictly economic terms, is actually more akin to the economic model that the Chinese communists have been using to grow their country so dramatically.
Please read his letter of 26th February, 1964 to US President Johnson (source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Special Head of State Correspondence File, Ghana - Presidential Correspondence). As usual, that pan-Africanist and political genius, whose equal has not yet been born, was far ahead of his time.
Massa, with respect, I suggest that you leave Nkrumah out of your own unique and (as my neighbour, a precocious boy aged 11, commented!) “rather bizarre ideological construct” - which you obviously think is the political equivalent of a Tsunami that no doubt will soon sweep the world: and make the black race, masters of the universe?
Yes, we must have self-belief as Africans - but is talk about world dominance not as arrogant a notion as that held by the odious white supremacists of this world? Ditto brown and yellow supremacists?
Massa, we are all members of the one human race, are we not? Is that not a more peaceful and positive way to proceed - especially at a time of global climate change: when humankind faces the most perilous phase of our existence on the planet Earth, than all that negative black master-race stuff?
As for your opinions about Nana Akufo-Addo, well, I have nothing to say about that - as I loathe the ethos of selfishness and unfathomable greed that underpins the party he belongs to: and which has ruined our country with its unparalleled incompetence in governing Ghana, these last eight years. However, as a fellow human being, I must confess that I rather like him - as his family and mine have had links going back to the 1920’s.
It’s a pity that he did not beat the disastrous President Kufuor for his party’s candidature for the presidency in 2000 - as in my view he would have done far better than Mr. Kufour has. Sadly, he is eight years too late - and I hope his party is voted out of power, today, Sunday 7th December 2008: as any other party will be far better than this regime: one sadly characterized by amorality, dishonesty and the incredible greed we have all been so horrified by.
As Justice Kpegah so pithily puts it, the ruling regime has come to its wit’s end. Long ago, some of us suggested that instead of making forays into the piranha-infested waters of the capital markets of the West (just so that they could get kickbacks from the fat fees their cronies in our financial services companies were earning for doing absolutely nothing!), it was rather in the long-term interest of our country to raise funds to develop our country with, through a strategic partnership with the Chinese.
We suggested that that could be done by issuing them with our sovereign bonds in exchange for the best- resourced Chinese state-owned companies partnering Ghana's own state-owned companies (all structured to give workers a 10 per cent stake, private Ghanaians 40 per cent, purchased from the stock market, and the Ghanaian nation-state 50 per cent - to ensure maximum productivity!) in joint-ventures to build our infrastructure.
An example of such a partnership, could have been used to get one of the best-resourced of the Chinese construction companies to collaborate with our own State Housing Corporation to fund the building of hundreds of thousands of affordable and good quality houses for renting out to ordinary Ghanaians nationwide, at affordable rental rates - to free them from the clutches of the selfish and greedy landlords of Ghana, permanently! It could have been funded by issuing the Chinese government with our sovereign bonds, in exchange for their funding the project.
If those incompetents had listened to us, we would not be back to square one today - suffering from “debt distress” and flat broke!
The outrage, for some of us, in all this, is that having benefitted from debt relief (although they themselves, like the rest of our political class, neither had the nous or the gumption to fight for debt-relief, whiles some of us were fighting for debt-relief in the 1990’s!), these well-educated morons, have piled up yet more debt to the extent that today it is bleeding our country to death, again.
Incredibly, they have succeeded in landing us in exactly the same difficulties we were experiencing during the NDC-era - when interest payments on our unsustainable external debt, then, was sucking the very lifeblood out of our country. Pity.
Surprising though it might be to some, indigenous Ghanaian businesspeople, actually have a role to play in our development, too – but only those amongst them who are socially and environmentally responsible : who will always pay their taxes, pay their workers a fair wage, and will not pollute our natural environment, under any circumstances.
If our political class were imaginative enough, instead of constantly mouthing platitudes about private sector development, they would make Ghana the nation with the lowest corporate tax rate (9 per cent!) and abolish personal income tax for all who live in Ghana - to grow the real econonmy.
If they followed that by undertaking genuine land reform in Ghana, by taking over all land held in trust for their peope by our traditional rulers and redistributing same to landless peasants in rural Ghana, and keeping the rest in a state-owned land bank to be made available to investors in agriculture, which must be made a tax-fee business for all who engage in it (not only cocoa farmers), we will power ahead in spite of the global recession.
