The recent meeting in Tanzania of finance ministers from Africa, which was sponsored by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), generated a great deal of media coverage across the continent, and the rest of the world. Many Africans were hoping that some new thinking about the economic future of our continent would emerge from that meeting.
Critics of the IMF and World Bank, say that the global recession appears to be seen by the two multi-lateral organisations, as a golden opportunity to get African nations under their sway, yet again. However, it is important that those nations that do fall into the arms of the two institutions resist some of the “conditionalities” that are attached to their loans: such as selling profit-making state-owned assets – whiles many Western nations are busy pumping public cash into private companies in partial-nationalizations.
Clearly, the two multilateral institutions offer nations like Ghana a better alternative to our nation’s daft and shortsighted forays into the piranha-infested capital markets of the (pre-recession) Western world. Those senseless and expensive forays only benefitted the fat-cats in our financial services sector, and the crooks amongst our previous rulers.
Incidentally, we could have borrowed the same amounts from China for far less, than issuing sovereign bonds at idiotic rates of interest to canny Western investors – just to benefit the craving for kickbacks by the powerful crooks in the previous regime: whose cronies in our financial services sector earned huge fees from the issuance of those bonds for doing absolutely nothing.
Perhaps the time has come for the new government to find out precisely who and who bought those Ghanaian sovereign bonds that were issued abroad – and to make sure that there is no “Kweku-Ananse” money-laundering, of the (to quote some of Ghana’s cynics) “Eland-NIB-Ali-Baba-magic” variety, which sees our nation paying zillions of dollars in regular interest payments to legal fronts for international crooks.
But I digress. It is important that in dealing with the World Bank and the IMF, Ghana makes it absolutely clear to both institutions that it cannot, and will not, sell profit-making state-owned assets in our financial services sector, under any circumstances – as such a retrograde step is untenable and would be politically suicidal for the National Democratic Congress (NDC) regime of President Mills.
For those Ghanaians who think creatively, far from it being a gloomy period, this current global recession offers nations like Ghana a rare opportunity to take a fresh look at their developmental processes. For example, why should our present leaders repeat the same mistake today, which African leaders made in the 1960’s, when they failed to seize the opportunity to buy into Nkrumah’s vision of an African common-market – because it came together with what they saw as his near-impossible dream of a continental government for a United States of Africa?
We need not seek a continental government just yet, but if we had an African common market today, dear reader, would factories across Africa not be able to add value to the continent’s many natural resources and successfully sell them across Africa? Would that not have kept the recession at bay somewhat, today – and saved those now being thrown out of work, as export orders from outside the continent shrink and dry up: thus leading to the closure of many factories?
Ghana’s leaders must seize the opportunity that the existing goodwill for Nkrumah’s Ghana all over the Africa of today, offers them, and act quickly to strike bilateral free-trade deals with all the nations of Africa – and leverage that goodwill to spread the footprint of corporate Ghana (both state-owned and private), across Africa. Would our many industries not be able to take advantage of the economies of scale offered by expanded markets to compete effectively all over Africa, and take on more workers in the process?
Above all, our leaders must stop begging visiting foreign dignitaries “to come to our aid” in order to improve our agricultural sector. They must rather think creatively themselves to improve the productivity of our agricultural sector. At a time of global climate change, we need not waste precious time reinventing the wheel to improve our agricultural sector.
Ghana’s leaders must simply be creative and take a good look at the developmental-template offered by the South African sustainable livelihoods organisation, Sustainable Villages Africa (SVA). If they have the political will to do so, they can replicate that developmental-model here with SVA’s help to transform rural Ghana into thriving farming areas, with prosperous rural populations – in public private partnerships (PPP) between district assemblies, SVA, and farmer-groups.
Tallow Oil is apparently building a mini oil refinery in Uganda. Since China still regards Ghana as a special friend in Africa, because of the goodwill that remains from Nkrumah’s close friendship with Chinese leaders, we must take advantage of that goodwill to help us grow the energy sector of our economy rapidly: the global recession notwithstanding.
What stops us from approaching China and proposing that we issue sovereign bonds to them in exchange for their funding the building of oil refineries and natural gas plants here, for example? Will the two nations not mutually benefit if they could collaborate to build such plants – to export petroleum products to Africa and beyond: in joint-ventures between the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) and the best-resourced of China’s state-owned energy companies?
Rather than twiddle their fingers fretting about the lack of credit worldwide, our leaders must see this recession as an opportunity to strengthen our ties with China. If they did that, could we not leverage our relationship with China to empower the state-owned housing delivery companies in Ghana, to partner their Chinese equivalents: to build hundreds of thousands of good quality affordable housing using the PPP model in all the districts in Ghana?
Could those houses not be rented out by the district assemblies to Ghanaians who cannot afford to own their own homes, presently? Will the building of those affordable houses not create scores of jobs nationwide, as well as provide all the district assemblies in Ghana with a new and sustainable revenue-source: their own housing-stock?
At a time of global climate-change, rather than begging high government officials from France and Germany to “come to our aid,” why do our leaders not ask those foreign dignitaries to link up the Forestry Division of the Forestry Commission (as well as private Ghanaian tree-planting companies accessing the new teak-growing initiative being started by the government), with corporate clients of carbon-offsetting organisations in Germany and France, wishing to fund tree-growing projects overseas, to neutralize some of their corporate carbon-footprint?
Will such collaboration not provide money to Ghana’s teak growers and provide our nation with precious foreign exchange too – thus improving Ghana’s GDP growth rates in a sustainable and green fashion? Is that not a far more sensible way to proceed, than resorting to the kind of humiliating begging-bowl diplomacy we see some of our leaders engaging in ad nauseam, on our television screens? Ditto exploring the possibility of designating the teak-growing initiative as projects under Ghana’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), in any successor climate-change agreement, to the Kyoto treaty?
The change promised by the NDC isn’t going to happen if our new leaders don’t think creatively and opt to stick to conventional economic thinking, instead – particularly at a time when the world is in the grip of such a severe recession. This is precisely the time to think creatively and lower tax rates for corporate Ghana, by bringing it down to less than 10 per cent, whiles passing tough new laws to deal with tax evaders. That will automatically widen the tax net and encourage payment. Will that not immediately put our nation on the world map – as the nation with the lowest corporate tax rate in the world? And will that not spur some investment here even at a difficult time like this?
Whiles such a review of the tax regime is seen to by the new NDC regime, perhaps the new government could also put money directly into the pockets of all Ghanaian workers and encourage them to work even harder – by being bold and finally abolishing personal income-tax in our country (fulfilling a campaign promise without stoking up inflation!). Surely, that will make Ghana a truly attractive gateway to Africa, and make this the destination of choice for all wishing to do business in Africa?
And if they permit all Ghanaian workers to retire on their salaries, as well as provide a social pension to all Ghanaians over 65, regardless of whether they contributed to one or not, will that not help create a fairer and more civilized society in Ghana? Is that not infinitely better than widening the gap between the well-off and the rest of society, by paying huge sums in ex-gratia payments to over-pampered politicians – most of whom were in reality corrupt and self-seeking individuals who never toiled to improve the quality of life of ordinary Ghanaians whiles in office: although showered with perks worth zillions during their tenure?
I share the view of those who posit that the less ”awoof” money we have available for politicians to waste (in ostentatious lifestyles), and rogue public servants to steal, the better off our nation will be. In my humble opinion, having less money ‘sloshing’ about the system, is the perfect way to have “lean government” – and end the ruthless dog-eat-dog kleptocracy, which our democracy has sadly evolved into. A word to the wise…
Sunday, 22 March 2009
Ghana Must Not Support The AU's Position On Bashir's ICC Indictment
Like the murderous President Saddam Hussein before him, the dictator of Sudan, President Omar Bashir, can also muster a large crowd of placard-bearing sycophants to publicly demonstrate their support for him, at any time he deems it convenient to show the world that he has the backing of the citizens of the police-state he presides over. In the end, Omar Bashir, like Saddam Hussein, will also pay for his crimes against humanity – as sure as day follows night.
Those who take part in those public demonstrations organized by the Sudanese government, have no choice when they are ordered to hit the streets in Omar Bashir’s support – for they live under a ruthless and brutal tyranny. However, since Ghana is not a vassal of Sudan, the members of the government of Ghana, particularly its foreign minister, do not have to live in fear of President Bashir.
One does not know the reason for the recent statement attributed to Ghana‘s foreign minister, Alhaji Mohammed Mumuni, that Ghana supports the position of the African Union (AU), on the issue of the indictment of President Bashir, by the International Criminal Court (ICC). However, it is important that on all such occasions he follows the dictum: “Silence is golden.” Ghana is a civilized nation that must never give succour to regimes that abuse the human rights of their citizens – no matter where in the globe they are to be found.
Alhaji Mohammed Mumuni would have been far wiser refraining from answering any question requiring a direct answer on the subject – and should have rather taken advantage of the opportunity offered by the interview, to stress the importance that Ghana attaches to the international community finding an outcome to the Darfur tragedy, which sees an immediate halt to the suffering of the people of Darfur. That must be Ghana’s position.
There are no overriding strategic reasons why Ghana ought to feel that it has an obligation to remain on friendly terms with the Sudanese regime. Sudan, after all, is an AU member that deliberately destabilizes its neighbour Uganda, so as to discourage it from supporting the people of Southern Sudan – to whom Bashir and Co. have made promises they have no intention of keeping (a ruse that has enabled them end the civil war in Southern Sudan more or less on their terms: and ensured that the oil in that region of Sudan is exploited largely for Khartoum’s benefit).
Why, does Ghana’s foreign minister not know that the war in Southern Sudan will eventually be restarted – as soon as the Southern Sudanese vote to secede from Khartoum in the scheduled independence referendum? Will he and the regime he represents support Omar Bashir and Co. then, too? It is important that in all situations where there are widespread abuses of the human rights of our fellow Africans by their governments, the government of Nkrumah’s Ghana, strongly condemns all such human rights abuses.
We must gain that reputation in Africa – just as Botswana has gained a reputation as nation that has a moral foreign policy that makes them speak out boldly against injustice by oppressive regimes in their part of Africa. What is going on in Western Sudan cannot be justified under any circumstances. It is an affront to all black Africans – as the regime of Omar Bashir is carrying out a policy of ethnic-cleansing in Darfur solely for racist reasons.
The irony, is that although Omar Bashir and Co. are regarded as black African Muslims in the Arab world, they themselves consider themselves as ”Arabs” and regard the blacks in Darfur and elsewhere in Sudan, as inferior beings, on account of their darker hues. That is intolerable, and the nation Nkrumah founded must never tolerate racial prejudice on African soil – particularly prejudice that leads to the carrying out of a pogrom anywhere in the continent: to wipe out its black African inhabitants.
What benefit is there in Ghana ruining its international reputation so needlessly, by supporting the untenable position of the AU – and giving comfort to a mass-murderer who is busy killing our fellow black Africans? Do we not pride ourselves as a democratic nation with solid pan-Africanist credentials, whose citizens live in a free society, in which the rule of law prevails – and in which sovereignty resides in the people? Alhaji Mohammed Mumuni, and the regime he is such a prominent member of, must understand clearly, that Ghanaians did not vote them into office to give succour to African dictators, who brutalize and kill scores of their own people.
Yes, it may very well be true that Ghana’s politicians can always rely on the support of the “My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong” myrmidon-types, who wear blinkers permanently and are too blind to see what is wrong in our country – and too thick to think independently. Sadly, it is their blind support that eventually ruins political parties when they finally attain power. Our political class must always remember that it is the small minority of discerning Ghanaians, those independent and fair-minded Ghanaians (often referred to by the media as “floating voters”), whose opinions result in regime-change in Ghanaian elections, today.
President Mills and the regime he leads must know that a majority of those independent-minded Ghanaians are outraged to hear Ghana’s foreign minister reiterating the AU’s disgraceful position on the indictment by the ICC of Sudan’s President Omar Bashir. It is shameful that a nation such as Ghana supports an African regime that looks down on our fellow Africans and is also busy carrying out ethnic-cleansing to rid Darfur of its black African inhabitants (so that their land is usurped by their so-called ”Arab” neighbours).
Speaking as an independent-minded Ghanaian, in my view, making common cause with Omar Bashir, will definitely make me refrain from voting for President Mills’ regime in 2012 – even if it succeeds in turning Ghana into paradise by then. For, in supporting the AU’s disgraceful position, they would have helped an African ruler, who is guilty of the mass-murder of fellow Africans. On the issue of the indictment of President Omar Bashir by the ICC, the Mills administration had better revise its notes very quickly – for it is a non-negotiable issue over which a majority of Ghana’s “floating-voters” will never compromise. A word to the wise…
Those who take part in those public demonstrations organized by the Sudanese government, have no choice when they are ordered to hit the streets in Omar Bashir’s support – for they live under a ruthless and brutal tyranny. However, since Ghana is not a vassal of Sudan, the members of the government of Ghana, particularly its foreign minister, do not have to live in fear of President Bashir.
One does not know the reason for the recent statement attributed to Ghana‘s foreign minister, Alhaji Mohammed Mumuni, that Ghana supports the position of the African Union (AU), on the issue of the indictment of President Bashir, by the International Criminal Court (ICC). However, it is important that on all such occasions he follows the dictum: “Silence is golden.” Ghana is a civilized nation that must never give succour to regimes that abuse the human rights of their citizens – no matter where in the globe they are to be found.
Alhaji Mohammed Mumuni would have been far wiser refraining from answering any question requiring a direct answer on the subject – and should have rather taken advantage of the opportunity offered by the interview, to stress the importance that Ghana attaches to the international community finding an outcome to the Darfur tragedy, which sees an immediate halt to the suffering of the people of Darfur. That must be Ghana’s position.
There are no overriding strategic reasons why Ghana ought to feel that it has an obligation to remain on friendly terms with the Sudanese regime. Sudan, after all, is an AU member that deliberately destabilizes its neighbour Uganda, so as to discourage it from supporting the people of Southern Sudan – to whom Bashir and Co. have made promises they have no intention of keeping (a ruse that has enabled them end the civil war in Southern Sudan more or less on their terms: and ensured that the oil in that region of Sudan is exploited largely for Khartoum’s benefit).
Why, does Ghana’s foreign minister not know that the war in Southern Sudan will eventually be restarted – as soon as the Southern Sudanese vote to secede from Khartoum in the scheduled independence referendum? Will he and the regime he represents support Omar Bashir and Co. then, too? It is important that in all situations where there are widespread abuses of the human rights of our fellow Africans by their governments, the government of Nkrumah’s Ghana, strongly condemns all such human rights abuses.
We must gain that reputation in Africa – just as Botswana has gained a reputation as nation that has a moral foreign policy that makes them speak out boldly against injustice by oppressive regimes in their part of Africa. What is going on in Western Sudan cannot be justified under any circumstances. It is an affront to all black Africans – as the regime of Omar Bashir is carrying out a policy of ethnic-cleansing in Darfur solely for racist reasons.
The irony, is that although Omar Bashir and Co. are regarded as black African Muslims in the Arab world, they themselves consider themselves as ”Arabs” and regard the blacks in Darfur and elsewhere in Sudan, as inferior beings, on account of their darker hues. That is intolerable, and the nation Nkrumah founded must never tolerate racial prejudice on African soil – particularly prejudice that leads to the carrying out of a pogrom anywhere in the continent: to wipe out its black African inhabitants.
What benefit is there in Ghana ruining its international reputation so needlessly, by supporting the untenable position of the AU – and giving comfort to a mass-murderer who is busy killing our fellow black Africans? Do we not pride ourselves as a democratic nation with solid pan-Africanist credentials, whose citizens live in a free society, in which the rule of law prevails – and in which sovereignty resides in the people? Alhaji Mohammed Mumuni, and the regime he is such a prominent member of, must understand clearly, that Ghanaians did not vote them into office to give succour to African dictators, who brutalize and kill scores of their own people.
Yes, it may very well be true that Ghana’s politicians can always rely on the support of the “My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong” myrmidon-types, who wear blinkers permanently and are too blind to see what is wrong in our country – and too thick to think independently. Sadly, it is their blind support that eventually ruins political parties when they finally attain power. Our political class must always remember that it is the small minority of discerning Ghanaians, those independent and fair-minded Ghanaians (often referred to by the media as “floating voters”), whose opinions result in regime-change in Ghanaian elections, today.
President Mills and the regime he leads must know that a majority of those independent-minded Ghanaians are outraged to hear Ghana’s foreign minister reiterating the AU’s disgraceful position on the indictment by the ICC of Sudan’s President Omar Bashir. It is shameful that a nation such as Ghana supports an African regime that looks down on our fellow Africans and is also busy carrying out ethnic-cleansing to rid Darfur of its black African inhabitants (so that their land is usurped by their so-called ”Arab” neighbours).
Speaking as an independent-minded Ghanaian, in my view, making common cause with Omar Bashir, will definitely make me refrain from voting for President Mills’ regime in 2012 – even if it succeeds in turning Ghana into paradise by then. For, in supporting the AU’s disgraceful position, they would have helped an African ruler, who is guilty of the mass-murder of fellow Africans. On the issue of the indictment of President Omar Bashir by the ICC, the Mills administration had better revise its notes very quickly – for it is a non-negotiable issue over which a majority of Ghana’s “floating-voters” will never compromise. A word to the wise…
THE 31ST DECEMBER WOMEN’S MOVEMENT MUST REMODEL ITSELF – AND SHED ITS POLITICAL AMBITIONS!
For years Ghanaian women have held their families together through sheer perseverance, love, dedication, and made great sacrifices to ensure the education of their children. Any organisation dedicated to ensuring the empowerment of women in our nation therefore deserves support from society.