Hmmm, Ghana – eyeasem oo: entiye awiayepaa enia? Asem ebaba debi ankasa! May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
Saturday, 6 December 2008
Re: "EDIF Revamps Ayensu Starch Factory"
One wonders how many beautiful young women in Ghana, will soon be wooed with "honey-tongued" promises by the unprincipled and greedy philanderers amongst our next rulers - who will doubtless start making rash promises to delectable young things that they will be given the "revamped" Ayensu starch factory on a "platinum platter" : if they agree to become their mistresses?
Will there be a replay many times over, in the coming months, of the many scenes of blatant sexual harassment that a morally upright young woman had to endure - as was the case of the besieged Nana Frema Busia: who some repulsive and power-drunk politician suggested should yield to him and be rewarded with the refurbished Juapong Textiles factory?
Thus, dear reader, have we been governed these last lost eight years, by powerful and amoral men without honour who are completely untrustworthy in their own personal lives - shameless deceivers of women who break their marriage vows on a daily basis: yet have been clever enough to fool Ghanaians into entrusting their nation to them.
Where else on the planet Earth, but Ghana, would a national assembly, assigned by constitutional edict, to have oversight responsibility over the actions of the executive branch of government, pass a law authorizing a sale and purchase agreement involving a state-owned aluminum smelter and a fraudulent company - a special purpose vehicle put together by the agents of a few powerful crooks in the executive arm of government and christened "International Aluminum Partners" to hide their personal interest in a privatization deal, without the whole nation being scandalized: especially when the architects of that fraud have the temerity to ask that their mandate is renewed, yet again?
How did we come to such a sorry pass, dear reader - and become a cowed nation full of such moral cowards: who see no evil, hear no evil and smell no evil, in the face of such massive corruption and moral decadence?
How did we end up becoming a “dog-eat-dog” society full of self-seeking “My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong” myrmidon-types - who wear blinkers permanently and are too thick to think for themselves and too blind to see the depths to which we have sunk as a people? How come the geniuses who dreamt up that ill-conceived folly, the Ayensu Starch Factory, have no sense of shame - for succeeding so spectacularly in messing up a perfectly good project: and have the effrontery to ask Ghanaians to return them to power again?
As a people, are we condemned to continue electing men and women who worship at the cult-of-the-mediocre with such unparalleled fervour - such as the current clueless crowd in power in our country, today?
Are we going to re-elect yet another set of greedy and arrogant tribal supremacists from the same confounded party now in power - who will then also set about spending scarce national resources to humour some megalomaniac traditionalist: who craves to experience some imaginary past glory again and become a king of some Micky-mouse-kingdom, within the unitary Ghanaian nation-state?
Will we have to again endure the nauseating spectacle of the absurd attempt by the next favoured traditionalist of the new era, as he insists on turning a Quixotic and bad dream into reality - at the expense of the unity and stability of the Republic of Ghana?
How long will we tolerate the next mad and bad traditionalist whom our new rulers will also favour - as that dinosaur too seeks to return our country to the feudal era: although this is the 21st century ICT age: when ordinary people wish to belong to a society that aspires to become a meritocracy?
Why, do we all not know that inherited privilege is the worst enemy of any meritocracy? The question, dear reader, is: just what do these confounded, well-educated and amoral imbeciles, think we are - fools?
Oh Ghana - enti yeawiyee paa, enia? Asem ebaba debi ankasa! May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, alwas. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
Will there be a replay many times over, in the coming months, of the many scenes of blatant sexual harassment that a morally upright young woman had to endure - as was the case of the besieged Nana Frema Busia: who some repulsive and power-drunk politician suggested should yield to him and be rewarded with the refurbished Juapong Textiles factory?
Thus, dear reader, have we been governed these last lost eight years, by powerful and amoral men without honour who are completely untrustworthy in their own personal lives - shameless deceivers of women who break their marriage vows on a daily basis: yet have been clever enough to fool Ghanaians into entrusting their nation to them.
Where else on the planet Earth, but Ghana, would a national assembly, assigned by constitutional edict, to have oversight responsibility over the actions of the executive branch of government, pass a law authorizing a sale and purchase agreement involving a state-owned aluminum smelter and a fraudulent company - a special purpose vehicle put together by the agents of a few powerful crooks in the executive arm of government and christened "International Aluminum Partners" to hide their personal interest in a privatization deal, without the whole nation being scandalized: especially when the architects of that fraud have the temerity to ask that their mandate is renewed, yet again?