It is this recognition of the important role women play in our society that makes many fair-minded Ghanaians reluctant to publicly criticise women’s organisations such as the 31st December Women’s Movement (DWM). Without a shadow of doubt, it has helped many marginalized Ghanaian women, to improve their lives – and the sincerity of its leaders to the cause of women’s empowerment cannot be gainsaid.
However, it is important that its leaders take a fresh look at the way they have run the organisation in the past. A non-governmental organisation engaged in charitable work, by definition, ought to be one that is part of civil society, and is completely separate from the government of the day. Ideally, it ought not to involve itself actively in partisan politics – as it should exist to serve all sections of society irrespective of their political affiliation.
In a multi-party democracy such ours, the women’s wings of political parties, cannot, and must not be allowed, to masquerade as non-governmental organisations – and it cannot be right that they are given the legal status of one. That clearly is an abuse of the law, and, it can be argued further, fraudulent.
We must be honest and bold enough, to admit that there are many independent-minded and fair-minded Ghanaians, in whose view; the DWM is anything other than an opaque affiliate, of the National Democratic Congress (NDC). Some of the DMW’s critics have long accused its leaders of riding on the backs of district assemblies and ruthlessly exploiting the machinery of government to grow their organisation, during the tenure of the last NDC administration.
There is a germ of truth in those criticisms. For, I clearly remember that in the late 1990’s, I spotted a plaque on a door of one of the offices of the Ga District Assembly at Amassaman, which read: “31st December Women’s Movement.” I also remember being told to contact the district assembly in my area, when I once made a telephone enquiry (to its Accra HQ offices) about the feasibility of women in Akim Abuakwa Juaso benefiting from one of the 31st December Women’s Movement’s many women’s empowerment projects.
If the 31st December Women’s Movement is to continue to exist, and not be a source of embarrassment to the present NDC regime of President Mills, it is important that it sheds its political ambitions. It is also important that its leaders do not seek to use it as a vehicle to further their own personal political ambitions. They must not adopt the same negative past strategy of exploiting the machinery of state to grow their organisation.
The DWM must also give real ownership of its projects to the women of the communities they work in – and not legally own those projects itself as if they were franchise-type investments they have made countrywide: in order to make a return on those investments and turn itself into a super-wealthy organisation. That cannot, and will never, be morally right.
No reputable charitable organisation can simply exist in order to enrich itself as an entity, and seek wealth as an end, in itself: through the clever strategy of building up an investment portfolio solely for that purpose and by enrolling millions of (card-bearing and dues-paying?) members. A non-governmental organisation must exist for the sole benefit of its target group: which in the case of the DWM, one presumes, are all marginalized Ghanaian women, in particular – and vulnerable women from other strata of society, generally, one hopes.
Perhaps the DWM ought to take a good look at the “business-models” and organizational ethos underpinning reputable international NGO’s such as: Oxfam; Medicines Sans Frontieres; Fearless Planet; etc. etc. – all of which give ownership of the projects they seek funding for, to the target communities they work with. Surely, that is a far better way to proceed than to continue with the bad old “Alice-in-Wonderland-smoke-and mirrors” ways that led the DMW into so much trouble when there was regime-change in January 2001? A word to the wise…
It is this recognition of the important role women play in our society that makes many fair-minded Ghanaians reluctant to publicly criticise women’s organisations such as the 31st December Women’s Movement (DWM). Without a shadow of doubt, it has helped many marginalized Ghanaian women, to improve their lives – and the sincerity of its leaders to the cause of women’s empowerment cannot be gainsaid.
However, it is important that its leaders take a fresh look at the way they have run the organisation in the past. A non-governmental organisation engaged in charitable work, by definition, ought to be one that is part of civil society, and is completely separate from the government of the day. Ideally, it ought not to involve itself actively in partisan politics – as it should exist to serve all sections of society irrespective of their political affiliation.
In a multi-party democracy such ours, the women’s wings of political parties, cannot, and must not be allowed, to masquerade as non-governmental organisations – and it cannot be right that they are given the legal status of one. That clearly is an abuse of the law, and, it can be argued further, fraudulent.
We must be honest and bold enough, to admit that there are many independent-minded and fair-minded Ghanaians, in whose view; the DWM is anything other than an opaque affiliate, of the National Democratic Congress (NDC). Some of the DMW’s critics have long accused its leaders of riding on the backs of district assemblies and ruthlessly exploiting the machinery of government to grow their organisation, during the tenure of the last NDC administration.
There is a germ of truth in those criticisms. For, I clearly remember that in the late 1990’s, I spotted a plaque on a door of one of the offices of the Ga District Assembly at Amassaman, which read: “31st December Women’s Movement.” I also remember being told to contact the district assembly in my area, when I once made a telephone enquiry (to its Accra HQ offices) about the feasibility of women in Akim Abuakwa Juaso benefiting from one of the 31st December Women’s Movement’s many women’s empowerment projects.
If the 31st December Women’s Movement is to continue to exist, and not be a source of embarrassment to the present NDC regime of President Mills, it is important that it sheds its political ambitions. It is also important that its leaders do not seek to use it as a vehicle to further their own personal political ambitions. They must not adopt the same negative past strategy of exploiting the machinery of state to grow their organisation.
The DWM must also give real ownership of its projects to the women of the communities they work in – and not legally own those projects itself as if they were franchise-type investments they have made countrywide: in order to make a return on those investments and turn itself into a super-wealthy organisation. That cannot, and will never, be morally right.
No reputable charitable organisation can simply exist in order to enrich itself as an entity, and seek wealth as an end, in itself: through the clever strategy of building up an investment portfolio solely for that purpose and by enrolling millions of (card-bearing and dues-paying?) members. A non-governmental organisation must exist for the sole benefit of its target group: which in the case of the DWM, one presumes, are all marginalized Ghanaian women, in particular – and vulnerable women from other strata of society, generally, one hopes.
Perhaps the DWM ought to take a good look at the “business-models” and organizational ethos underpinning reputable international NGO’s such as: Oxfam; Medicines Sans Frontieres; Fearless Planet; etc. etc. – all of which give ownership of the projects they seek funding for, to the target communities they work with. Surely, that is a far better way to proceed than to continue with the bad old “Alice-in-Wonderland-smoke-and mirrors” ways that led the DMW into so much trouble when there was regime-change in January 2001? A word to the wise…
Friday, 6 March 2009
PRESIDENT MILLS IS RIGHT TO PROCLAIM NKRUMAH AS GHANA’S FOUNDING FATHER!
What an extraordinary people we are – rooting for people who were not only elitists and Akan tribal-supremacists, but were also quislings who worked hard as stooges for neocolonialism and were lackeys of Western interests in our nation. What primary schoolchild in the Ghana of today does not know that Dr. J.B. Danquah was on the payroll of America’s C.I.A.?
It shows the orientation and caliber of some of the members of our political class that they can even accept that those quislings, who wanted our nation to be handed over to them after independence, so that the progeny of the ruling elites of our pre-colonial feudal past would succeed in dominating Ghanaian society and our country till kingdom come, should share the honour of being regarded as Ghana’s founding-fathers, with Nkrumah. What perfidy!
Who in Ghana does not know that the phrase a “property-owning democracy” encapsulated perfectly the elitist mindset of the J.B.Danquah’s – who coined it when they wanted to create a nation in which only property-owners and those who earned a regular salary would have the right to vote in elections?
Was it not the far-sighted Nkrumah who insisted that all Ghanaians, irrespective of their station in life, ought to have the right to vote in elections in our country? Hopefully, at least the Alban Bagbins of this world will acknowledge that it is thanks to Nkrumah, that we have universal adult suffrage underpinning our electoral system - something that has lasted to this very era, incidentally: and which we all take for granted now.
Perhaps the Honourable Bagbin and Co. do not also know that Dr. Danquah (ditto most of his acolytes) so despised northerners and non-Akans that he airily dismissed Nkrumah’s CPP regime as a regime made up of “Ntafuo” and “Veranda boys”? Do they know how he and Nana Ofori Atta1 tyrannized non-Akans living in Akim Abuakwa – and were dictatorial in their attitude, generally, within the Akim Abaukwa area?
Did they not see how in the eight short years President Kufuor, a political descendant of Dr. J.B. Danquah, and an Akan tribal-supremacist par excellence himself, wielded power in Ghana, he worked extremely hard (in alliance with some of his megalomaniac tribal-supremacist traditional rulers) to divide our nation along ethnic lines as never before in our nation’s 52-year history?
It is an indisputable fact that Dr. Nkrumah was the founding father of our nation and a man who above all, sought to unite a people of diverse-ethnicity into a united and modern African nation-state – and President Mills is perfectly right to designate his birthday as Founder’s Day. Period. Who ever heard of any nation with a colonial past and a proud people (with abundant self-belief as pan-Africanists), honouring the stooges for neocolonialism and eager lackeys of Western imperialism from their country’s early history of its struggle against colonialism as national heroes and heroines?
We must end this nonsense on bamboo stilts argument and give Nkrumah his due. Nkrumah dwarfed all his contemporaries, and towered above them as a major historical figure. That is why he is included by all historians in the Pantheon of the 20th Century’s greatest historical figures.
He was on the right side of history – and understood (unlike the J.B.Danquahs) clearly that our national interest did not coincide with that of the neocolonialist and imperialist powers – and that it never would throughout our history, going forward.
That is why he will be remembered till the very end of time by every generation of black Africans worldwide – as the man of vision who founded Ghana, the star of Africa: long after the Alban Bagbins of this world have sunk into oblivion and been forgotten. Kwame Nkrumah’s equal has not yet been born. Period.
It shows the orientation and caliber of some of the members of our political class that they can even accept that those quislings, who wanted our nation to be handed over to them after independence, so that the progeny of the ruling elites of our pre-colonial feudal past would succeed in dominating Ghanaian society and our country till kingdom come, should share the honour of being regarded as Ghana’s founding-fathers, with Nkrumah. What perfidy!
Who in Ghana does not know that the phrase a “property-owning democracy” encapsulated perfectly the elitist mindset of the J.B.Danquah’s – who coined it when they wanted to create a nation in which only property-owners and those who earned a regular salary would have the right to vote in elections?
Was it not the far-sighted Nkrumah who insisted that all Ghanaians, irrespective of their station in life, ought to have the right to vote in elections in our country? Hopefully, at least the Alban Bagbins of this world will acknowledge that it is thanks to Nkrumah, that we have universal adult suffrage underpinning our electoral system - something that has lasted to this very era, incidentally: and which we all take for granted now.
Perhaps the Honourable Bagbin and Co. do not also know that Dr. Danquah (ditto most of his acolytes) so despised northerners and non-Akans that he airily dismissed Nkrumah’s CPP regime as a regime made up of “Ntafuo” and “Veranda boys”? Do they know how he and Nana Ofori Atta1 tyrannized non-Akans living in Akim Abuakwa – and were dictatorial in their attitude, generally, within the Akim Abaukwa area?
Did they not see how in the eight short years President Kufuor, a political descendant of Dr. J.B. Danquah, and an Akan tribal-supremacist par excellence himself, wielded power in Ghana, he worked extremely hard (in alliance with some of his megalomaniac tribal-supremacist traditional rulers) to divide our nation along ethnic lines as never before in our nation’s 52-year history?
It is an indisputable fact that Dr. Nkrumah was the founding father of our nation and a man who above all, sought to unite a people of diverse-ethnicity into a united and modern African nation-state – and President Mills is perfectly right to designate his birthday as Founder’s Day. Period. Who ever heard of any nation with a colonial past and a proud people (with abundant self-belief as pan-Africanists), honouring the stooges for neocolonialism and eager lackeys of Western imperialism from their country’s early history of its struggle against colonialism as national heroes and heroines?
We must end this nonsense on bamboo stilts argument and give Nkrumah his due. Nkrumah dwarfed all his contemporaries, and towered above them as a major historical figure. That is why he is included by all historians in the Pantheon of the 20th Century’s greatest historical figures.
He was on the right side of history – and understood (unlike the J.B.Danquahs) clearly that our national interest did not coincide with that of the neocolonialist and imperialist powers – and that it never would throughout our history, going forward.
That is why he will be remembered till the very end of time by every generation of black Africans worldwide – as the man of vision who founded Ghana, the star of Africa: long after the Alban Bagbins of this world have sunk into oblivion and been forgotten. Kwame Nkrumah’s equal has not yet been born. Period.
U.N. SECURITY COUNCIL MUST IGNORE THE AFRICAN UNION’S PLEAS ON BEHALF OF INDICTED WAR CRIMINAL, SUDANESE PRESIDENT OMAR BASHIR!
Across the continent of Africa, millions of ordinary Africans suffer silently, daily, from untold hardship and misery – the direct result of the terrible yoke, which the curse of a forced existence under the jackboots of some of the modern world’s cruelest and most despotic of rulers, represents.
To such Africans, forced to endure the tyranny of barbaric, corrupt and mostly-incompetent rulers (who are in effect accountable to no one, and maim and kill at will, regularly, with total impunity), news of the indictment by the International Criminal Court (ICC), of one of the cruelest of Africa’s many present-day Adolf Hitlers, Sudanese President Omar Bashir, is nothing short of miraculous.
They are overjoyed that at long last the international community is serving notice to cruel and despotic rulers across the African continent – by making it absolutely clear to such leaders that they will no longer be allowed to get away with crimes against humanity.
For years, the people of Darfur have suffered greatly, as the international community has looked on helplessly, unable to halt their suffering and protect them from their cruel and despotic rulers.
Over that period, Sudan’s ruthless and crafty rulers have strung the world along, with one blatant lie after another, and topped their perfidy with a series of broken promises – so as to buy themselves sufficient time for the end-game of their grand strategy: the rolling pogrom taking place in Darfur.
Despite widespread international condemnation of their barbaric actions, Sudan’s leaders have ignored all pleas to cease fighting the horrendous war they are prosecuting in Western Sudan. Rather, they have obstinately pursued their ethnic-cleansing agenda in Darfur, regardless – often using their proxies, the cruel and brutish myrmidons known as the Janjaweed: remorseless killers who are recruited, trained and armed by Omar Bashir and the brutish regime he leads.
It is a simple and effective strategy that has enabled Sudanese leaders to carry out their evil agenda in Western Sudan without any interruption – whiles blithely cocking a snook at the world: by loudly proclaiming their innocence. Orchestrating this crime against humanity has been the freshly-indicted war criminal, Sudanese President Omar Bashir.
It is such an outrage and an affront to humankind that black African leaders, who themselves, ironically (on account of their dark hues), would have been at the receiving end of Omar Bashir’s unspeakable and abominable acts of cruelty, if they had had the misfortune of being born in Darfur, are now pleading with the U.N. Security Council that Bashir’s indictment by the ICC be suspended for a year.
Why does the African Union not rather elect to expend its energies persuading the indicted war criminal, Omar Bashir, to rescind his decision to boot out a number of humanitarian organisations operating in his country to save countless human lives – and on which nearly five million Sudanese citizens depend for their daily sustenance?
The question that concerned and freedom-loving Africans across the continent would like the African Union to answer is: Why should the international community, through the ICC, not come to the aid of Africans, who are being brutalized and murdered in droves, on a daily basis, from Darfur, through Eastern D.R .Congo, to Zimbabwe, and elsewhere on the continent?
Are those unfortunate millions not their compatriots too – who happen to be helpless victims of African despots whom the African Union as a continental body appears so powerless (or unwilling) to assist and protect?
The absurd notion that somehow the indictment of African leaders by the ICC, for their crimes against humanity, is part of a grand conspiracy by neocolonialists, who are apparently out to get progressive and anti-imperialist African leaders, in order to enable them re-colonize Africa, is an insult to all freedom-loving Africans.
The world must put political correctness aside and see that nonsense on bamboo stilts for what it truly is – a cynical attempt by the racist Omar Bashir, a black African of a lighter hue than most black Africans, who sadly deludes himself that he is an “Arab” (although most in the Arab world despise fellow-Muslims of his colour, if truth be told) to play on the sensibilities of black Africans: by exploiting memories of past humiliations that European colonial domination of their continent, represents, for most Africans.
Colonial domination is a thing of the past and no outsiders will ever be able to dominate our continent in the same way that Europeans did in the past. So let those in the continent who make such spurious arguments understand that their fellow Africans, unfortunate victims, who are being brutalized and murdered by African leaders of Omar Bashir’s ilk, are no less deserving of freedom than Frenchmen, Englishmen, Americans, Germans, Japanese or Scandinavians.
Enslavement of fellow Africans by the Omar Bashirs of today is as unacceptable as the enslavement of Africans by the colonial powers of yesteryear was. Freedom-loving Africans across the continent, who care about the many victims of Omar Bashir’s cruelty in Darfur, consequently urge the U.N. Security Council to ignore pleas by the African Union, that Bashir’s indictment by the ICC be suspended for a year.
On the contrary, the U.N. Security Council must rather speak out unequivocally, and act boldly, by calling on all the member-nations of the United Nations to endeavour to have Omar Bashir arrested immediately – and sent to appear before the ICC in The Hague: to stand trial for the many crimes against humanity, which he and the members of the regime that he leads have been committing in Darfur.
Now that Omar Bashir has finally got his come-uppance and received his just desserts, let all the other African “mini-Adolf Hitlers” also busy at work brutalizing, pillaging and murdering with impunity in places such as: Eastern and Northern D.R. Congo; Zimbabwe; Central African Republic; Chad; Kenya, and elsewhere in Africa, take note of the times we now live in. A word to the wise…
To such Africans, forced to endure the tyranny of barbaric, corrupt and mostly-incompetent rulers (who are in effect accountable to no one, and maim and kill at will, regularly, with total impunity), news of the indictment by the International Criminal Court (ICC), of one of the cruelest of Africa’s many present-day Adolf Hitlers, Sudanese President Omar Bashir, is nothing short of miraculous.