How did we come to such a sorry pass, dear reader - and become a cowed nation full of such moral cowards: who see no evil, hear no evil and smell no evil, in the face of such massive corruption and moral decadence?
How did we end up becoming a “dog-eat-dog” society full of self-seeking “My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong” myrmidon-types - who wear blinkers permanently and are too thick to think for themselves and too blind to see the depths to which we have sunk as a people? How come the geniuses who dreamt up that ill-conceived folly, the Ayensu Starch Factory, have no sense of shame - for succeeding so spectacularly in messing up a perfectly good project: and have the effrontery to ask Ghanaians to return them to power again?
As a people, are we condemned to continue electing men and women who worship at the cult-of-the-mediocre with such unparalleled fervour - such as the current clueless crowd in power in our country, today?
Are we going to re-elect yet another set of greedy and arrogant tribal supremacists from the same confounded party now in power - who will then also set about spending scarce national resources to humour some megalomaniac traditionalist: who craves to experience some imaginary past glory again and become a king of some Micky-mouse-kingdom, within the unitary Ghanaian nation-state?
Will we have to again endure the nauseating spectacle of the absurd attempt by the next favoured traditionalist of the new era, as he insists on turning a Quixotic and bad dream into reality - at the expense of the unity and stability of the Republic of Ghana?
How long will we tolerate the next mad and bad traditionalist whom our new rulers will also favour - as that dinosaur too seeks to return our country to the feudal era: although this is the 21st century ICT age: when ordinary people wish to belong to a society that aspires to become a meritocracy?
Why, do we all not know that inherited privilege is the worst enemy of any meritocracy? The question, dear reader, is: just what do these confounded, well-educated and amoral imbeciles, think we are - fools?
Oh Ghana - enti yeawiyee paa, enia? Asem ebaba debi ankasa! May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, alwas. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
Thursday, 4 December 2008
OPEN LETTER TO ALL THE CANDIDATES FOR THE SUNDAY DECEMBER 7, 2008 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION!
Gentlemen,
I write to you as a patriotic Ghanaian and Nkrumaist ultra-nationalist – who loves mother Ghana dearly. I wish all of you the very best of luck, this coming Sunday - the day of the presidential election!
Only yesterday, I received an email notifying me of a comment that had been posted on my blog, by an American graduate student, named Beth - who is apparently doing research for a paper on globalization.
The article on which she was commenting, was one I had written in October 2008, appealing to the COCOBOD to start thinking of cocoa farmers as equal partners.
Needless to say, the COCOBOD ignored it completely - as they have done every article I have written to them encouraging them to opt for the path of sustainability (i.e. move the industry in the direction of organic cocoa farming - to ensure its long-term future).
Gentlemen, I am reproducing both the comment of the American graduate student, Beth, and the article (now modified, slightly, for you!) she thought was thought-provoking enough, to take the trouble to comment on - but which was sadly ignored by the COCOBOD - for you.
I do hope it will be good food for thought, for the one amongst you, who is lucky enough to be elected on Sunday, to become Ghana’s next president.
Best wishes,
Kofi.
PS Please find below the article I addressed to the COCOBOD - which is followed by the comment of the American lady, Beth (who has just the kind of profile of the enlightened overseas chocolate consumer, which I mentioned in that article, incidentally!).
“GHANA COCOBOD: PLEASE LISTEN TO THE ORDINARY COCOA FARMERS OF GHANA FOR A CHANGE - FOR, WE AREN'T FOOLS AT ALL!
As an ordinary cocoa farmer, I am constantly amazed at the display of wealth that I see in the car park of the COCOBOD, whenever I visit its headquarters building, Cocoa House, in Accra.
The latest models of luxury Volvos assigned to COCOBOD executives, and the billions spent renovating Cocoa House, are an indication of the massive resources the COCOBOD commands in our country.
As a simple and very ordinary cocoa farmer, who likes to think he is a creative thinker, I believe that the time has now come for a paradigm shift in the role that the COCOBOD plays in the lives of cocoa farmers.
Those who run the COCOBOD must now start listening to us: and to think of us as equal partners - in the important task of moving the industry to a higher and more sustainable level.
My family farms at Akim Abuakwa Juaso - where the community desperately wants to improve its quality of life: by farming in an environmentally sustainable manner that also results in improved farm productivity.