They are overjoyed that at long last the international community is serving notice to cruel and despotic rulers across the African continent – by making it absolutely clear to such leaders that they will no longer be allowed to get away with crimes against humanity.
For years, the people of Darfur have suffered greatly, as the international community has looked on helplessly, unable to halt their suffering and protect them from their cruel and despotic rulers.
Over that period, Sudan’s ruthless and crafty rulers have strung the world along, with one blatant lie after another, and topped their perfidy with a series of broken promises – so as to buy themselves sufficient time for the end-game of their grand strategy: the rolling pogrom taking place in Darfur.
Despite widespread international condemnation of their barbaric actions, Sudan’s leaders have ignored all pleas to cease fighting the horrendous war they are prosecuting in Western Sudan. Rather, they have obstinately pursued their ethnic-cleansing agenda in Darfur, regardless – often using their proxies, the cruel and brutish myrmidons known as the Janjaweed: remorseless killers who are recruited, trained and armed by Omar Bashir and the brutish regime he leads.
It is a simple and effective strategy that has enabled Sudanese leaders to carry out their evil agenda in Western Sudan without any interruption – whiles blithely cocking a snook at the world: by loudly proclaiming their innocence. Orchestrating this crime against humanity has been the freshly-indicted war criminal, Sudanese President Omar Bashir.
It is such an outrage and an affront to humankind that black African leaders, who themselves, ironically (on account of their dark hues), would have been at the receiving end of Omar Bashir’s unspeakable and abominable acts of cruelty, if they had had the misfortune of being born in Darfur, are now pleading with the U.N. Security Council that Bashir’s indictment by the ICC be suspended for a year.
Why does the African Union not rather elect to expend its energies persuading the indicted war criminal, Omar Bashir, to rescind his decision to boot out a number of humanitarian organisations operating in his country to save countless human lives – and on which nearly five million Sudanese citizens depend for their daily sustenance?
The question that concerned and freedom-loving Africans across the continent would like the African Union to answer is: Why should the international community, through the ICC, not come to the aid of Africans, who are being brutalized and murdered in droves, on a daily basis, from Darfur, through Eastern D.R .Congo, to Zimbabwe, and elsewhere on the continent?
Are those unfortunate millions not their compatriots too – who happen to be helpless victims of African despots whom the African Union as a continental body appears so powerless (or unwilling) to assist and protect?
The absurd notion that somehow the indictment of African leaders by the ICC, for their crimes against humanity, is part of a grand conspiracy by neocolonialists, who are apparently out to get progressive and anti-imperialist African leaders, in order to enable them re-colonize Africa, is an insult to all freedom-loving Africans.
The world must put political correctness aside and see that nonsense on bamboo stilts for what it truly is – a cynical attempt by the racist Omar Bashir, a black African of a lighter hue than most black Africans, who sadly deludes himself that he is an “Arab” (although most in the Arab world despise fellow-Muslims of his colour, if truth be told) to play on the sensibilities of black Africans: by exploiting memories of past humiliations that European colonial domination of their continent, represents, for most Africans.
Colonial domination is a thing of the past and no outsiders will ever be able to dominate our continent in the same way that Europeans did in the past. So let those in the continent who make such spurious arguments understand that their fellow Africans, unfortunate victims, who are being brutalized and murdered by African leaders of Omar Bashir’s ilk, are no less deserving of freedom than Frenchmen, Englishmen, Americans, Germans, Japanese or Scandinavians.
Enslavement of fellow Africans by the Omar Bashirs of today is as unacceptable as the enslavement of Africans by the colonial powers of yesteryear was. Freedom-loving Africans across the continent, who care about the many victims of Omar Bashir’s cruelty in Darfur, consequently urge the U.N. Security Council to ignore pleas by the African Union, that Bashir’s indictment by the ICC be suspended for a year.
On the contrary, the U.N. Security Council must rather speak out unequivocally, and act boldly, by calling on all the member-nations of the United Nations to endeavour to have Omar Bashir arrested immediately – and sent to appear before the ICC in The Hague: to stand trial for the many crimes against humanity, which he and the members of the regime that he leads have been committing in Darfur.
Now that Omar Bashir has finally got his come-uppance and received his just desserts, let all the other African “mini-Adolf Hitlers” also busy at work brutalizing, pillaging and murdering with impunity in places such as: Eastern and Northern D.R. Congo; Zimbabwe; Central African Republic; Chad; Kenya, and elsewhere in Africa, take note of the times we now live in. A word to the wise…
Tuesday, 3 March 2009
MR. CHINA VENTURES INTO AFRICA – A SHORT STORY WITH A MORAL IN IT FOR CLUELESS GHANAIAN POLITICIANS: A WORK OF FICTION BY KOFI THOMPSON
When Liam Casey, the swashbuckling Irish businessman who built PCH International into the Western world’s foremost holder of data on China, with an unrivalled knowledge of the Chinese business world, walked into his office in the morning of the 6th of March 2010, little did he know that his fortunes were about to change dramatically.
When he sat down to read his emails that morning, there was one from an unfamiliar name, Shegelegebangoshe, who it turned out was an African internet-blogger and journalist. It made the point that in spite of the global economic recession most educated Africans still yearned for an African Renaissance.
This yearning presented PCH International with an opportunity to extend its corporate footprint across Africa – where opportunities for it to expand abounded. According to Shegelegebangoshe, the opportunity for PCH International arose from the African continent’s desperate need to add value to its raw materials. It also needed to improve its infrastructure by bringing them up to world-class standards. An example, he pointed out, was its power-generating capacity.
Shegelegebangoshe also pointed out that in view of its unfortunate and painful past experience of European colonial domination and exploitation, coupled with the fact that most Western nations still unconsciously had the colonialist-mindset in their dealings with the continent, the perfect way to actualize Africa’s economic regeneration was for nations in the continent to partner the best-resourced Chinese companies to help their modernization drive. PCH International could be the perfect facilitator for such partnerships across the continent.
In his email, Shegelegebangoshe stressed the fact that because of its unrivalled knowledge of the Chinese business world, PCH International had the perfect business model to facilitate joint-ventures in which African governments would partner world-class Chinese companies in projects designed to upgrade the continent’s infrastructure and add value to Africa’s abundant natural resources.
That way, its huge deposits of valuable minerals such as gold, bauxite, manganese, and iron ore, could all be processed locally, in order to create jobs and generate wealth for the nations and peoples of Africa. Liam Casey felt intrigued by the vision outlined in the email. He had never really thought about Africa as a place of opportunity before.
In his mind’s eye it had always been a continent of famine and wars that went back as far back as he could remember. However, there was no denying the fact that facilitating projects that entailed partnerships between reformist-minded and democratically-elected regimes in the continent and leading Chinese companies, both state-owned and private-sector ones, would fit into PCH International’s business model perfectly.
He immediately thought he had to find suitable Africans whom he could work with. Shegelegebangoshe had mentioned Mr. Kofi Annan, the former UN Secretary General and Mrs. Gracia Mandela, former South African President Nelson Mandela’s wife, as key figures that could help him get PCH International into Africa in a "turbulence-free" manner. The more he thought about it the more exciting he found the prospect of PCH International venturing into Africa.
Here was a unique opportunity for an Irishman to make a buck whiles providing the means for Africa to escape from the clutches of imperialism and neocolonialism. The idea of making that happen appealed to him enormously. In its own turbulent past history had his native Ireland not also suffered as a victim of British colonialism and imperialism too?
He had to start boning-up on the continent’s economic outlook and find out as much as he could about the key nations on the continent. He definitely had to make a start by contacting the ambassadors of those key nations in Africa. Shegelegebangoshe had mentioned Ghana as the perfect place to begin his African odyssey from.
It was politically stable, had a government run by a former university professor, President John Evans Atta Mills, whom everyone agreed was an honest man. “That definitely must be a breed of homo sapiens rare in African politics,” he chuckled to himself. Ghana needed power plants that it could use its huge deposits of natural gas to run. It could generate considerable foreign exchange exporting power to its neighbours.
In addition to building state-of-the-art oil refineries to process its oil deposits into petroleum products to export to its neighbours, it could also build natural gas liquefaction plants. That could enable it to freeze its natural gas, stick that unto ships, and export it to an energy-hungry Europe, desperate to find alternative sources of energy, to enable it lessen its dependence on the unreliable Russian bear.
Yet another idea that Shegelegebangoshe had brought to his attention was an interesting invention by a Colonel Kofi Abaka Jackson, said to be a retired Ghanaian air force officer and former member of one of Ghana’s past military regimes.
Colonel Jackson’s genius was to invent a system to harness the flow of rivers to produce hydro-power without the need to build expensive hydro-power dams. Such a power-generating plant could definitely enable a nation like the D.R. Congo to harness the flow of the giant Congo River to produce power for a large swathe of the continent. His own native Ghana itself could harness its many rivers using his power-generating invention to produce power too.
Then there was the country’s good quality cocoa beans. They were famous the world over amongst major chocolate producers. If it could process all of its cocoa production, Ghana could generate tens of thousands of jobs, in cocoa processing plants, spread across the country’s cocoa-growing regions.
It could do same with its Shea-nut crop. That could also be processed locally into various products for export. It also had suitable land too for Ghana-Chinese joint-ventures to grow and process rice both for local consumption and to export to the nations in the West African sub-region.
To finance such deals Liam Casey thought that the suggestion by Shegelegebangoshe that creatively utilizing Ghana’s sovereign bonds could be a useful way to fund Ghana-Chinese joint-venture projects. It was an idea that the Chinese government would probably accept in principle. The Chinese government would give bank guarantees for such projects with the sovereign bonds of reformist-minded and politically stable regimes in Africa as insurance.
It was an idea that needed fine-tuning; but it certainly made a great deal of sense to him. Ghana had oil and natural gas in abundance. If it issued US$20 billions worth of sovereign bonds to China, that sum could easily fund its development plan and turn it into a developed nation within a maximum seven-year period – the global recession notwithstanding.
Liam Casey rose from his desk and stretched out his hands. He had to think carefully about this intriguing idea. He was an adventurer: and this was some adventure indeed. It could benefit all concerned. If he could help Africa to break free from its dependence on the charity of other nations by becoming prosperous economically, as well as help his beloved China to profit from such joint-ventures, whiles PCH International itself grew and made vast profits too in the process, why not, he smiled to himself?
Coincidentally, he noted, Ghana’s independence anniversary was today, 6th March, 2010. He thought that that had to be a good omen. Apparently, under the regime of Ghana’s founding father, Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, the country had also been a special friend of China’s in Africa. He would make sure the goodwill that existed between the two nations from that era was revived again to benefit both nations. He had to get cracking. He had to buy himself a very light jet (VLJ) pronto. He could imagine the newspaper headlines: “Mr. China ventures into Africa!”
When he sat down to read his emails that morning, there was one from an unfamiliar name, Shegelegebangoshe, who it turned out was an African internet-blogger and journalist. It made the point that in spite of the global economic recession most educated Africans still yearned for an African Renaissance.
This yearning presented PCH International with an opportunity to extend its corporate footprint across Africa – where opportunities for it to expand abounded. According to Shegelegebangoshe, the opportunity for PCH International arose from the African continent’s desperate need to add value to its raw materials. It also needed to improve its infrastructure by bringing them up to world-class standards. An example, he pointed out, was its power-generating capacity.
Shegelegebangoshe also pointed out that in view of its unfortunate and painful past experience of European colonial domination and exploitation, coupled with the fact that most Western nations still unconsciously had the colonialist-mindset in their dealings with the continent, the perfect way to actualize Africa’s economic regeneration was for nations in the continent to partner the best-resourced Chinese companies to help their modernization drive. PCH International could be the perfect facilitator for such partnerships across the continent.
In his email, Shegelegebangoshe stressed the fact that because of its unrivalled knowledge of the Chinese business world, PCH International had the perfect business model to facilitate joint-ventures in which African governments would partner world-class Chinese companies in projects designed to upgrade the continent’s infrastructure and add value to Africa’s abundant natural resources.
That way, its huge deposits of valuable minerals such as gold, bauxite, manganese, and iron ore, could all be processed locally, in order to create jobs and generate wealth for the nations and peoples of Africa. Liam Casey felt intrigued by the vision outlined in the email. He had never really thought about Africa as a place of opportunity before.
In his mind’s eye it had always been a continent of famine and wars that went back as far back as he could remember. However, there was no denying the fact that facilitating projects that entailed partnerships between reformist-minded and democratically-elected regimes in the continent and leading Chinese companies, both state-owned and private-sector ones, would fit into PCH International’s business model perfectly.
He immediately thought he had to find suitable Africans whom he could work with. Shegelegebangoshe had mentioned Mr. Kofi Annan, the former UN Secretary General and Mrs. Gracia Mandela, former South African President Nelson Mandela’s wife, as key figures that could help him get PCH International into Africa in a "turbulence-free" manner. The more he thought about it the more exciting he found the prospect of PCH International venturing into Africa.
Here was a unique opportunity for an Irishman to make a buck whiles providing the means for Africa to escape from the clutches of imperialism and neocolonialism. The idea of making that happen appealed to him enormously. In its own turbulent past history had his native Ireland not also suffered as a victim of British colonialism and imperialism too?
He had to start boning-up on the continent’s economic outlook and find out as much as he could about the key nations on the continent. He definitely had to make a start by contacting the ambassadors of those key nations in Africa. Shegelegebangoshe had mentioned Ghana as the perfect place to begin his African odyssey from.
It was politically stable, had a government run by a former university professor, President John Evans Atta Mills, whom everyone agreed was an honest man. “That definitely must be a breed of homo sapiens rare in African politics,” he chuckled to himself. Ghana needed power plants that it could use its huge deposits of natural gas to run. It could generate considerable foreign exchange exporting power to its neighbours.
In addition to building state-of-the-art oil refineries to process its oil deposits into petroleum products to export to its neighbours, it could also build natural gas liquefaction plants. That could enable it to freeze its natural gas, stick that unto ships, and export it to an energy-hungry Europe, desperate to find alternative sources of energy, to enable it lessen its dependence on the unreliable Russian bear.
Yet another idea that Shegelegebangoshe had brought to his attention was an interesting invention by a Colonel Kofi Abaka Jackson, said to be a retired Ghanaian air force officer and former member of one of Ghana’s past military regimes.
Colonel Jackson’s genius was to invent a system to harness the flow of rivers to produce hydro-power without the need to build expensive hydro-power dams. Such a power-generating plant could definitely enable a nation like the D.R. Congo to harness the flow of the giant Congo River to produce power for a large swathe of the continent. His own native Ghana itself could harness its many rivers using his power-generating invention to produce power too.
Then there was the country’s good quality cocoa beans. They were famous the world over amongst major chocolate producers. If it could process all of its cocoa production, Ghana could generate tens of thousands of jobs, in cocoa processing plants, spread across the country’s cocoa-growing regions.
It could do same with its Shea-nut crop. That could also be processed locally into various products for export. It also had suitable land too for Ghana-Chinese joint-ventures to grow and process rice both for local consumption and to export to the nations in the West African sub-region.
To finance such deals Liam Casey thought that the suggestion by Shegelegebangoshe that creatively utilizing Ghana’s sovereign bonds could be a useful way to fund Ghana-Chinese joint-venture projects. It was an idea that the Chinese government would probably accept in principle. The Chinese government would give bank guarantees for such projects with the sovereign bonds of reformist-minded and politically stable regimes in Africa as insurance.
It was an idea that needed fine-tuning; but it certainly made a great deal of sense to him. Ghana had oil and natural gas in abundance. If it issued US$20 billions worth of sovereign bonds to China, that sum could easily fund its development plan and turn it into a developed nation within a maximum seven-year period – the global recession notwithstanding.
Liam Casey rose from his desk and stretched out his hands. He had to think carefully about this intriguing idea. He was an adventurer: and this was some adventure indeed. It could benefit all concerned. If he could help Africa to break free from its dependence on the charity of other nations by becoming prosperous economically, as well as help his beloved China to profit from such joint-ventures, whiles PCH International itself grew and made vast profits too in the process, why not, he smiled to himself?
Coincidentally, he noted, Ghana’s independence anniversary was today, 6th March, 2010. He thought that that had to be a good omen. Apparently, under the regime of Ghana’s founding father, Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, the country had also been a special friend of China’s in Africa. He would make sure the goodwill that existed between the two nations from that era was revived again to benefit both nations. He had to get cracking. He had to buy himself a very light jet (VLJ) pronto. He could imagine the newspaper headlines: “Mr. China ventures into Africa!”
Saturday, 28 February 2009
THE RULE OF LAW MUST NOT BE USED TO LEGITIMISE THE CREATION OF AN UNJUST SOCIETY IN OUR DEMOCRACY!
A rather vociferous minority amongst those who sit on the benches opposite those of the majority side in parliament, are giving ordinary Ghanaians the clear impression, that they are determined to exploit the concept of the rule of law to the hilt – to enable them continue furthering their parochial interests: at the expense of the Ghanaian nation-state (and the generality of its citizenry).
How else can one explain the continued insistence by some politicians that those obscene ex-gratia payments are made willy-nilly: in the face of widespread public disapproval – because they were sanctioned by a law passed by parliamentarians: most of whom we now know were in reality merely self-serving, self-seeking and the most dishonourable of individuals, driven purely by the basest of motives, to sanction those payments?
As a consequence of this rather unhealthy development, the question many independent-minded and discerning Ghanaians now urgently want answered by our political class is: Can the rule of law be allowed in Ghana to be manipulated by a clever and greedy few – to legitimize the creation of an unjust society in which only the powerful and well-connected prosper (in what is supposed to be a democracy)?