For example, the inhabitants want to build a library for the schoolchildren in the community. They also want to use the biochar retort developed by the renowned sustainability expert, the Swedish gentleman Folke Gunther, to make biochar from waste cocoa husks and other biomass available on our farms.
The use of biochar by Ghana's cocoa farmers will increase yields dramatically - and without all the harmful chemicals (the so-called HITECH mass-spraying initiative: the “chemical-cocktail-lunacy”) that is making health-conscious foreigners shun chocolate made from non-organic cocoa beans - and consequently makes discerning overseas buyers wary of Ghana's cocoa these days.
Ultimately, the community wants to use the American designer Sean K. Barry's biochar plant, to make biochar and produce electric power - and also use the waste gas to provide the town's inhabitants with a refrigerated warehouse.
We do have the ideas - but sadly lack the means to realize our goal of turning Akim Abuakwa Juaso into a model sustainable cocoa-producing village.
We urge the COCOBOD to take a look at the sustainable development model that Sustainable Villages Africa (SVA), the South African sustainable livelihood organisation has developed - and give them a contract to do a pilot project to develop Akim Abuakwa Juaso into a model sustainable village: and replicate same if it is successful, all over the cocoa-growing areas of the enterprise Ghana.
The COCOBOD must also take an interest in the work of the International Biochar Initiative - and empower the Cocoa Research Institute of Ghana (CRIG) to work closely with that body, to leverage the many benefits of biochar, for cocoa farmers in particular, and Ghanaian farmers generally.
Let them listen to a poor cocoa farmer, for once, for a change - for, it is precisely because of our labour, that they get perks like the poshest Volvo models and COCOBOD-paid chauffeurs to drive them around in the lap of luxury; live in luxurious Hollywood-style COCOBOD properties; are paid the local equivalent of fantastic developed-world-level salaries; and work in air-conditioned glory.
Hopefully, none of them will dare accuse poor cocoa farmers who point out all the perks they earn, as being "lazy" and "envious" - as our "Hypocrite-in-Chief" is wont to describe those who point out the glaring disparities in wealth in our nation, today. A word to the wise...
Hmmm, Ghana - eyeasesm oo: asem ebaba debi ankasa! May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana! “
Beth's comment: “Yes! I love what you have to say and I love your vision for your community. I am just an American grad student, studying the cocoa industry for a paper on globalization. I came across your blog and am so encouraged by your thoughts. Thank you!"
I write to you as a patriotic Ghanaian and Nkrumaist ultra-nationalist – who loves mother Ghana dearly. I wish all of you the very best of luck, this coming Sunday - the day of the presidential election!
Only yesterday, I received an email notifying me of a comment that had been posted on my blog, by an American graduate student, named Beth - who is apparently doing research for a paper on globalization.
The article on which she was commenting, was one I had written in October 2008, appealing to the COCOBOD to start thinking of cocoa farmers as equal partners.
Needless to say, the COCOBOD ignored it completely - as they have done every article I have written to them encouraging them to opt for the path of sustainability (i.e. move the industry in the direction of organic cocoa farming - to ensure its long-term future).
Gentlemen, I am reproducing both the comment of the American graduate student, Beth, and the article (now modified, slightly, for you!) she thought was thought-provoking enough, to take the trouble to comment on - but which was sadly ignored by the COCOBOD - for you.
I do hope it will be good food for thought, for the one amongst you, who is lucky enough to be elected on Sunday, to become Ghana’s next president.
Best wishes,
Kofi.
PS Please find below the article I addressed to the COCOBOD - which is followed by the comment of the American lady, Beth (who has just the kind of profile of the enlightened overseas chocolate consumer, which I mentioned in that article, incidentally!).
“GHANA COCOBOD: PLEASE LISTEN TO THE ORDINARY COCOA FARMERS OF GHANA FOR A CHANGE - FOR, WE AREN'T FOOLS AT ALL!
As an ordinary cocoa farmer, I am constantly amazed at the display of wealth that I see in the car park of the COCOBOD, whenever I visit its headquarters building, Cocoa House, in Accra.
The latest models of luxury Volvos assigned to COCOBOD executives, and the billions spent renovating Cocoa House, are an indication of the massive resources the COCOBOD commands in our country.
As a simple and very ordinary cocoa farmer, who likes to think he is a creative thinker, I believe that the time has now come for a paradigm shift in the role that the COCOBOD plays in the lives of cocoa farmers.
Those who run the COCOBOD must now start listening to us: and to think of us as equal partners - in the important task of moving the industry to a higher and more sustainable level.