Yes, it is true that in spite of their nation-wrecking collective-agenda, such politicians may be able to rely on the continued support of those tiresome, “My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong” myrmidon-types, whose blind support for political parties ends up destroying them when they eventually win power (because they wear their infernal “blinkers-of-intolerance” permanently – and are hence too blind to see what is wrong with our nation: and too thick to think for themselves).
However, what such politicians must always remember, is that it is a relatively small group of swing-voters: the independent-minded, patriotic, and nationalistic Ghanaians (the so-called “floating-voters”), who ultimately decide who wins power in the Ghana of the 21st century ICT age – and those principled and fair-minded Ghanaians are most definitely not enthused in the slightest by the unfathomable greed that those monstrous ex-gratia payments represent.
Why should ordinary people tolerate what in effect are the building-blocks for the creation of an unjust and unequal society in their country – by those who have an elitist worldview, believe in inherited privilege (the worst enemy of any meritocracy) and, to add insult to injury, did not succeed in improving the quality of life of ordinary Ghanaians, when they were given the opportunity to govern our nation?
Should such political failures be the chosen and blessed few in our country, as well as the only section of society, to enjoy Ghana’s “democracy-dividend”? Why in heaven’s name are ordinary people expected to tolerate such an egregious example of injustice – and accept it quietly as a matter of course too?
More so when those building-blocks of inequality are the handiwork of those whom when they thought no one was listening in to what they believed were secret and seditious meetings (held to engage in a conspiracy to enable them steal the December 2008 elections – and deny Ghanaians the change they so clearly wanted), made no secret of their utter contempt for Ghanaian democracy; the rule of law; and the prevailing national mood for regime-change.
Do these ace hypocrites think that Ghanaians have forgotten their pernicious deeds and words during the December 2008 elections so soon – deeds and words caught on tape recordings (in which they were exposed espousing their shocking elitist and anti-democratic views) broadcast in December 2008 by the brilliant Raymond Archer: who was then hosting Radio Gold FM’s “Election Forensics” programme?
We cannot possibly allow the creation of an unjust society in the democracy we are trying to build in our homeland Ghana, if we want our democratic institutions to survive and thrive – and if we are also truly committed to building Africa’s equivalent of the egalitarian societies of Scandinavia in our country.
No one begrudges the payment of reasonable ex-gratia payments to those who serve our nation diligently and honestly as public officials, when they eventually retire – but only as long as our nation has the wherewithal to do same for all its public officials working in all spheres of human endeavour in our national life.
The contribution of every Ghanaian worker towards nation-building in our homeland Ghana is as important as that made by the members of our ruling elite – and deserves to be equally well rewarded too when they finally retire.
Excessive ex-gratia payments that do not take the dire economic circumstances of our nation into account, at any given point in time in its history, must never be sanctioned by those who under our constitution, are supposed to protect the public purse. On those grounds alone, the controversial ex-gratia payments for our parliamentarians and other retiring high public officials from the previous administration, can never be justified under any circumstances.
It is important that that bald fact of life in the Ghana of today, is made abundantly clear to those parliamentarians, amongst whose abysmal record of protecting our national interest from predators in the immediate-past, even includes sanctioning that scandalous sale and purchase agreement for the privatization of VALCO – ostensibly to two reputable international metals conglomerates, Norske Hydro and VALE: both of whom strenuously denied ever committing themselves to purchasing VALCO.
The greedy ambitions of a powerful few at the top echelons of society must never be allowed to determine public policy, to the detriment of our nation and its people – particularly when those ex-gratia payments were clearly only ever meant to empower those whom we all now know played fast and lose with public funds when they held power.
Those payments are simply meant to enable yesteryear’s masters of the universe to continue milking our nation dry even in their retirement years – and live in the opulent style to which they had become accustomed during their tenure in office: when they were so incredibly profligate with taxpayers’ money.
Let no one in this country seek to justify those payments – because they can never be justified morally in a poor developing nation that still struggles to meet the monthly emoluments of serving government employees: and a majority of whose citizens (particularly pensioners) can barely afford even two square meals a day.
Those truly honourable ones left amongst our country’s largely self-seeking political class (who still have a conscience, i.e.) must reconsider their stand on this matter – whiles the opportunity for them to right this terrible wrong done to Ghanaians and their nation still remains within their grasp. They must not use the law as a cloak to hide their greed and legitimize an injustice against ordinary Ghanaians.
If the concept of the rule of law is to continue to survive in this country, no groups or individuals must ever be allowed to manipulate that great tenet of democracy, simply to further their parochial interests – and at the expense of ordinary Ghanaians and their nation.
Above all, let no one attempt to use the rule of law to try and legitimize efforts aimed at the creation of an unjust and an unequal society – in which equality of opportunity does not exist. We must ensure that the democracy we are trying to build in our homeland Ghana is one in which all citizens, not just a greedy and powerful few, enjoy a good quality of life – whatever their station in life is. Period. A word to the wise…
How else can one explain the continued insistence by some politicians that those obscene ex-gratia payments are made willy-nilly: in the face of widespread public disapproval – because they were sanctioned by a law passed by parliamentarians: most of whom we now know were in reality merely self-serving, self-seeking and the most dishonourable of individuals, driven purely by the basest of motives, to sanction those payments?
As a consequence of this rather unhealthy development, the question many independent-minded and discerning Ghanaians now urgently want answered by our political class is: Can the rule of law be allowed in Ghana to be manipulated by a clever and greedy few – to legitimize the creation of an unjust society in which only the powerful and well-connected prosper (in what is supposed to be a democracy)?
Yes, it is true that in spite of their nation-wrecking collective-agenda, such politicians may be able to rely on the continued support of those tiresome, “My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong” myrmidon-types, whose blind support for political parties ends up destroying them when they eventually win power (because they wear their infernal “blinkers-of-intolerance” permanently – and are hence too blind to see what is wrong with our nation: and too thick to think for themselves).
However, what such politicians must always remember, is that it is a relatively small group of swing-voters: the independent-minded, patriotic, and nationalistic Ghanaians (the so-called “floating-voters”), who ultimately decide who wins power in the Ghana of the 21st century ICT age – and those principled and fair-minded Ghanaians are most definitely not enthused in the slightest by the unfathomable greed that those monstrous ex-gratia payments represent.
Why should ordinary people tolerate what in effect are the building-blocks for the creation of an unjust and unequal society in their country – by those who have an elitist worldview, believe in inherited privilege (the worst enemy of any meritocracy) and, to add insult to injury, did not succeed in improving the quality of life of ordinary Ghanaians, when they were given the opportunity to govern our nation?
Should such political failures be the chosen and blessed few in our country, as well as the only section of society, to enjoy Ghana’s “democracy-dividend”? Why in heaven’s name are ordinary people expected to tolerate such an egregious example of injustice – and accept it quietly as a matter of course too?
More so when those building-blocks of inequality are the handiwork of those whom when they thought no one was listening in to what they believed were secret and seditious meetings (held to engage in a conspiracy to enable them steal the December 2008 elections – and deny Ghanaians the change they so clearly wanted), made no secret of their utter contempt for Ghanaian democracy; the rule of law; and the prevailing national mood for regime-change.
Do these ace hypocrites think that Ghanaians have forgotten their pernicious deeds and words during the December 2008 elections so soon – deeds and words caught on tape recordings (in which they were exposed espousing their shocking elitist and anti-democratic views) broadcast in December 2008 by the brilliant Raymond Archer: who was then hosting Radio Gold FM’s “Election Forensics” programme?
We cannot possibly allow the creation of an unjust society in the democracy we are trying to build in our homeland Ghana, if we want our democratic institutions to survive and thrive – and if we are also truly committed to building Africa’s equivalent of the egalitarian societies of Scandinavia in our country.
No one begrudges the payment of reasonable ex-gratia payments to those who serve our nation diligently and honestly as public officials, when they eventually retire – but only as long as our nation has the wherewithal to do same for all its public officials working in all spheres of human endeavour in our national life.
The contribution of every Ghanaian worker towards nation-building in our homeland Ghana is as important as that made by the members of our ruling elite – and deserves to be equally well rewarded too when they finally retire.
Excessive ex-gratia payments that do not take the dire economic circumstances of our nation into account, at any given point in time in its history, must never be sanctioned by those who under our constitution, are supposed to protect the public purse. On those grounds alone, the controversial ex-gratia payments for our parliamentarians and other retiring high public officials from the previous administration, can never be justified under any circumstances.
It is important that that bald fact of life in the Ghana of today, is made abundantly clear to those parliamentarians, amongst whose abysmal record of protecting our national interest from predators in the immediate-past, even includes sanctioning that scandalous sale and purchase agreement for the privatization of VALCO – ostensibly to two reputable international metals conglomerates, Norske Hydro and VALE: both of whom strenuously denied ever committing themselves to purchasing VALCO.
The greedy ambitions of a powerful few at the top echelons of society must never be allowed to determine public policy, to the detriment of our nation and its people – particularly when those ex-gratia payments were clearly only ever meant to empower those whom we all now know played fast and lose with public funds when they held power.
Those payments are simply meant to enable yesteryear’s masters of the universe to continue milking our nation dry even in their retirement years – and live in the opulent style to which they had become accustomed during their tenure in office: when they were so incredibly profligate with taxpayers’ money.
Let no one in this country seek to justify those payments – because they can never be justified morally in a poor developing nation that still struggles to meet the monthly emoluments of serving government employees: and a majority of whose citizens (particularly pensioners) can barely afford even two square meals a day.
Those truly honourable ones left amongst our country’s largely self-seeking political class (who still have a conscience, i.e.) must reconsider their stand on this matter – whiles the opportunity for them to right this terrible wrong done to Ghanaians and their nation still remains within their grasp. They must not use the law as a cloak to hide their greed and legitimize an injustice against ordinary Ghanaians.
If the concept of the rule of law is to continue to survive in this country, no groups or individuals must ever be allowed to manipulate that great tenet of democracy, simply to further their parochial interests – and at the expense of ordinary Ghanaians and their nation.
Above all, let no one attempt to use the rule of law to try and legitimize efforts aimed at the creation of an unjust and an unequal society – in which equality of opportunity does not exist. We must ensure that the democracy we are trying to build in our homeland Ghana is one in which all citizens, not just a greedy and powerful few, enjoy a good quality of life – whatever their station in life is. Period. A word to the wise…
Tuesday, 24 February 2009
To The Cynical Nii Noi Allotey - Who Also Posts Comments On Ghanaweb.Com
Massa, you say: "They will declare assets but acquire and hide wealth using friends and relations. Asset declaration does not work in Africa." Unquote. What an extraordinary thing to say, Massa! Why be so negative about Africa and Africans?
It might very well be that at last we actually do have an honest man for a president, Massa - has that thought ever occurred to you, yet? I would implore you to have some self-belief as an African, Massa.
Believe me, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with either Africans or the nations they are citizens of. Don’t forget that it took the so-called developed nations many centuries to get where they are today - and we are also making progress after a fashion: and at our own pace, too.
There is a lot to be proud of about Africans and their continent. Perhaps an intelligent man like you might see some of the many positive things about Africans and Africa, were you to travel around a great deal more in your own nation - and the rest of our continent too?
Massa, do please be proud of your own race – especially as you appear to be such an intelligent man! Hmmm, Ghana – eyeasem oo! God give us patience! May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
It might very well be that at last we actually do have an honest man for a president, Massa - has that thought ever occurred to you, yet? I would implore you to have some self-belief as an African, Massa.
Believe me, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with either Africans or the nations they are citizens of. Don’t forget that it took the so-called developed nations many centuries to get where they are today - and we are also making progress after a fashion: and at our own pace, too.
There is a lot to be proud of about Africans and their continent. Perhaps an intelligent man like you might see some of the many positive things about Africans and Africa, were you to travel around a great deal more in your own nation - and the rest of our continent too?
Massa, do please be proud of your own race – especially as you appear to be such an intelligent man! Hmmm, Ghana – eyeasem oo! God give us patience! May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
A BRIEF NOTE TO AFUA - WHO POSTS COMMENTS ON GHANAWEB!
Ohemaa, with respect, we are not doomed - and Ghanaians do have brains: surprising though it might be to your good self! Why the cynicism - what is wrong with a president demanding that his appointees declare their assets within seven days?
If we do eventually get fed up with Professor Mills' regime, we will turf them out of power in 2012 or 2016 - just as we did the previous regime: when we finally got fed up with that greedy lot. Ohemaa, Ghanaians aren't fools at all! Ever heard the popular and wise Ghanaian saying: "No condition is permanent!"?
It might do an intelligent woman like you well to always remember that not all Ghanaians are the “My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong” myrmidon-types: who wear blinkers permanently and are too blind to see what actually goes on in our country, and too thick to work out just what is wrong with our nation, at any given point in time – and whose blind support for political parties destroys those parties eventually: when they win power; in the final analysis.
Ohemaa, it is the independent-minded and discerning Ghanaian, the so-called “floating-voter”, whose vote on election-day, effects regime-change in the democratic Ghana of the 21st century ICT age. I do hope you are one yourself too! In any case, it precisely because of such Ghanaians that Ghana will always confound the cynics who think ill and negatively of her.
Hmmm, Ghana - eyeasem oo! God give us patience! May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
If we do eventually get fed up with Professor Mills' regime, we will turf them out of power in 2012 or 2016 - just as we did the previous regime: when we finally got fed up with that greedy lot. Ohemaa, Ghanaians aren't fools at all! Ever heard the popular and wise Ghanaian saying: "No condition is permanent!"?
It might do an intelligent woman like you well to always remember that not all Ghanaians are the “My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong” myrmidon-types: who wear blinkers permanently and are too blind to see what actually goes on in our country, and too thick to work out just what is wrong with our nation, at any given point in time – and whose blind support for political parties destroys those parties eventually: when they win power; in the final analysis.
Ohemaa, it is the independent-minded and discerning Ghanaian, the so-called “floating-voter”, whose vote on election-day, effects regime-change in the democratic Ghana of the 21st century ICT age. I do hope you are one yourself too! In any case, it precisely because of such Ghanaians that Ghana will always confound the cynics who think ill and negatively of her.
Hmmm, Ghana - eyeasem oo! God give us patience! May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
THE GOVERNMENT MUST LEAVE GHANA INTERNATIONAL AIRLINES TO ITS OWN DEVICES!
It was recently reported that Ghana International Airlines(GIA) is asking the government of Ghana to bail it out - to the tune of some US$52 millions, apparently. If the Mills administration has the national interest at heart, it must simply leave GIA to its own devices – and use the US$50 million plus that GIA is said to be seeking from it, to rather help in the effort now underway to ensure that Ghana’s power problems are resolved quickly.
That GIA is today said to be seeking funding from the Ghanaian nation-state, vindicates those who criticized the previous regime, for allowing foreign investors who did not own a scheduled airline, to step into the vacuum created by the demise of Ghana Airways.
It also brings into sharp focus the negative effect on our country’s development when governments of the day sacrifice the national interest – by allowing the greedy ambitions of a powerful and politically well-connected few to prevail: when deciding the future of state-owned entities.
At the time when there was talk of finding a replacement for Ghana Airways, because it clearly could no longer be sustained by state subsidies, some of us argued (when the ridiculous idea for GIA was being canvassed by those who sought to profit from it), that it was far better to let that ethical businessman Sir Richard Branson’s airline company take over Ghana Airways and merge it with Virgin Nigeria: and call it Virgin ECOWAS.
The attraction for us then, was that Virgin was not only a world-class carrier (run by a man who is famous for being an ethical operator who refuses to pay bribes in his operations worldwide), but was also one of the most innovative and profitable of the world’s leading airlines – which was already familiar with the West African business environment: through its Virgin Nigeria joint-venture with the Nigerian government.
The logic of a Virgin ECOWAS for us was that it could eventually grow to encompass all the loss-making national carriers in the ECOWAS region and contribute revenue to their owner-governments in terms of profits from such a West Africa-wide joint-venture.
Above all, it would have made the skies of a sub-region of an African continent notorious for the atrocious safety-record of its many dangerous domestic carriers, a safe one, for air travellers in the whole of West Africa – thus promoting intra-regional trade and encouraging multi-nation-destination tourism in the area.
One does not know if GIA is still run by the same individual who used to own Experienced Student Travel Services Limited (ESTS), but the government would do well to talk to those who used to employ her as General Manageress of Student Travel Services (STS).
Apparently, her poor supervision there led to the disappearance of substantial sums of money – which ended up with a pastor whom it was said could double money: via the company’s accountant.
That she was employed by GIA during the previous regime to run that company without anyone ever asking for references from her former employers at STS speaks volumes about the nepotism that underpins the company culture of GIA. It is also instructive that when she left STS she sought to reap where she had not sown – by setting up a rival firm to compete with her former employers.
By the simple ruse of adding an E to the acronym STS she sought to carry on business as usual – profiting from the usage of the commercial network and contacts built up over the years by STS at great cost to the company that once employed her. Surely not the most ethical of moves for anyone who believes in the principles of corporate good governance to make, is it, dear reader?
The government of Ghana will definitely be better off without GIA – because as presently constituted it amounts to the financial equivalent of a black-hole: through which taxpayers’ money will continue to disappear regularly. The new Mills administration must simply leave GIA to its own devices – and if that be its fate, let it die a natural death, as it struggles to survive against the odds, in an international airline industry facing massive losses, in a world in the grip of a severe recession. A word to the wise…
That GIA is today said to be seeking funding from the Ghanaian nation-state, vindicates those who criticized the previous regime, for allowing foreign investors who did not own a scheduled airline, to step into the vacuum created by the demise of Ghana Airways.
It also brings into sharp focus the negative effect on our country’s development when governments of the day sacrifice the national interest – by allowing the greedy ambitions of a powerful and politically well-connected few to prevail: when deciding the future of state-owned entities.