My family farms at Akim Abuakwa Juaso - where the community desperately wants to improve its quality of life: by farming in an environmentally sustainable manner that also results in improved farm productivity.
For example, the inhabitants want to build a library for the schoolchildren in the community. They also want to use the biochar retort developed by the renowned sustainability expert, the Swedish gentleman Folke Gunther, to make biochar from waste cocoa husks and other biomass available on our farms.
The use of biochar by Ghana's cocoa farmers will increase yields dramatically - and without all the harmful chemicals (the so-called HITECH mass-spraying initiative: the “chemical-cocktail-lunacy”) that is making health-conscious foreigners shun chocolate made from non-organic cocoa beans - and consequently makes discerning overseas buyers wary of Ghana's cocoa these days.
Ultimately, the community wants to use the American designer Sean K. Barry's biochar plant, to make biochar and produce electric power - and also use the waste gas to provide the town's inhabitants with a refrigerated warehouse.
We do have the ideas - but sadly lack the means to realize our goal of turning Akim Abuakwa Juaso into a model sustainable cocoa-producing village.
We urge the COCOBOD to take a look at the sustainable development model that Sustainable Villages Africa (SVA), the South African sustainable livelihood organisation has developed - and give them a contract to do a pilot project to develop Akim Abuakwa Juaso into a model sustainable village: and replicate same if it is successful, all over the cocoa-growing areas of the enterprise Ghana.
The COCOBOD must also take an interest in the work of the International Biochar Initiative - and empower the Cocoa Research Institute of Ghana (CRIG) to work closely with that body, to leverage the many benefits of biochar, for cocoa farmers in particular, and Ghanaian farmers generally.
Let them listen to a poor cocoa farmer, for once, for a change - for, it is precisely because of our labour, that they get perks like the poshest Volvo models and COCOBOD-paid chauffeurs to drive them around in the lap of luxury; live in luxurious Hollywood-style COCOBOD properties; are paid the local equivalent of fantastic developed-world-level salaries; and work in air-conditioned glory.
Hopefully, none of them will dare accuse poor cocoa farmers who point out all the perks they earn, as being "lazy" and "envious" - as our "Hypocrite-in-Chief" is wont to describe those who point out the glaring disparities in wealth in our nation, today. A word to the wise...
Hmmm, Ghana - eyeasesm oo: asem ebaba debi ankasa! May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana! “
Beth's comment: “Yes! I love what you have to say and I love your vision for your community. I am just an American grad student, studying the cocoa industry for a paper on globalization. I came across your blog and am so encouraged by your thoughts. Thank you!"
WOULD GHANA'S CYNICS BE RIGHT IN SAYING THAT THAT GENIUS JAKE OBETSEBI-LAMPTEY WAS PULLING A FAST ONE ON GHANAIANS, PERHAPS?
Quote: "Mr. Lamptey in an earlier interview defended his continued stay in the residence despite public criticisms and promised to vacate “if I am done with what I am doing.”" End of Joy FM quotation.
My reaction: I wonder just what the most irreverent of Ghana's many cynics will say about this gem! Would they be right, for example, if they expressed their sense of outrage at this rather shocking revelation - by saying that Jake is a perfect example of the classic African politician : in politics to feather his own nest, whiles busy going through the ever-tedious motions of nation-building, in tandem with taking his personal net worth into the stratosphere, by stealth?
Would they, dear reader, also be right in saying that that genius, Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey, knew exactly what he was doing when he made that statement - engaging in a little influence-peddling; ditto being a dissimulator par excellence; pulling wool over the eyes of the gullible people he and his crowd have fooled so successfully for eight long and painful years : and all that, as he quietly went about the rather clever business of fast-tracking his application to the Chief Registrar of Lands, Mrs. Rebecca Sittie, for a land title certificate, to seal his purchase of that plum state property, perhaps?
What else have the cleverest members of this confounded regime, which contains some of the greediest and most dishonest politicians that Ghanaians have ever had the misfortune of voluntarily electing into office, sold to themselves - as they asset-strip Ghana, in the name of their warped neo-liberal ideology championed by Dick Cheney and Co.: and now largely discredited as similar greed elsewhere has more or less destroyed the world’s financial system?
In the light of such shenanigans, would it not be in our nation’s interest, to turf this incompetent and greedy lot out of power: just to discover the extent of the grand larceny that has gone on in the eight years of positive change for the personal circumstances of the too-clever-by-half Kufuor Mafioso gang?
Even if the NPP regime has succeeded in turning Ghana into the most prosperous nation-state on the face of the planet Earth (which they most certainly haven’t – although some of them have certainly succeeded in turning themselves into some of the world’s most prosperous elected politicians, ever!), what have ordinary Ghanaian got to lose : if we throw them out of power, just to send a clear message to all our politicians (across the spectrum!) that no political party voted into office freely by Ghanaians, can take ordinary people in this country for granted, with such impunity, and get away with it successfully for so long, ever again?
After all, what have ordinary people, who are principled, independent-minded and not part of that large moronic army of "My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong" myrmidon-types got to lose - since they are not amongst those honey-tongued, smooth operators now busy lining up to be appointed as ambassadors; members of the boards of state-owned entities; given juicy contracts; sold expensive government-owned luxury vehicles for peanuts; offered state-owned companies like Juapong Textiles for zilch on a platinum platter in exchange for hoped-for never-ending orgies with repulsive politicians, a la Nana Frema Busia; made members of the president’s entourage on some of the many useless foreign trips our leaders make in order to pile up per diems at the people’s expense; given a spot in the various consortia arranging those lunatic foreign loans and bond issues, in order to earn huge fees for virtually doing no work at all; etc. etc.?
Hmmm, Ghana - eyeasem oo: enti yeawiaye paa, enia? Asem ebaba debi ankasa! Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
My reaction: I wonder just what the most irreverent of Ghana's many cynics will say about this gem! Would they be right, for example, if they expressed their sense of outrage at this rather shocking revelation - by saying that Jake is a perfect example of the classic African politician : in politics to feather his own nest, whiles busy going through the ever-tedious motions of nation-building, in tandem with taking his personal net worth into the stratosphere, by stealth?
Would they, dear reader, also be right in saying that that genius, Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey, knew exactly what he was doing when he made that statement - engaging in a little influence-peddling; ditto being a dissimulator par excellence; pulling wool over the eyes of the gullible people he and his crowd have fooled so successfully for eight long and painful years : and all that, as he quietly went about the rather clever business of fast-tracking his application to the Chief Registrar of Lands, Mrs. Rebecca Sittie, for a land title certificate, to seal his purchase of that plum state property, perhaps?
What else have the cleverest members of this confounded regime, which contains some of the greediest and most dishonest politicians that Ghanaians have ever had the misfortune of voluntarily electing into office, sold to themselves - as they asset-strip Ghana, in the name of their warped neo-liberal ideology championed by Dick Cheney and Co.: and now largely discredited as similar greed elsewhere has more or less destroyed the world’s financial system?
In the light of such shenanigans, would it not be in our nation’s interest, to turf this incompetent and greedy lot out of power: just to discover the extent of the grand larceny that has gone on in the eight years of positive change for the personal circumstances of the too-clever-by-half Kufuor Mafioso gang?
Even if the NPP regime has succeeded in turning Ghana into the most prosperous nation-state on the face of the planet Earth (which they most certainly haven’t – although some of them have certainly succeeded in turning themselves into some of the world’s most prosperous elected politicians, ever!), what have ordinary Ghanaian got to lose : if we throw them out of power, just to send a clear message to all our politicians (across the spectrum!) that no political party voted into office freely by Ghanaians, can take ordinary people in this country for granted, with such impunity, and get away with it successfully for so long, ever again?
After all, what have ordinary people, who are principled, independent-minded and not part of that large moronic army of "My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong" myrmidon-types got to lose - since they are not amongst those honey-tongued, smooth operators now busy lining up to be appointed as ambassadors; members of the boards of state-owned entities; given juicy contracts; sold expensive government-owned luxury vehicles for peanuts; offered state-owned companies like Juapong Textiles for zilch on a platinum platter in exchange for hoped-for never-ending orgies with repulsive politicians, a la Nana Frema Busia; made members of the president’s entourage on some of the many useless foreign trips our leaders make in order to pile up per diems at the people’s expense; given a spot in the various consortia arranging those lunatic foreign loans and bond issues, in order to earn huge fees for virtually doing no work at all; etc. etc.?
Hmmm, Ghana - eyeasem oo: enti yeawiaye paa, enia? Asem ebaba debi ankasa! Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
Tuesday, 2 December 2008
Re: “Busia’s Daughter’s Open Petition To President Kufour"
This Kafkaesque tragedy, illustrates perfectly, and neatly sums up, all that is wrong with Ghanaian society, today: the unfortunate fact that we allow ourselves to be governed largely by ruthless men and women, who are completely amoral - and are untrustworthy individuals in their own private lives: Yet, as a people, close our eyes to that unsavoury and intolerable situation.