At the time when there was talk of finding a replacement for Ghana Airways, because it clearly could no longer be sustained by state subsidies, some of us argued (when the ridiculous idea for GIA was being canvassed by those who sought to profit from it), that it was far better to let that ethical businessman Sir Richard Branson’s airline company take over Ghana Airways and merge it with Virgin Nigeria: and call it Virgin ECOWAS.
The attraction for us then, was that Virgin was not only a world-class carrier (run by a man who is famous for being an ethical operator who refuses to pay bribes in his operations worldwide), but was also one of the most innovative and profitable of the world’s leading airlines – which was already familiar with the West African business environment: through its Virgin Nigeria joint-venture with the Nigerian government.
The logic of a Virgin ECOWAS for us was that it could eventually grow to encompass all the loss-making national carriers in the ECOWAS region and contribute revenue to their owner-governments in terms of profits from such a West Africa-wide joint-venture.
Above all, it would have made the skies of a sub-region of an African continent notorious for the atrocious safety-record of its many dangerous domestic carriers, a safe one, for air travellers in the whole of West Africa – thus promoting intra-regional trade and encouraging multi-nation-destination tourism in the area.
One does not know if GIA is still run by the same individual who used to own Experienced Student Travel Services Limited (ESTS), but the government would do well to talk to those who used to employ her as General Manageress of Student Travel Services (STS).
Apparently, her poor supervision there led to the disappearance of substantial sums of money – which ended up with a pastor whom it was said could double money: via the company’s accountant.
That she was employed by GIA during the previous regime to run that company without anyone ever asking for references from her former employers at STS speaks volumes about the nepotism that underpins the company culture of GIA. It is also instructive that when she left STS she sought to reap where she had not sown – by setting up a rival firm to compete with her former employers.
By the simple ruse of adding an E to the acronym STS she sought to carry on business as usual – profiting from the usage of the commercial network and contacts built up over the years by STS at great cost to the company that once employed her. Surely not the most ethical of moves for anyone who believes in the principles of corporate good governance to make, is it, dear reader?
The government of Ghana will definitely be better off without GIA – because as presently constituted it amounts to the financial equivalent of a black-hole: through which taxpayers’ money will continue to disappear regularly. The new Mills administration must simply leave GIA to its own devices – and if that be its fate, let it die a natural death, as it struggles to survive against the odds, in an international airline industry facing massive losses, in a world in the grip of a severe recession. A word to the wise…
Saturday, 21 February 2009
LET OUR LEADERS BE MODEST IN THE DEMANDS THEY MAKE ON THE PUBLIC PURSE!
Former President Kufuor’s recent defence of the proposed ex-gratia payments to members of the former parliament has generated a great deal of public comment. His critics point to the “unprofessionalism” displayed by members of that particular parliament the former president commends so highly – who apparently simply approved Mr. Kufuor’s own ex-gratia payment as a matter of course: without actually ever examining it in any detail whatsoever.
Such critics also chide Mr. Kufour for what they say is the cynicism contained in his assertion that those opposed to the ex-gratia payments to those parliamentarians did not know the “value” of their work in parliament – by pointing out the fact that in similar fashion, and without any due diligence checks, those selfsame parliamentarians incredibly approved the sale of VALCO to a non-existent special purpose vehicle, grandly christened by some of the rogues associated with the previous regime whom it was going to benefit personally, as, International Aluminum Partners: allegedly made up of two reputable international metals conglomerates that both strenuously denied ever agreeing to buy VALCO.
To such critics of our political class, it is outrageous that those parliamentarians, whom former President Kufuor defends so spiritedly, did not take into account the dire economic circumstances of what is still a poor developing nation, when they approved those astonishing ex-gratia payments to the former president and a host of other highly-placed former public officials.
In the view of many independent-minded and patriotic Ghanaians those selfsame parliamentarians whose work Mr. Kufuor praises, also let our nation down badly, on each occasion that they allowed the Kufuor regime to manipulate the legislative branch of government – by railroading bills inimical to the national interest through that particular parliament.
The question Ghana’s hard-pressed taxpayers would like answered is: Have the over-pampered members of our political class now completely forgotten that this is a nation in which there are such huge disparities in wealth – and whose government struggles to pay its own employees regularly? Do they not understand that no nation in which there are such glaring inequalities will remain a democracy for very long?
It is instructive that the gentleman who once campaigned for the presidency by asking Ghanaians to examine their personal circumstances and vote accordingly, has now forgotten his own apparent personal sense of outrage at the straightened circumstances the vast majority of ordinary people happened to find themselves in, when he was seeking to be their president, in 2000.
Mr. Kufuor’s amnesia is typical of the mentality of the generality of Ghana’s educated urban elites – a majority of whom do not really care about the plight of our nation and the endemic poverty most ordinary Ghanaians suffer from: as long as the going is good for them personally. His party’s philosophy of personal greed (respectably dressed-up with the innocuous-sounding phrase: “a property-owning democracy”) led to selfishness amongst Ghanaians rising to its apogee in the dishonest “dog-eat-dog-society” it turned our nation into.
Mr. Kufuor’s message then (when he was campaigning for the presidency in 2000), of a fair society in which there would be positive change in the personal circumstances of all Ghanaians, struck a cord with a majority of Ghanaians – who duly voted for the change in government that brought him to power as President Rawlings’ successor in office in January 2001.
What Mr. Kufuor and those who think like him in our country must understand, is that the dignity of nations, such as ours, does not lie in sumptuous presidential palace complexes (in our particular case the financial equivalent of a black-hole through which zillions of hard-pressed taxpayers’ money legally disappears regularly as costs for its construction escalate) and the luxurious lifestyles of its ruling elites – but in decent living standards and a positive overall quality of life for ordinary Ghanaians: both those presently employed and their compatriots who are now retired.
Ordinary people in Ghana do not begrudge their nation’s high and mighty ruling elite any generous retirement benefits paid them by the Ghanaian nation-state at the end of their tenures of office – as long as they are able to improve the living standards of all strata of Ghanaian society whiles in office. Until that happens, Ghanaians expect their leaders to be moderate in their demands on the public purse – as regards both their pay and perks of office whiles serving Ghana: and their retirement-benefits when they finally retire from office.
Former President Kufuor must remember that he once told Ghanaians that as a people we must learn to cut our coat according to the size of our cloth. The same advice applies in the size of the retirement packages that the Ghanaian nation-state offers its most important officeholders upon their retirement. That the former president and some of his supporters find it difficult to understand that simple fact of life illustrates perfectly the gulf that exists between them and the ordinary people of Ghana.
Since Ghana gained her independence in 1957, the ordinary people of our nation have constantly been called upon by their political leaders, over the years, to make personal sacrifices – in order to help build a better Ghana for the entirety of its people.
Today, times are tough everywhere in a world that has tipped into what by all appearances might very well turn out to be a rather severe recession. It is a situation that calls for Ghanaians from all strata of society to tighten their belts. Surely, those who volunteer to serve the people in government must set an example and also make sacrifices – such as accepting more modest retirement benefits, too? A word to the wise…
Such critics also chide Mr. Kufour for what they say is the cynicism contained in his assertion that those opposed to the ex-gratia payments to those parliamentarians did not know the “value” of their work in parliament – by pointing out the fact that in similar fashion, and without any due diligence checks, those selfsame parliamentarians incredibly approved the sale of VALCO to a non-existent special purpose vehicle, grandly christened by some of the rogues associated with the previous regime whom it was going to benefit personally, as, International Aluminum Partners: allegedly made up of two reputable international metals conglomerates that both strenuously denied ever agreeing to buy VALCO.
To such critics of our political class, it is outrageous that those parliamentarians, whom former President Kufuor defends so spiritedly, did not take into account the dire economic circumstances of what is still a poor developing nation, when they approved those astonishing ex-gratia payments to the former president and a host of other highly-placed former public officials.
In the view of many independent-minded and patriotic Ghanaians those selfsame parliamentarians whose work Mr. Kufuor praises, also let our nation down badly, on each occasion that they allowed the Kufuor regime to manipulate the legislative branch of government – by railroading bills inimical to the national interest through that particular parliament.
The question Ghana’s hard-pressed taxpayers would like answered is: Have the over-pampered members of our political class now completely forgotten that this is a nation in which there are such huge disparities in wealth – and whose government struggles to pay its own employees regularly? Do they not understand that no nation in which there are such glaring inequalities will remain a democracy for very long?
It is instructive that the gentleman who once campaigned for the presidency by asking Ghanaians to examine their personal circumstances and vote accordingly, has now forgotten his own apparent personal sense of outrage at the straightened circumstances the vast majority of ordinary people happened to find themselves in, when he was seeking to be their president, in 2000.
Mr. Kufuor’s amnesia is typical of the mentality of the generality of Ghana’s educated urban elites – a majority of whom do not really care about the plight of our nation and the endemic poverty most ordinary Ghanaians suffer from: as long as the going is good for them personally. His party’s philosophy of personal greed (respectably dressed-up with the innocuous-sounding phrase: “a property-owning democracy”) led to selfishness amongst Ghanaians rising to its apogee in the dishonest “dog-eat-dog-society” it turned our nation into.
Mr. Kufuor’s message then (when he was campaigning for the presidency in 2000), of a fair society in which there would be positive change in the personal circumstances of all Ghanaians, struck a cord with a majority of Ghanaians – who duly voted for the change in government that brought him to power as President Rawlings’ successor in office in January 2001.
What Mr. Kufuor and those who think like him in our country must understand, is that the dignity of nations, such as ours, does not lie in sumptuous presidential palace complexes (in our particular case the financial equivalent of a black-hole through which zillions of hard-pressed taxpayers’ money legally disappears regularly as costs for its construction escalate) and the luxurious lifestyles of its ruling elites – but in decent living standards and a positive overall quality of life for ordinary Ghanaians: both those presently employed and their compatriots who are now retired.
Ordinary people in Ghana do not begrudge their nation’s high and mighty ruling elite any generous retirement benefits paid them by the Ghanaian nation-state at the end of their tenures of office – as long as they are able to improve the living standards of all strata of Ghanaian society whiles in office. Until that happens, Ghanaians expect their leaders to be moderate in their demands on the public purse – as regards both their pay and perks of office whiles serving Ghana: and their retirement-benefits when they finally retire from office.
Former President Kufuor must remember that he once told Ghanaians that as a people we must learn to cut our coat according to the size of our cloth. The same advice applies in the size of the retirement packages that the Ghanaian nation-state offers its most important officeholders upon their retirement. That the former president and some of his supporters find it difficult to understand that simple fact of life illustrates perfectly the gulf that exists between them and the ordinary people of Ghana.
Since Ghana gained her independence in 1957, the ordinary people of our nation have constantly been called upon by their political leaders, over the years, to make personal sacrifices – in order to help build a better Ghana for the entirety of its people.
Today, times are tough everywhere in a world that has tipped into what by all appearances might very well turn out to be a rather severe recession. It is a situation that calls for Ghanaians from all strata of society to tighten their belts. Surely, those who volunteer to serve the people in government must set an example and also make sacrifices – such as accepting more modest retirement benefits, too? A word to the wise…
Thursday, 19 February 2009
A RARE INSIGHT INTO GHANA’S BYZANTINE FINANCIAL SERVICES SECTOR!
Critics of Ghana’s Byzantine financial services industry say that the latest scandal to hit that sector of Ghana’s economy illustrates perfectly the lax regulatory regime governing the industry. They claim that that regulatory environment is the result of the many incestuous relationships between regulators and players in the industry.
According to those critics the latest industry scandal also exposes the widespread ignorance that exists in much of the Ghanaian media about that sector of our national economy – a fact that has unfortunately allowed sharp practice in the industry to persist.
For many independent-minded and discerning Ghanaians the scandal offers a rare opportunity to take a peek at Ghana’s financial services sector – and it is not a pretty sight they see, sadly. Critics claim that like their counterparts in the decimated capital markets of the West, insider-dealing and plain crookedness, amongst industry players, are rife, in our financial services sector too (and that greed also definitely rules OK in it).
Naturally, over the last eight years that Ghana was ruled by our country’s stooges for neo-colonialism (and eager lackeys of the now-discredited neo-liberals of the West), the industry’s powerful and politically well-connected oligarchs were able to successfully hide behind the coattails of the political Establishment – whose desire to hide their own crookedness from the rest of the world, worked in their favour.
According to “bush-telegraph” sources, for example, powerful politicians using special-purpose offshore vehicles, apparently received kickbacks from the massive fees earned by some of those who profited so mightily from Ghana’s senseless forays into the piranha-infested capital markets of the West, which were made during the tenure of the previous regime.
It meant that whiles a few well-connected and powerful individuals became super-rich, Ghana (a nation whose very lifeblood was once being constantly sucked out of it, as it made regular interest payments on its large external debt of old during the Rawlings regime), incredibly, succeeded in piling up yet more debt once again.
Thus, although Ghana had much of its old debt forgiven not too long after the previous regime first assumed power in 2001, today, as a consequence of the piling up of new debt by that selfsame old regime the country has now ended up suffering from (to use a World Bank euphemism) the same debilitating “debt distress” that once crippled the Rawlings administration.
It is obvious that many more scandals, connected with the frenzied and senseless piling up of that large new external debt by the previous regime, will also soon come to light. The scale of the greed that drove some of those who profited from the massive fees generated by the piling up of that debt will shock most ordinary Ghanaians.
Doubtless, the usual admonishment used to try and silence those who seek to expose corruption in our financial services sector that, quote: “It will discourage foreign direct investment…” unquote, will be deployed against those who seek to expose past corruption within the industry and to criticise its greedy ways.
In the end, ordinary Ghanaians, now having their sensibilities insulted yet further by being asked by some of the selfsame individuals responsible for much of the corruption of the past to pay obscene amounts in ex-gratia payments to the high and mighty of yesteryear (some of whose greed it appears knows no bounds), will be prevented from getting to know the truth about how their nation was crippled because the greed for money of a few powerful individuals drove the previous regime’s insatiable thirst for foreign loans.
Clearly, Ghana would have been far better off seeking loans from China to fund its development during the tenure of President Kufuor, for example, rather than opting to raise money from the capital markets of the West. Much of the nation’s troubles under the previous regime stemmed from the difficulties it was having finding money to meet interest payments on the US$750 million sovereign bonds and the US$200 million GT corporate bonds (issued in London on GT's behalf by Iroko).
Obviously, there were no juicy fees to be had in plumping for the Chinese option – which would have meant that there would be no money forthcoming from that quarter to be shared amongst those who constituted the partnership between the Titans of our financial services industry and the powerful crooks who dominated the previous regime.
Consequently, those then running Ghana chose the capital markets of the West instead – influenced by those amongst them who wanted to secure kickbacks from their cronies in the financial services sector: and it was dressed up as evidence of the confidence the world had in our nation (a corrupt nation swirling with cocaine money that precious few reputable long-term investors – with the exception of those interested in the extractive-industries – would touch with a barge-pole if truth be told).
Currently, as we speak, a number of media-folk (described by uncharitable social commentators as “clueless and mercenary hacks”) are being deployed in an effort to stop the public from discovering the massive profits made by the lucrative partnership between some of the greedy crooks amongst our previous rulers and the more dishonest of the Titans of our financial services sector.
Those massive profits are said by some of the industry’s critics to have been made possible only as a result of insider-dealing and other unethical practices – and that it was the partnership between the influential Titans of the financial services industry and some of the most powerful amongst our previous rulers, which enabled a small number of the respectable and super-wealthy crooks in the industry, to get away with their crimes against our nation successfully and for so long.
For simple folk, such as me, it will be interesting to know the dénouement of the latest scandal to hit our financial services sector. What I yearn for most, is that above all, those curious Ghanaians who for years have been dying to know who the owners of Iroko are (and just which of the Titans amongst our financial services sector are their local associates or partners), will finally get their wish.
One certainly hopes that those Ghanaians, who are outraged that at a time when the world is grappling with the consequences of a global credit crunch, when even the most dynamic of economies have tipped into recession, their nation’s resources are being toyed with by clever and respectable white-colour criminals, will have the patience to wait for the murky details of the latest example of the “Kweku-Ananse” creative-accounting and financial-engineering schemes, said to be replete in our financial services sector, to be unraveled.
At some point, going forward, perhaps Ghanaians will finally get to hear how it came about that a bunch of faceless rogues amongst those running a shadowy trading company with Asian antecedents and not having much of a background could come to our country and literally make money from thin air at our cash-strapped nation’s expense because they had friends in high places.
Patriotic Ghanaians must pray that some of the many tentacles of that particular giant "octopus-of-greed" engaged in the massive rip-off of our nation do touch the jurisdiction of least one of the regulators and prosecutors responsible for policing the financial services industries in the US, the EU and the UK. The opportunity to make an example of crooked and wealthy Africans as well as their Asian partners in white-collar crime will definitely be hard to resist in the corridors of power in the capitals of those nations of the West.
As for those in the media who in the past sold their consciences to the once-powerful crooks of yesteryear and are now allowing themselves to be manipulated by the super- wealthy white-collar criminals who dominate our financial services sector (for personal financial gain), one simply hopes that they will at least try and find answers to a few simple questions from the devious minds they are now seeking to sell their consciences to – for the sake of their country and its hard-pressed taxpayers.
Perhaps they can finally redeem themselves by finding out for Ghanaians (and thus helping them separate fact from fiction), the true facts, as regards the wild grapevine stories now doing the rounds and which have to do with the ownership of Iroko – and how it is said by some of Ghana’s conspiracy theorists to have woven a tangled golden-web of unfathomable-greed with honey-coated words to take advantage of our clueless leaders and the nation they ruled to enrich its owners and their local associates. It is said to be a Mauritius-registered offshore entity.