Why, then, dear reader, as a consequence, will endemic corruption not thrive, in such a nation-state - one full of such moral cowards? Should we then be surprised that we have evolved into a society in which people prosper only if they close their eyes to the ills of society?
Where are the many well-heeled middle class women’s-advocacy activists, who have prospered so mightily, over the years, from the zillions of dollars in grants, which they have made from the growth industry that speaking up publicly, on behalf of the millions of miserable, desperately poor and abused women in Ghana (whom they actually do so little for in reality!), represents, when the are needed most - in this particular case, in that of the blatant abuse of the human rights, of a hard-working and patriotic Ghanaian woman, like Nana Frema Busia?
Have they nearly all not ran for cover, thus far, in this shabby affair? Why, are they not aware that clever dictators have, over the years, labeled the most prominent dissidents in their nations’ as “mad” - in order to rid themselves of such persistent ‘nuisances’ and make them irrelevant politically through that clever ruse?
Did Stalin not fill whole Gulags with such poor souls during his tyranny? Have we become a Stalinist state too - in addition to the monstrosity of our graduating into a kleptocratic oligarchy of the very worst sort, under our “Hypocrite-In-Chief”?
Yes, sycophancy has become an effective means to an end, today, in our homeland Ghana - used by countless numbers of "My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong" myrmidon-types, throughout our country, to feather their own nests: at society’s expense.
Should there be any surprise, then, that today vast tracts of publicly-owned land that ought to revert to their original owners, as first-option buyers (if the purpose for which those lands were originally acquired by the state no longer hold good) now end up being acquired by the very people entrusted with those selfsame parcels of land: who are supposed to be good and honest stewards of our nation's assets?
Unlike most Ghanaian journalists, I had the misfortune of growing up in homes that were often visited by some of the major political figures of the immediate post-Nkrumah era regimes. Thus, I often overheard dinner table conversations and telephone conversations involving some of the major figures of history from that era - and also often had access to, and read, many secret cabinet files: as a precocious young teenager, with a keen interest in the current affairs of that time.
I was often appalled by the amoral ways of many of those individuals - and even at that tender age, lost my respect for them: because of the many shocking things I often overheard. It is because of the many outrageous and unsavoury things I often overhead during that period of my life that I grew up with such a loathing for elitism, tribalism and politics that lacks principle.
Ghana's tragedy, is that at precisely the point when our nation had the unique opportunity to set new and higher standards of morality in our public life, we had the misfortune of electing a regime that in reality was dominated by a few incredibly ruthless and morally depraved individuals, well-versed in the art and science of hypocrisy, who had an iron grip on the political party coming to power, in January 2001.
Good God, dear reader, how prescient Dr Asemfofro, who was beaten thoroughly (after the event, i.e.!) for daring to ask publicly, at that infamous Sunyani press conference, if the president's conscience was clear: as far as the issue of corruption was concerned. He did predict just this sort of end for President Kufuor's regime, if indeed it was corrupt, did he not? Pity.
The idea that a decent and sane woman like Nana Frema Busia, who is brave and principled enough to stand up to some of the most powerful individuals in our country (who are also amoral and ruthless enough to want her dead, ideally, but content to label a sane and highly intelligent woman, mad, to achieve the same end), should be so completely at the mercy of her tormentors, is intolerable to honest and decent Ghanaians who are independent-minded patriots, who love mother Ghana.
How can it be that these morally cowardly individuals, who really ought to apologize to her and to do right by her, can put this brave and principled young woman through such a torturous experience - merely so that the faces of such despicable men and women: who, when it comes down to it, are actually nothing more than a gang of common criminals lucky enough to have been given the opportunity to govern a nation like ours, will be saved - and their evil deeds covered up successfully?
Is it any wonder, then, that these disreputable incompetents have, over the eight years they have been in power, worked so hard to appropriate the wealth of the country that Ghanaians entrusted to them in December 2000, with such impunity?
The real tragedy for our country is that Nana Frema Busia's torturers might successfully lie and trick their way back to power, yet again - and continue worshiping at the "cult-of-the-mediocre" with even more fervour: to the detriment of our dear nation Ghana and its much-abused people. Pity.