The praise-singers of old, who were such fierce guard-dogs of the previous regime, would do well to tell Ghanaians if any their nation’s wealthy and well-connected business elite, who were able to send their personal net worth into the stratosphere so easily during the previous regime, actually own a stake in Iroko – and if not who are the Ghanaians who led Iroko to the boardrooms of Ghana Telecom and that of the National Investment Bank (NIB) and what was in it for them.
Are they willing, for example, to get in touch with the UK financial services sector regulator, the Financial Services Authority (FSA), to ask them if in their opinion, those uncharitable Ghanaians s who condemn the kinds of methods they say were used by Iroko to obtain business in Ghana – such as the ethics (or lack thereof) underpinning the GT corporate bond it issued on that company’s behalf in London and for which there appeared to be no credible interest-payment plan in place at the material time those bonds were issued in London – have any basis in pointing accusing fingers at Iroko for alleged sharp practice in that transaction?
Perhaps they could also get the FSA to tell them whether in its view the curious NIB promissory notes Iroko discounted for that shadowy trading firm (with Asian antecedents) that is said by some of Ghana’s conspiracy theorists to have “questionable ethical standards” would be acceptable to any self-respecting Western regulator – keen to see corporate good governance principles underpinning all financial transactions entered into by London-based financial institutions worldwide.
Given the circumstances of our nation, and at a time when even bigger financial institutions in the wealthy Western nations face an uncertain future and are being propped up by their governments (which are busy pumping vast amounts of taxpayers’ money into private banks in partial-nationalizations), how would the FSA view what industry critics describe as a “financial-sleight-of-hand “(the “Ali-Baba-magic" financial-skullduggery) that the prompt discounting of those promissory notes by Iroko represents?
Just what were those promissory notes issued for? Is what one hears (from the bush-telegraph) that discounting those promissory notes netted that shadowy trading company with zillions of hard-to-come-by US dollars in the blink of an eyelid? Above all, how would the FSA react if such an “odd” and unsanctioned transaction (by a publicly-owned bank's board of directors)had occurred in the UK’s financial services sector between a bank funded with taxpayers' money and a shadowy private foreign-based trading company?
Over the last eight years that Ghana was ruled by the greedy stooges for neo-colonialism (and lackeys of the now-discredited neo-liberals of the West), the clever and respectable rogues in our financial services sector were able to successfully hide behind the coattails of the political Establishment – whose desire to hide their own crookedness from the rest of the world, worked in their favour. It worked a treat for those oligarchs.
It is the desire to hide the massive profits made by the lucrative partnership between some of our previous rulers and some of the Titans of our financial services sector (made possible by insider-dealing and other unethical practices), which enabled the respectable and super-wealthy crooks in the industry, to get away with their crimes against our nation successfully for so long.
Today, they now have to face the music for their arrogance and hubris of the past. Sadly, now that the day of reckoning is upon them they are scrambling to avail themselves of the services of some of the amoral mercenaries in the Ghanaian media world – in a desperate attempt to prevent the law from finally catching up with them.
A major concern of many of those who have closely monitored the extraordinary growth of the financial services sector of our economy has been the many incestuous relationships between regulators and players in the industry. For example, it would appear that a tradition has now been firmly established that no self-respecting central bank governor in this country should fail to spend his or her years of retirement as either the owner of a private bank or the director of one.
It would be interesting to know what those now clamouring for tighter regulation in the financial services sectors of the major Western capitalist nations would say about such a development – were such an unfortunate occurrence to evolve there too: and regulators were busy setting up their own banks or taking up plum non-executive roles in financial services companies, upon their retirement.
The Mills administration must understand that transparency in all business transactions is what attracts reputable foreign direct investors into emerging markets. They must resist the temptation to allow opaque practices and the corruption it breeds to continue to be hidden from public view and to go unpunished – because they fall for the mantra used by the clever crooks who profited so mightily from the Kufuor administration’s corrupt ways and enabled them to get away with their nation-wrecking activities: that shining the spotlight on corrupt business deals “will frighten away foreign direct investment.”
On the contrary, transparency in our financial services sector (as well as all the other sectors of our national economy) is precisely what will attract the kind of long-term foreign direct investment that is guided by corporate good governance principles, into our country.
Hopefully the new minister for communications, the Hon. Haruna Iddrisu, wll bear that in mind when he tackles the GT/Vodafone sale and purchase agreement that the previous government entered into - and which in furtherance of they also succeeded in railroading a bill through the previous parliament: which astonshingly passed an "illegal law" indemnifying all those who participated in that shabby deal from future prosecution for any illegal actions they may have been guilty of in striking the deal (contrary to our constitution which admonishes Ghanaians to fight corruption - not encourage it).
The corruption of the past that bedeviled Ghana’s financial services sector and eventually led to the difficulties our nation faces today must never be allowed to occur again – and the only way to prevent their reoccurrence is to expose all the shady deals that went on during the tenure of the previous regime: and prosecute all those who helped to cheat our nation and enriched themselves at our nation’s expense in the process. A word to the wise…
According to those critics the latest industry scandal also exposes the widespread ignorance that exists in much of the Ghanaian media about that sector of our national economy – a fact that has unfortunately allowed sharp practice in the industry to persist.
For many independent-minded and discerning Ghanaians the scandal offers a rare opportunity to take a peek at Ghana’s financial services sector – and it is not a pretty sight they see, sadly. Critics claim that like their counterparts in the decimated capital markets of the West, insider-dealing and plain crookedness, amongst industry players, are rife, in our financial services sector too (and that greed also definitely rules OK in it).
Naturally, over the last eight years that Ghana was ruled by our country’s stooges for neo-colonialism (and eager lackeys of the now-discredited neo-liberals of the West), the industry’s powerful and politically well-connected oligarchs were able to successfully hide behind the coattails of the political Establishment – whose desire to hide their own crookedness from the rest of the world, worked in their favour.
According to “bush-telegraph” sources, for example, powerful politicians using special-purpose offshore vehicles, apparently received kickbacks from the massive fees earned by some of those who profited so mightily from Ghana’s senseless forays into the piranha-infested capital markets of the West, which were made during the tenure of the previous regime.
It meant that whiles a few well-connected and powerful individuals became super-rich, Ghana (a nation whose very lifeblood was once being constantly sucked out of it, as it made regular interest payments on its large external debt of old during the Rawlings regime), incredibly, succeeded in piling up yet more debt once again.
Thus, although Ghana had much of its old debt forgiven not too long after the previous regime first assumed power in 2001, today, as a consequence of the piling up of new debt by that selfsame old regime the country has now ended up suffering from (to use a World Bank euphemism) the same debilitating “debt distress” that once crippled the Rawlings administration.
It is obvious that many more scandals, connected with the frenzied and senseless piling up of that large new external debt by the previous regime, will also soon come to light. The scale of the greed that drove some of those who profited from the massive fees generated by the piling up of that debt will shock most ordinary Ghanaians.
Doubtless, the usual admonishment used to try and silence those who seek to expose corruption in our financial services sector that, quote: “It will discourage foreign direct investment…” unquote, will be deployed against those who seek to expose past corruption within the industry and to criticise its greedy ways.
In the end, ordinary Ghanaians, now having their sensibilities insulted yet further by being asked by some of the selfsame individuals responsible for much of the corruption of the past to pay obscene amounts in ex-gratia payments to the high and mighty of yesteryear (some of whose greed it appears knows no bounds), will be prevented from getting to know the truth about how their nation was crippled because the greed for money of a few powerful individuals drove the previous regime’s insatiable thirst for foreign loans.
Clearly, Ghana would have been far better off seeking loans from China to fund its development during the tenure of President Kufuor, for example, rather than opting to raise money from the capital markets of the West. Much of the nation’s troubles under the previous regime stemmed from the difficulties it was having finding money to meet interest payments on the US$750 million sovereign bonds and the US$200 million GT corporate bonds (issued in London on GT's behalf by Iroko).
Obviously, there were no juicy fees to be had in plumping for the Chinese option – which would have meant that there would be no money forthcoming from that quarter to be shared amongst those who constituted the partnership between the Titans of our financial services industry and the powerful crooks who dominated the previous regime.
Consequently, those then running Ghana chose the capital markets of the West instead – influenced by those amongst them who wanted to secure kickbacks from their cronies in the financial services sector: and it was dressed up as evidence of the confidence the world had in our nation (a corrupt nation swirling with cocaine money that precious few reputable long-term investors – with the exception of those interested in the extractive-industries – would touch with a barge-pole if truth be told).
Currently, as we speak, a number of media-folk (described by uncharitable social commentators as “clueless and mercenary hacks”) are being deployed in an effort to stop the public from discovering the massive profits made by the lucrative partnership between some of the greedy crooks amongst our previous rulers and the more dishonest of the Titans of our financial services sector.
Those massive profits are said by some of the industry’s critics to have been made possible only as a result of insider-dealing and other unethical practices – and that it was the partnership between the influential Titans of the financial services industry and some of the most powerful amongst our previous rulers, which enabled a small number of the respectable and super-wealthy crooks in the industry, to get away with their crimes against our nation successfully and for so long.
For simple folk, such as me, it will be interesting to know the dénouement of the latest scandal to hit our financial services sector. What I yearn for most, is that above all, those curious Ghanaians who for years have been dying to know who the owners of Iroko are (and just which of the Titans amongst our financial services sector are their local associates or partners), will finally get their wish.
One certainly hopes that those Ghanaians, who are outraged that at a time when the world is grappling with the consequences of a global credit crunch, when even the most dynamic of economies have tipped into recession, their nation’s resources are being toyed with by clever and respectable white-colour criminals, will have the patience to wait for the murky details of the latest example of the “Kweku-Ananse” creative-accounting and financial-engineering schemes, said to be replete in our financial services sector, to be unraveled.
At some point, going forward, perhaps Ghanaians will finally get to hear how it came about that a bunch of faceless rogues amongst those running a shadowy trading company with Asian antecedents and not having much of a background could come to our country and literally make money from thin air at our cash-strapped nation’s expense because they had friends in high places.
Patriotic Ghanaians must pray that some of the many tentacles of that particular giant "octopus-of-greed" engaged in the massive rip-off of our nation do touch the jurisdiction of least one of the regulators and prosecutors responsible for policing the financial services industries in the US, the EU and the UK. The opportunity to make an example of crooked and wealthy Africans as well as their Asian partners in white-collar crime will definitely be hard to resist in the corridors of power in the capitals of those nations of the West.
As for those in the media who in the past sold their consciences to the once-powerful crooks of yesteryear and are now allowing themselves to be manipulated by the super- wealthy white-collar criminals who dominate our financial services sector (for personal financial gain), one simply hopes that they will at least try and find answers to a few simple questions from the devious minds they are now seeking to sell their consciences to – for the sake of their country and its hard-pressed taxpayers.
Perhaps they can finally redeem themselves by finding out for Ghanaians (and thus helping them separate fact from fiction), the true facts, as regards the wild grapevine stories now doing the rounds and which have to do with the ownership of Iroko – and how it is said by some of Ghana’s conspiracy theorists to have woven a tangled golden-web of unfathomable-greed with honey-coated words to take advantage of our clueless leaders and the nation they ruled to enrich its owners and their local associates. It is said to be a Mauritius-registered offshore entity.
The praise-singers of old, who were such fierce guard-dogs of the previous regime, would do well to tell Ghanaians if any their nation’s wealthy and well-connected business elite, who were able to send their personal net worth into the stratosphere so easily during the previous regime, actually own a stake in Iroko – and if not who are the Ghanaians who led Iroko to the boardrooms of Ghana Telecom and that of the National Investment Bank (NIB) and what was in it for them.
Are they willing, for example, to get in touch with the UK financial services sector regulator, the Financial Services Authority (FSA), to ask them if in their opinion, those uncharitable Ghanaians s who condemn the kinds of methods they say were used by Iroko to obtain business in Ghana – such as the ethics (or lack thereof) underpinning the GT corporate bond it issued on that company’s behalf in London and for which there appeared to be no credible interest-payment plan in place at the material time those bonds were issued in London – have any basis in pointing accusing fingers at Iroko for alleged sharp practice in that transaction?
Perhaps they could also get the FSA to tell them whether in its view the curious NIB promissory notes Iroko discounted for that shadowy trading firm (with Asian antecedents) that is said by some of Ghana’s conspiracy theorists to have “questionable ethical standards” would be acceptable to any self-respecting Western regulator – keen to see corporate good governance principles underpinning all financial transactions entered into by London-based financial institutions worldwide.
Given the circumstances of our nation, and at a time when even bigger financial institutions in the wealthy Western nations face an uncertain future and are being propped up by their governments (which are busy pumping vast amounts of taxpayers’ money into private banks in partial-nationalizations), how would the FSA view what industry critics describe as a “financial-sleight-of-hand “(the “Ali-Baba-magic" financial-skullduggery) that the prompt discounting of those promissory notes by Iroko represents?
Just what were those promissory notes issued for? Is what one hears (from the bush-telegraph) that discounting those promissory notes netted that shadowy trading company with zillions of hard-to-come-by US dollars in the blink of an eyelid? Above all, how would the FSA react if such an “odd” and unsanctioned transaction (by a publicly-owned bank's board of directors)had occurred in the UK’s financial services sector between a bank funded with taxpayers' money and a shadowy private foreign-based trading company?
Over the last eight years that Ghana was ruled by the greedy stooges for neo-colonialism (and lackeys of the now-discredited neo-liberals of the West), the clever and respectable rogues in our financial services sector were able to successfully hide behind the coattails of the political Establishment – whose desire to hide their own crookedness from the rest of the world, worked in their favour. It worked a treat for those oligarchs.
It is the desire to hide the massive profits made by the lucrative partnership between some of our previous rulers and some of the Titans of our financial services sector (made possible by insider-dealing and other unethical practices), which enabled the respectable and super-wealthy crooks in the industry, to get away with their crimes against our nation successfully for so long.
Today, they now have to face the music for their arrogance and hubris of the past. Sadly, now that the day of reckoning is upon them they are scrambling to avail themselves of the services of some of the amoral mercenaries in the Ghanaian media world – in a desperate attempt to prevent the law from finally catching up with them.
A major concern of many of those who have closely monitored the extraordinary growth of the financial services sector of our economy has been the many incestuous relationships between regulators and players in the industry. For example, it would appear that a tradition has now been firmly established that no self-respecting central bank governor in this country should fail to spend his or her years of retirement as either the owner of a private bank or the director of one.
It would be interesting to know what those now clamouring for tighter regulation in the financial services sectors of the major Western capitalist nations would say about such a development – were such an unfortunate occurrence to evolve there too: and regulators were busy setting up their own banks or taking up plum non-executive roles in financial services companies, upon their retirement.
The Mills administration must understand that transparency in all business transactions is what attracts reputable foreign direct investors into emerging markets. They must resist the temptation to allow opaque practices and the corruption it breeds to continue to be hidden from public view and to go unpunished – because they fall for the mantra used by the clever crooks who profited so mightily from the Kufuor administration’s corrupt ways and enabled them to get away with their nation-wrecking activities: that shining the spotlight on corrupt business deals “will frighten away foreign direct investment.”
On the contrary, transparency in our financial services sector (as well as all the other sectors of our national economy) is precisely what will attract the kind of long-term foreign direct investment that is guided by corporate good governance principles, into our country.
Hopefully the new minister for communications, the Hon. Haruna Iddrisu, wll bear that in mind when he tackles the GT/Vodafone sale and purchase agreement that the previous government entered into - and which in furtherance of they also succeeded in railroading a bill through the previous parliament: which astonshingly passed an "illegal law" indemnifying all those who participated in that shabby deal from future prosecution for any illegal actions they may have been guilty of in striking the deal (contrary to our constitution which admonishes Ghanaians to fight corruption - not encourage it).
The corruption of the past that bedeviled Ghana’s financial services sector and eventually led to the difficulties our nation faces today must never be allowed to occur again – and the only way to prevent their reoccurrence is to expose all the shady deals that went on during the tenure of the previous regime: and prosecute all those who helped to cheat our nation and enriched themselves at our nation’s expense in the process. A word to the wise…
Could Ghana’s "Tro-Tros" Constitute An Efficient Private-Sector Mass-Transportation System?
I recently spent a day with a dear friend from the Pennsylvanian city of Scranton, visiting some parts of Accra that are usually included in the itineraries of most local tour companies – as places of interest for tourists that are worth visiting. Our day-trip was undertaken exclusively travelling around Accra with the city’s famous tro-tros (mini-buses).
As we made our way around town, I could not help but wonder what insights, if any, into the life endured by ordinary people, on a daily basis, which the presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the December 2008 election, Nana Akufo-Addo, gained, during the presidential election campaign – when he too decided to visit parts of Accra by travelling in some of Accra’s tro-tros.
What first struck me most, as my friend and I travelled around town during our day-trip, was the fact that it took ages to get a tro-tro – because the ones that came by, were invariably full or did not have two free seats available to enable us board them together. A considerable amount of time therefore went by before we got on one whenever we had to change tro-tros to get to different destinations at various stages of our sightseeing trip.
Our starting point was Mendskrom – which is the nearest tro-tro stop from where I live at McCarthy Hill. Clearly, if we were employees of any establishment in Accra, we would have had to venture out of the house roughly a good three hours ahead of time daily – in order to get to work by 8.30 am.
If ordinary people have to put up with such inconvenience daily, then perhaps the question we ought to pose our leaders is: Are they sufficiently aware of the difficulty workers face as they struggle to get to work on time daily – and if they are, what do they propose to do about it: in order to help boost productivity nationwide?
Another of the not inconsiderable number of observations we made during our day-trip, was that virtually every one of the tro-tros we got around in, was a mini-van that had been converted into a bus. It was obvious to my Scranton friend and I that in effect we were travelling in vehicles that were death-traps – and that were we to be involved in a vehicular-collision at any point during our journey, many of the passengers on the tro-tro, including both of us, would most probably be seriously injured.
One could easily imagine the number of passengers who would end up in hospital with broken legs and probably suffer some internal injuries too – because of the fact that the seats of the tro-tros would most certainly become dislodged and crash into some of the passengers: simply because those seats were bolted unto the thin floors of the mini-buses with the flimsiest of bolts and nuts.
Anyone observing the bolts and nuts used to hold their seats in position in any detail, does not need to be a qualified engineer to conclude that those who carry out such conversions do not take into account the structural need to prevent such an occurrence – because those ‘mini-buses’ had not been structurally designed to carry any significant number of seated passengers, other than two front-seat passengers, in the first place.
In a nation with one of the highest vehicular accident rates in the world, would it not make sense to ensure the safety of the travelling public – by passing a law to make it illegal for any vehicle not structurally designed to ferry passengers, to do so? We must certainly never allow converted vans and mini-vans to be registered in our country to carry passengers in 21st century Ghana.
Surely, if Chinese companies have invested in assembly-plants here, some of the many banks and other non-banking financial services sector entities could be persuaded by government, to partner them: to make it possible for the owners of Ghana’s fleet of privately-owned tro-tros, to acquire purpose-built mini-buses on more generous hire-purchase terms, than are currently available – so that a national tro-tro fleet renewal programme could gradually be undertaken in the next four years?
If young tro-tro drivers, imbued with the spirit of enterprise, who are currently employed by comfortably well-off tro-tro owners up and down our country, were helped to acquire their own tro-tros: with funds from a special youth-enterprise fund set up for just such a purpose, would we not help such young men and women to become self-employed micro-entrepreneurs – and help give birth to an enterprise-culture amongst the younger generation of Ghanaians sadly currently only being ruthlessly exploited by our nation’s many Shylock tro-tro owners?
Clearly, Ghana’s tro-tros have the potential to constitute an efficient nationwide mass-transportation system – operated entirely by the private sector. Consequently, as a nation, we ought to make a conscious effort to help the many entrepreneurs who invest in that sector – as well as encourage young people imbued with a sense of personal initiative, who find employment in that sector of our economy as drivers and “mates” (conductors to the initiated), to become owner-drivers.
Currently, many of such young people are merely exploited for their labour – and are at the mercy of selfish and hard-hearted tro-tro owners: who care more about obtaining their daily sales than the welfare of their employees and the safety of the travelling public who use those rickety and unsafe tro-tros daily plying roads up and down our country.
Perhaps it is time the members of our political class currently in power did some creative thinking: and explored the possibility of creating a new generation of an entrepreneurial-class for the transport sector of Ghana’s economy – by empowering some of the many young people employed in that sector of our nation’s economy to own their own tro-tros: thus helping them improve their standard of living, whiles providing the public who depend on them with purpose-built and safe tro-tros to travel on.
As we made our way around town, I could not help but wonder what insights, if any, into the life endured by ordinary people, on a daily basis, which the presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the December 2008 election, Nana Akufo-Addo, gained, during the presidential election campaign – when he too decided to visit parts of Accra by travelling in some of Accra’s tro-tros.
What first struck me most, as my friend and I travelled around town during our day-trip, was the fact that it took ages to get a tro-tro – because the ones that came by, were invariably full or did not have two free seats available to enable us board them together. A considerable amount of time therefore went by before we got on one whenever we had to change tro-tros to get to different destinations at various stages of our sightseeing trip.
Our starting point was Mendskrom – which is the nearest tro-tro stop from where I live at McCarthy Hill. Clearly, if we were employees of any establishment in Accra, we would have had to venture out of the house roughly a good three hours ahead of time daily – in order to get to work by 8.30 am.
If ordinary people have to put up with such inconvenience daily, then perhaps the question we ought to pose our leaders is: Are they sufficiently aware of the difficulty workers face as they struggle to get to work on time daily – and if they are, what do they propose to do about it: in order to help boost productivity nationwide?
Another of the not inconsiderable number of observations we made during our day-trip, was that virtually every one of the tro-tros we got around in, was a mini-van that had been converted into a bus. It was obvious to my Scranton friend and I that in effect we were travelling in vehicles that were death-traps – and that were we to be involved in a vehicular-collision at any point during our journey, many of the passengers on the tro-tro, including both of us, would most probably be seriously injured.
One could easily imagine the number of passengers who would end up in hospital with broken legs and probably suffer some internal injuries too – because of the fact that the seats of the tro-tros would most certainly become dislodged and crash into some of the passengers: simply because those seats were bolted unto the thin floors of the mini-buses with the flimsiest of bolts and nuts.
Anyone observing the bolts and nuts used to hold their seats in position in any detail, does not need to be a qualified engineer to conclude that those who carry out such conversions do not take into account the structural need to prevent such an occurrence – because those ‘mini-buses’ had not been structurally designed to carry any significant number of seated passengers, other than two front-seat passengers, in the first place.
In a nation with one of the highest vehicular accident rates in the world, would it not make sense to ensure the safety of the travelling public – by passing a law to make it illegal for any vehicle not structurally designed to ferry passengers, to do so? We must certainly never allow converted vans and mini-vans to be registered in our country to carry passengers in 21st century Ghana.
Surely, if Chinese companies have invested in assembly-plants here, some of the many banks and other non-banking financial services sector entities could be persuaded by government, to partner them: to make it possible for the owners of Ghana’s fleet of privately-owned tro-tros, to acquire purpose-built mini-buses on more generous hire-purchase terms, than are currently available – so that a national tro-tro fleet renewal programme could gradually be undertaken in the next four years?
If young tro-tro drivers, imbued with the spirit of enterprise, who are currently employed by comfortably well-off tro-tro owners up and down our country, were helped to acquire their own tro-tros: with funds from a special youth-enterprise fund set up for just such a purpose, would we not help such young men and women to become self-employed micro-entrepreneurs – and help give birth to an enterprise-culture amongst the younger generation of Ghanaians sadly currently only being ruthlessly exploited by our nation’s many Shylock tro-tro owners?
Clearly, Ghana’s tro-tros have the potential to constitute an efficient nationwide mass-transportation system – operated entirely by the private sector. Consequently, as a nation, we ought to make a conscious effort to help the many entrepreneurs who invest in that sector – as well as encourage young people imbued with a sense of personal initiative, who find employment in that sector of our economy as drivers and “mates” (conductors to the initiated), to become owner-drivers.
Currently, many of such young people are merely exploited for their labour – and are at the mercy of selfish and hard-hearted tro-tro owners: who care more about obtaining their daily sales than the welfare of their employees and the safety of the travelling public who use those rickety and unsafe tro-tros daily plying roads up and down our country.
Perhaps it is time the members of our political class currently in power did some creative thinking: and explored the possibility of creating a new generation of an entrepreneurial-class for the transport sector of Ghana’s economy – by empowering some of the many young people employed in that sector of our nation’s economy to own their own tro-tros: thus helping them improve their standard of living, whiles providing the public who depend on them with purpose-built and safe tro-tros to travel on.
Tuesday, 10 February 2009
CAN THE JUDICIARY DOOM THE NEW MILLS ADMINISTRATION?
After a rather strained conversation with a friend one Saturday afternoon (7th February, 2009) it suddenly dawned on me that he was right in saying that the new Mills administration faces a potential danger that many Ghanaians are unaware of.
The post-election regime-change euphoria generated amongst many Ghanaians, including even some of those in the media who truly love mother Ghana, has blinded many of us too, to a clear and present danger facing our nation.
It is important that those in the media who take their watchdog role in society seriously (and have never allowed their consciences to be bought by members of our political class – from across the spectrum of Ghanaian politics) act to alert the nation to what is one of the biggest dangers now facing the enterprise Ghana.
Our nation’s march towards progress, the transformation of our society into Africa’s equivalent of the egalitarian societies of Scandinavia, could be halted in its tracks – if the new administration is held hostage: by an alliance between those who benefited so mightily from the patronage of the powerful tribal-supremacist cabal that dominated the previous regime and some of the members of a supposedly-independent judiciary: who were apparently sympathetic to the previous New Patriotic Party (NPP) regime.
For Ghana’s independent-minded patriots, including the so-called “floating-voters” (the discerning, non-partisan and non-tribalistic Ghanaians, whose crucial votes gave President Mills victory in eight out of Ghana’s ten regions), it is vital that Professor Mills’ administration succeeds. Consequently, it is important that the dark forces of the past are not allowed to sabotage his regime, by stealth, under any circumstances.
Initially, I was appalled by the thrust of my friend’s argument – as I saw it as an attack on an independent judiciary. However, upon reflection, it suddenly occurred to me that what my friend was saying was indeed profound. An alliance between the anti-democratic elements in the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and those judges who were apparently being relied on by the Maxwell Kofi Jumahs and the Atta Akeas, to overturn the 2008 presidential and parliamentary election results in a number of key constituencies is indeed a distinct possibility.
It will be recalled that both Maxwell Kofi Jumah and Atta Akyea, in recorded conversations broadcast on Radio Gold FM’s “Election Forensics” programme, made statements that made it clear that both knew their party could always rely on certain judges to deliver favourable judgments for the NPP government, in cases in which the previous regime had an interest.
No one who listened to those recordings could have failed to understand that the Maxwell Kofi Jumahs, the Atta Akyeas and the Malik Yakubu Alhassans (who were obviously having what they all thought were secret conversations being held behind closed doors) were working feverishly to subvert the will of ordinary Ghanaians – and steal the election by stealth: in the immediate aftermath of the December 2008 elections.
A key part of their strategy was the role that members of the judiciary, whom they referred to as the “right” judges, were expected to play in their attempt to deny Ghanaians the change they so obviously desired – as those cynical oligarchs masquerading as believers in democracy and the rule of law, sought to manipulate the judiciary in what in effect was a rolling coup attempt: which their recourse to using a section of what in reality is an unelected and unaccountable judiciary, represented.
It is also instructive that just recently, a key figure amongst those who only yesterday sought to deny Ghanaians the change they so clearly wanted, the newly-elected member of parliament for Abuakwa South, Atta Akyea, conveniently forgot his own anti-democratic utterances and disgraceful attempt to manipulate the legal process and help the NPP steal an election, when he made an intervention during the sitting of the parliamentary committee vetting the president’s nominees for ministerial appointments.
During the vetting by the parliamentary committee responsible for vetting those nominated by the president for ministerial positions, Atta Akeyea (who in the infamous “Election Forensics” tape-recordings broadcast by Radio Gold was heard saying in Twi: “…saa democracy nonsense yii…”) sought to pose what many saw as a most absurd question – which made reference to the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) era when Ghana was ruled by a military dictatorship.
There are some who wondered what Atta Akyea’s real motive was for posing what on the surface seemed an innocuous question. Was the idea to possibly evoke in the minds of some of those listening to the committee’s hearings, the positive picture of a member of the party apparently dedicated to freedom in Ghana, the NPP, questioning a former cadre of yesteryear’s dictatorial PNDC regime – now about to become a minister in the new Mills administration, perhaps?
Clearly, one of the tactics in the strategy adopted by those who benefitted materially from the previous regime and consequently now wish the new Mills administration to fail, is to define it as a natural successor to the PNDC military dictatorship – which Maxwell Kofi Jumah made an oblique reference to when he was recorded giving a pep-talk to the myrmidon-types (the “Macho-men”) that his party had recruited to snatch ballot boxes and to help them successfully rig the December 2008 election.
Are the verbal-sleights-of-hand of the Atta Akyeas of Ghanaian politics a pointer to the future – and part of the propaganda tactics in the strategy adopted by those powerful anti-democratic and elitist Akan tribal-supremacist elements in the NPP: who apparently thought Ghanaians had no right to vote their party out of power and sought to use all possible means (fair and foul), to achieve their aim of staying in power regardless of the national mood, perhaps?
If the new Mills administration is to succeed it must clip the wings of the dangerous tribal supremacist cabal that dominated the previous regime – and hijacked virtually the whole machinery of state for their personal benefit as well as that of their family clans and cronies.
To checkmate those enemies of our nation, it is in the national interest that the new Mills administration investigates what was a clear coup attempt by those who tried to rig the December 2008 polls. There is enough evidence to prosecute some of those who sought to deny Ghanaians the change they wanted – such as the shocking things heard in the “Election Forensics” programme tape-recordings played by Raymond Archer and broadcast by Radio Gold FM during the December 2008 elections.
The government must prosecute all those who were part of what clearly was a conspiracy to subvert Ghanaian democracy, during, and in the immediate aftermath, of the December 2008 – and whose outrageous plans, thank God, were thwarted by the vigilance of those Ghanaians whose heroic actions that day showed the wisdom in the popular saying: “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”
The new administration must also do what all US administrations do to ensure that their political agenda is not frustrated by the judiciary – make sure that they promote people who share their worldview to the US Supreme Court whenever vacancies occur amongst the justices of the US Supreme Court.
It is clear from those infamous Maxwell Kofi Jumah and Atta Akyea tape-recordings that the NPP was able to pack the judiciary with judges, whom it was obvious, they could manipulate at will. Professor Mills’ regime must do all it can to help protect Ghanaian democracy by finding a way to get all such compromised judges to retire from the bench quickly, on their own accord.
If the NDC regime fails to do so because they fear being accused (by those who probably wish them ill, in any case) of interfering with the judiciary, they will wake up to find, four years hence, that their regime had effectively been held hostage by a few corrupt, unelected and unaccountable judges loyal to the crooks who gang-raped mother Ghana so brutally, during the tenure of the NPP.
We must not allow those who when presented with a historic opportunity by Providence to set new standards of morality in our public life and deepen the roots of Ghanaian democracy by committing themselves to the rule of law, failed our nation, to stop the new administration from implementing the manifesto it presented to Ghanaians and which eventually won them the December 2008 elections.
If President Mills wants his regime and our country to succeed, he must act boldly to rid the judiciary of all those judges who chose to collaborate with the previous regime in pursing its selective-justice agenda.
If the president fails to do so his regime risks being held to ransom by those selfsame judges – who for all we know may still be loyal to those amoral men (and women) of yesterday, who held power not too long ago and abused it with total impunity: and who now wish to get away with their crimes against the ordinary people of Ghana and their nation, by manipulating the members of the judiciary whom they referred to once upon a time as the “right” judges, to frustrate the work of the new administration. A word to the wise…
May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
The post-election regime-change euphoria generated amongst many Ghanaians, including even some of those in the media who truly love mother Ghana, has blinded many of us too, to a clear and present danger facing our nation.
It is important that those in the media who take their watchdog role in society seriously (and have never allowed their consciences to be bought by members of our political class – from across the spectrum of Ghanaian politics) act to alert the nation to what is one of the biggest dangers now facing the enterprise Ghana.
Our nation’s march towards progress, the transformation of our society into Africa’s equivalent of the egalitarian societies of Scandinavia, could be halted in its tracks – if the new administration is held hostage: by an alliance between those who benefited so mightily from the patronage of the powerful tribal-supremacist cabal that dominated the previous regime and some of the members of a supposedly-independent judiciary: who were apparently sympathetic to the previous New Patriotic Party (NPP) regime.
For Ghana’s independent-minded patriots, including the so-called “floating-voters” (the discerning, non-partisan and non-tribalistic Ghanaians, whose crucial votes gave President Mills victory in eight out of Ghana’s ten regions), it is vital that Professor Mills’ administration succeeds. Consequently, it is important that the dark forces of the past are not allowed to sabotage his regime, by stealth, under any circumstances.
Initially, I was appalled by the thrust of my friend’s argument – as I saw it as an attack on an independent judiciary. However, upon reflection, it suddenly occurred to me that what my friend was saying was indeed profound. An alliance between the anti-democratic elements in the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and those judges who were apparently being relied on by the Maxwell Kofi Jumahs and the Atta Akeas, to overturn the 2008 presidential and parliamentary election results in a number of key constituencies is indeed a distinct possibility.
It will be recalled that both Maxwell Kofi Jumah and Atta Akyea, in recorded conversations broadcast on Radio Gold FM’s “Election Forensics” programme, made statements that made it clear that both knew their party could always rely on certain judges to deliver favourable judgments for the NPP government, in cases in which the previous regime had an interest.
No one who listened to those recordings could have failed to understand that the Maxwell Kofi Jumahs, the Atta Akyeas and the Malik Yakubu Alhassans (who were obviously having what they all thought were secret conversations being held behind closed doors) were working feverishly to subvert the will of ordinary Ghanaians – and steal the election by stealth: in the immediate aftermath of the December 2008 elections.
A key part of their strategy was the role that members of the judiciary, whom they referred to as the “right” judges, were expected to play in their attempt to deny Ghanaians the change they so obviously desired – as those cynical oligarchs masquerading as believers in democracy and the rule of law, sought to manipulate the judiciary in what in effect was a rolling coup attempt: which their recourse to using a section of what in reality is an unelected and unaccountable judiciary, represented.
It is also instructive that just recently, a key figure amongst those who only yesterday sought to deny Ghanaians the change they so clearly wanted, the newly-elected member of parliament for Abuakwa South, Atta Akyea, conveniently forgot his own anti-democratic utterances and disgraceful attempt to manipulate the legal process and help the NPP steal an election, when he made an intervention during the sitting of the parliamentary committee vetting the president’s nominees for ministerial appointments.
During the vetting by the parliamentary committee responsible for vetting those nominated by the president for ministerial positions, Atta Akeyea (who in the infamous “Election Forensics” tape-recordings broadcast by Radio Gold was heard saying in Twi: “…saa democracy nonsense yii…”) sought to pose what many saw as a most absurd question – which made reference to the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) era when Ghana was ruled by a military dictatorship.