Hmmm, Ghana - eyeasem oo: enti yeawiaye paa, enia? Asem ebaba debi ankasa! May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
Why, then, dear reader, as a consequence, will endemic corruption not thrive, in such a nation-state - one full of such moral cowards? Should we then be surprised that we have evolved into a society in which people prosper only if they close their eyes to the ills of society?
Where are the many well-heeled middle class women’s-advocacy activists, who have prospered so mightily, over the years, from the zillions of dollars in grants, which they have made from the growth industry that speaking up publicly, on behalf of the millions of miserable, desperately poor and abused women in Ghana (whom they actually do so little for in reality!), represents, when the are needed most - in this particular case, in that of the blatant abuse of the human rights, of a hard-working and patriotic Ghanaian woman, like Nana Frema Busia?
Have they nearly all not ran for cover, thus far, in this shabby affair? Why, are they not aware that clever dictators have, over the years, labeled the most prominent dissidents in their nations’ as “mad” - in order to rid themselves of such persistent ‘nuisances’ and make them irrelevant politically through that clever ruse?
Did Stalin not fill whole Gulags with such poor souls during his tyranny? Have we become a Stalinist state too - in addition to the monstrosity of our graduating into a kleptocratic oligarchy of the very worst sort, under our “Hypocrite-In-Chief”?
Yes, sycophancy has become an effective means to an end, today, in our homeland Ghana - used by countless numbers of "My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong" myrmidon-types, throughout our country, to feather their own nests: at society’s expense.
Should there be any surprise, then, that today vast tracts of publicly-owned land that ought to revert to their original owners, as first-option buyers (if the purpose for which those lands were originally acquired by the state no longer hold good) now end up being acquired by the very people entrusted with those selfsame parcels of land: who are supposed to be good and honest stewards of our nation's assets?
Unlike most Ghanaian journalists, I had the misfortune of growing up in homes that were often visited by some of the major political figures of the immediate post-Nkrumah era regimes. Thus, I often overheard dinner table conversations and telephone conversations involving some of the major figures of history from that era - and also often had access to, and read, many secret cabinet files: as a precocious young teenager, with a keen interest in the current affairs of that time.
I was often appalled by the amoral ways of many of those individuals - and even at that tender age, lost my respect for them: because of the many shocking things I often overheard. It is because of the many outrageous and unsavoury things I often overhead during that period of my life that I grew up with such a loathing for elitism, tribalism and politics that lacks principle.
Ghana's tragedy, is that at precisely the point when our nation had the unique opportunity to set new and higher standards of morality in our public life, we had the misfortune of electing a regime that in reality was dominated by a few incredibly ruthless and morally depraved individuals, well-versed in the art and science of hypocrisy, who had an iron grip on the political party coming to power, in January 2001.
Good God, dear reader, how prescient Dr Asemfofro, who was beaten thoroughly (after the event, i.e.!) for daring to ask publicly, at that infamous Sunyani press conference, if the president's conscience was clear: as far as the issue of corruption was concerned. He did predict just this sort of end for President Kufuor's regime, if indeed it was corrupt, did he not? Pity.
The idea that a decent and sane woman like Nana Frema Busia, who is brave and principled enough to stand up to some of the most powerful individuals in our country (who are also amoral and ruthless enough to want her dead, ideally, but content to label a sane and highly intelligent woman, mad, to achieve the same end), should be so completely at the mercy of her tormentors, is intolerable to honest and decent Ghanaians who are independent-minded patriots, who love mother Ghana.
How can it be that these morally cowardly individuals, who really ought to apologize to her and to do right by her, can put this brave and principled young woman through such a torturous experience - merely so that the faces of such despicable men and women: who, when it comes down to it, are actually nothing more than a gang of common criminals lucky enough to have been given the opportunity to govern a nation like ours, will be saved - and their evil deeds covered up successfully?
Is it any wonder, then, that these disreputable incompetents have, over the eight years they have been in power, worked so hard to appropriate the wealth of the country that Ghanaians entrusted to them in December 2000, with such impunity?
The real tragedy for our country is that Nana Frema Busia's torturers might successfully lie and trick their way back to power, yet again - and continue worshiping at the "cult-of-the-mediocre" with even more fervour: to the detriment of our dear nation Ghana and its much-abused people. Pity.
Hmmm, Ghana - eyeasem oo: enti yeawiaye paa, enia? Asem ebaba debi ankasa! May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
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