There are some who wondered what Atta Akyea’s real motive was for posing what on the surface seemed an innocuous question. Was the idea to possibly evoke in the minds of some of those listening to the committee’s hearings, the positive picture of a member of the party apparently dedicated to freedom in Ghana, the NPP, questioning a former cadre of yesteryear’s dictatorial PNDC regime – now about to become a minister in the new Mills administration, perhaps?
Clearly, one of the tactics in the strategy adopted by those who benefitted materially from the previous regime and consequently now wish the new Mills administration to fail, is to define it as a natural successor to the PNDC military dictatorship – which Maxwell Kofi Jumah made an oblique reference to when he was recorded giving a pep-talk to the myrmidon-types (the “Macho-men”) that his party had recruited to snatch ballot boxes and to help them successfully rig the December 2008 election.
Are the verbal-sleights-of-hand of the Atta Akyeas of Ghanaian politics a pointer to the future – and part of the propaganda tactics in the strategy adopted by those powerful anti-democratic and elitist Akan tribal-supremacist elements in the NPP: who apparently thought Ghanaians had no right to vote their party out of power and sought to use all possible means (fair and foul), to achieve their aim of staying in power regardless of the national mood, perhaps?
If the new Mills administration is to succeed it must clip the wings of the dangerous tribal supremacist cabal that dominated the previous regime – and hijacked virtually the whole machinery of state for their personal benefit as well as that of their family clans and cronies.
To checkmate those enemies of our nation, it is in the national interest that the new Mills administration investigates what was a clear coup attempt by those who tried to rig the December 2008 polls. There is enough evidence to prosecute some of those who sought to deny Ghanaians the change they wanted – such as the shocking things heard in the “Election Forensics” programme tape-recordings played by Raymond Archer and broadcast by Radio Gold FM during the December 2008 elections.
The government must prosecute all those who were part of what clearly was a conspiracy to subvert Ghanaian democracy, during, and in the immediate aftermath, of the December 2008 – and whose outrageous plans, thank God, were thwarted by the vigilance of those Ghanaians whose heroic actions that day showed the wisdom in the popular saying: “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”
The new administration must also do what all US administrations do to ensure that their political agenda is not frustrated by the judiciary – make sure that they promote people who share their worldview to the US Supreme Court whenever vacancies occur amongst the justices of the US Supreme Court.
It is clear from those infamous Maxwell Kofi Jumah and Atta Akyea tape-recordings that the NPP was able to pack the judiciary with judges, whom it was obvious, they could manipulate at will. Professor Mills’ regime must do all it can to help protect Ghanaian democracy by finding a way to get all such compromised judges to retire from the bench quickly, on their own accord.
If the NDC regime fails to do so because they fear being accused (by those who probably wish them ill, in any case) of interfering with the judiciary, they will wake up to find, four years hence, that their regime had effectively been held hostage by a few corrupt, unelected and unaccountable judges loyal to the crooks who gang-raped mother Ghana so brutally, during the tenure of the NPP.
We must not allow those who when presented with a historic opportunity by Providence to set new standards of morality in our public life and deepen the roots of Ghanaian democracy by committing themselves to the rule of law, failed our nation, to stop the new administration from implementing the manifesto it presented to Ghanaians and which eventually won them the December 2008 elections.
If President Mills wants his regime and our country to succeed, he must act boldly to rid the judiciary of all those judges who chose to collaborate with the previous regime in pursing its selective-justice agenda.
If the president fails to do so his regime risks being held to ransom by those selfsame judges – who for all we know may still be loyal to those amoral men (and women) of yesterday, who held power not too long ago and abused it with total impunity: and who now wish to get away with their crimes against the ordinary people of Ghana and their nation, by manipulating the members of the judiciary whom they referred to once upon a time as the “right” judges, to frustrate the work of the new administration. A word to the wise…
May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
Friday, 6 February 2009
The U.N. Has A Moral Obligation To Protect The People Of Darfur From Sudan's Brutal And Oppressive Rulers - And It Must Do So Now!
The world was saved from catastrophe in 1945 as a result of the moral courage shown by a number of that era's leaders during the Second World War. Adolf Hitler’s evil Nazi regime was defeated because leaders such as Britain’s Sir Winston Churchill and US President Roosevelt, rather than appease Adolf Hitler, confronted and defeated him.
The people of Darfur expect the Secretary General of the United Nations, Mr. Ban Ky-Moon, to follow the example of Churchill and Roosevelt – and have the moral courage to confront the leaders of Sudan, not appease them. The government of Sudan has adopted a scorched-earth strategy in its ethnic-cleansing war against the people of Darfur.
Surely, the U.N. of today exists to protect vulnerable members of the one human race from the 21st century’s Adolf Hitlers – not to give succour to regimes carrying out pogroms? So why is the UN Secretary General giving the world the impression that he does not want to offend the sensibilities of the mass-murderers who now rule Sudan?
The Sudanese government is as brutal and cynical as the Nazi regime was – and its racist attempt to wipe out the people of Darfur is an affront to all of humankind. The time has now come for the international community to put aside the kind of political correctness that enables a number of repressive and brutal regimes around the world to commit crimes against humanity with impunity – and confront Sudan’s leaders.
One of the most outrageous arguments made by those who in reality do not want to help protect the people of Darfur from their brutal rulers, is that confronting the Sudanese regime will only worsen their plight – when in the meantime Sudan’s racist rulers are literally busy wiping them off the face of the earth.
The people of Darfur are members of the one human race too – and the world must protect them from a racist regime of Africans that is responsible for an African equivalent of the Nazi Holocaust. Sudan’s racist leaders regard the people of Darfur as less than human – simply because they are of a darker hue.
The sad irony in all this is that the Arab world, which Sudan’s leaders claim kinship with, despises Sudan’s so-called ‘Arabs’ too – because they are also seen by Arabs as a dark-skinned people. The international community must encourage the International Criminal Court (ICC) to indict Sudan’s President Bashir – and to issue a warrant for his immediate arrest.
President Bashir and the members of the apartheid regime he leads are as evil as the Nazi regime was. Humankind must never tolerate such regimes – and that is why the U.N. has a moral obligation to protect the people of Darfur from their despotic and barbarous rulers. The international community must put aside political correctness and confront the government of Sudan – not appease it: for, that would be unforgivable moral cowardness. Period.
The people of Darfur expect the Secretary General of the United Nations, Mr. Ban Ky-Moon, to follow the example of Churchill and Roosevelt – and have the moral courage to confront the leaders of Sudan, not appease them. The government of Sudan has adopted a scorched-earth strategy in its ethnic-cleansing war against the people of Darfur.
Surely, the U.N. of today exists to protect vulnerable members of the one human race from the 21st century’s Adolf Hitlers – not to give succour to regimes carrying out pogroms? So why is the UN Secretary General giving the world the impression that he does not want to offend the sensibilities of the mass-murderers who now rule Sudan?
The Sudanese government is as brutal and cynical as the Nazi regime was – and its racist attempt to wipe out the people of Darfur is an affront to all of humankind. The time has now come for the international community to put aside the kind of political correctness that enables a number of repressive and brutal regimes around the world to commit crimes against humanity with impunity – and confront Sudan’s leaders.
One of the most outrageous arguments made by those who in reality do not want to help protect the people of Darfur from their brutal rulers, is that confronting the Sudanese regime will only worsen their plight – when in the meantime Sudan’s racist rulers are literally busy wiping them off the face of the earth.
The people of Darfur are members of the one human race too – and the world must protect them from a racist regime of Africans that is responsible for an African equivalent of the Nazi Holocaust. Sudan’s racist leaders regard the people of Darfur as less than human – simply because they are of a darker hue.
The sad irony in all this is that the Arab world, which Sudan’s leaders claim kinship with, despises Sudan’s so-called ‘Arabs’ too – because they are also seen by Arabs as a dark-skinned people. The international community must encourage the International Criminal Court (ICC) to indict Sudan’s President Bashir – and to issue a warrant for his immediate arrest.
President Bashir and the members of the apartheid regime he leads are as evil as the Nazi regime was. Humankind must never tolerate such regimes – and that is why the U.N. has a moral obligation to protect the people of Darfur from their despotic and barbarous rulers. The international community must put aside political correctness and confront the government of Sudan – not appease it: for, that would be unforgivable moral cowardness. Period.
Monday, 2 February 2009
Is The Kakum National Park's Forest Canopy Walkway Not A World Class Eco-Tourism ICON DESERVING OF WORLDCLASS PROMOTION?
On the 28th of January 2009, I joined a dear friend from the Pennsylvanian city of Scranton, to visit the Elmina Castle – from where we then set off for the Kakum National Park to brave the canopy walkway.
That canopy walkway provides visitors to Kakum National Park with a rare opportunity to experience a truly unique way of viewing a tropical rain forest.
It is unquestionably a world-class tourism icon that few responsible travellers who enjoy adventure travel will be able to resist pitting themselves against – once they discover its existence. After reaching the end of the last footbridge of the canopy walkway, I wondered if a creative way could not be found to make this gem of Ghana’s eco-tourism industry known throughout the world.
Surely, if all the responsible-travel professionals in the developed nations of the world, who cater to the top end of the adventure-travel niche of the global eco-tourism market, were made aware of this gem in the tourism sector of the Ghanaian economy, a lot more visitors would come to experience that unique attraction?
Would a little creative thinking that led to a series of webcams being placed at strategic points on the platforms surrounding the trees that support the seven footbridges making up the canopy-walkway, not make it possible, for example, to have year-round live webcasts of visitors crossing the footbridges – on a dedicated Kakum Forest canopy-walkway YouTube channel?
Traversing the 333 meter-long footbridge concentrates the mind wonderfully – as the thought of dropping the twenty-seven meters that they are off ground is certainly not something that one would want happening to one.
However, no matter how much one sways getting across it (and one does indeed sway – which is an understatement!) one is completely safe: for, in addition to being well-designed and constructed, it is also protected by very strong rope-netting throughout its length.
Not being as brave as my Scranton friend, I was thrilled to bits at having successfully crossed all seven footbridges and emerging in one piece: and with my heart still safely in place – although it occasionally missed a beat as its cowardly owner traversed the span of those seven footbridges held up at a giddy height by the seven stout trees to which they are tied.
At the end of that incredible experience, it was obvious to me that if a world-class eco-lodge had been sited in the Kakum National Park on that particular day, they would have definitely had a booking of a few days duration – to enable a nature-lover from Scranton to savour being in a unique tropical rain forest preserved by the use of imaginative measures: that also clearly benefit the local community and helps preserve their natural heritage too.
It is the prayer of the many nature-lovers who want to see rain forests such as the one protected by the creation of the Kakum National Park that the commercial department of the Wildlife Division of Ghana’s Forestry Commission, will succeed in attracting a suitable investor to put up a world-class eco-lodge at the Kakum National Park.
Surely, such suitably green accommodation would enable the Kakum National Park take its rightful place at the top reaches of the list of the world’s most exhilarating adventure holiday experiences?
That canopy walkway provides visitors to Kakum National Park with a rare opportunity to experience a truly unique way of viewing a tropical rain forest.
It is unquestionably a world-class tourism icon that few responsible travellers who enjoy adventure travel will be able to resist pitting themselves against – once they discover its existence. After reaching the end of the last footbridge of the canopy walkway, I wondered if a creative way could not be found to make this gem of Ghana’s eco-tourism industry known throughout the world.
Surely, if all the responsible-travel professionals in the developed nations of the world, who cater to the top end of the adventure-travel niche of the global eco-tourism market, were made aware of this gem in the tourism sector of the Ghanaian economy, a lot more visitors would come to experience that unique attraction?
Would a little creative thinking that led to a series of webcams being placed at strategic points on the platforms surrounding the trees that support the seven footbridges making up the canopy-walkway, not make it possible, for example, to have year-round live webcasts of visitors crossing the footbridges – on a dedicated Kakum Forest canopy-walkway YouTube channel?
Traversing the 333 meter-long footbridge concentrates the mind wonderfully – as the thought of dropping the twenty-seven meters that they are off ground is certainly not something that one would want happening to one.
However, no matter how much one sways getting across it (and one does indeed sway – which is an understatement!) one is completely safe: for, in addition to being well-designed and constructed, it is also protected by very strong rope-netting throughout its length.
Not being as brave as my Scranton friend, I was thrilled to bits at having successfully crossed all seven footbridges and emerging in one piece: and with my heart still safely in place – although it occasionally missed a beat as its cowardly owner traversed the span of those seven footbridges held up at a giddy height by the seven stout trees to which they are tied.
At the end of that incredible experience, it was obvious to me that if a world-class eco-lodge had been sited in the Kakum National Park on that particular day, they would have definitely had a booking of a few days duration – to enable a nature-lover from Scranton to savour being in a unique tropical rain forest preserved by the use of imaginative measures: that also clearly benefit the local community and helps preserve their natural heritage too.
It is the prayer of the many nature-lovers who want to see rain forests such as the one protected by the creation of the Kakum National Park that the commercial department of the Wildlife Division of Ghana’s Forestry Commission, will succeed in attracting a suitable investor to put up a world-class eco-lodge at the Kakum National Park.
Surely, such suitably green accommodation would enable the Kakum National Park take its rightful place at the top reaches of the list of the world’s most exhilarating adventure holiday experiences?
Why The NPP Must Now Rid Itself Of The Tribal-Supremacists Who Dominate It!
The election by the United States, of its first African-American president, has been followed by yet another stunning and historic first – the astonishing news that the Republican Party, the ideological home of most US conservatives, has elected an African-American as that party’s chairperson.
The fact that an African-American is now the US Republican Party’s chairperson ought to be food for thought for Ghana’s New Patriotic Party (NPP). For, if the NPP is to succeed in returning to power again, it is crucial that the party loosens the iron-grip that today’s narrow-minded tribal-supremacist descendants of the pre-colonial Akan feudal ruling elites (with whom they share a similar worldview) have on it.
It is vital that Ghana’s political equivalent of the white-supremacist Establishment elites that dominate the societies of the West, who control the NPP, shed the absurd notion that somehow Akans are superior to all the other tribes in Ghana – and that they, the arrogant and archetypal beneficiaries of inherited privilege, in turn, are superior to all ordinary Akans: and therefore, a priori, have a divine right to rule Ghana.
That pure-nonsense-on-bamboo-stilts notion was what informed the attempt by the NPP’s desperate Akan tribal-supremacists to rig the rerun of the December 28th presidential election. Those who listened to the infamous tape-recordings played on the Radio Gold FM programme “Election Forensics” will recall Atta Akyea's astonishing statement in Twi: “…saa democracy nonsense yi…” For non-Twi speakers, translated, what he said meant: “…this democracy nonsense…”
(Incidentally, essentially your typical elitist Akan tribal-supremacist does not believe in democracy – and they never have: it being merely a cloak of respectability designed and donned to enable them hide their lust for dictatorial power successfully.)
But I digress. To be successful in future elections, the NPP must become a truly multi-ethnic political party – not just a vehicle that in reality is simply a cloak to hide the secret agenda of the party’s Akan tribal-supremacists: whose desire is to ultimately dominate Ghana permanently by stealth. The fair-minded and non-tribalistic Akans who have some influence in the party ought to work hard to rid their party of the baleful influence of the few powerful Akan tribal-supremacists who now dominate their party so completely.
Clearly, the NPP cannot continue deluding itself that it is still a very popular political party simply because its large army of “My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong” myrmidon-types (who wear blinkers permanently and are too thick to think for themselves – and whose blind support for Ghana’s governing political parties encourages much of the corruption and incompetence in our public life), turn up at their “thank-you” rallies in droves.
The truth of the matter, is that to win elections in the Ghana of today, political parties need to take the opinions of the independent-minded and discerning voters, the so-called “floating-voters” (patriots who actually love Ghana and care about its future) into account – because political parties that ignore the invariably sensible opinions of such key voters, do so at their own peril.
Unlike the narrow-minded and blind-multitudes who follow our political parties, the “floating-voter”, when casting his or her vote, takes into account factors such as: the respect politicians have for all of Ghana’s ethnic groups; the competence and integrity of our political leaders; whether or not they are stooges for neocolonialism, who will collaborate with foreign interests to gang-rape our country – and above all, the effect a ruling regime’s economic policies have on the quality of life of all Ghanaians and the well-being of the Ghanaian nation-state: particularly the preservation of its biodiversity at a time of global climate change.
It is instructive that the defeated presidential candidate of the NPP in the December 2008 election, won in only two of the ten regions of Ghana – and that both were regions in which Akans form overwhelming majorities. As things currently stand, the painful truth is that the NPP, like all the parties that over the years have evolved from the Busia-Danquah political tradition, has become the natural home of Ghana’s equivalent of the Western world’s racist Establishment elites.
On the 19th of October 2007 I wrote an article entitled: “The Disrespect Shown to Alhaji Aliu Mahama.” In it, I made the point that if Alhaji Aliu Mahama had been an Akan, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) would have found a way of making him succeed President Kufuor.
Today, true to form, and even at this early stage, there apparently are some members within the party who, in 2009, want Nana Akufo Addo to be proclaimed the NPP’s presidential candidate for the December 2012 presidential election.
If a section of the NPP membership is now minded to make him the party’s presidential candidate again to contest the December 2012 presidential election, the question that needs answering is: Just why did they not save themselves the zillions of old cedis they frittered away, by allowing the former vice-president, Alhaji Aliu Mahama, to succeed President Kufuor in similar fashion for the December 2008 election?
Perhaps there are still some people amongst the Akan elite who dominate the NPP, who also secretly share Dr. J. B. Danquah’s contempt for non-Akans (evidenced by Danquah’s outrageous dismissal of the Convention Peoples Party regime as a government with “veranda boys” and “Ntafuor” in it), for whom that contempt for non-Akans resonates – in as far as the tribalistic “Ntafuor” bit goes?
In the 21st century ICT age, any Ghanaian politician who thinks that his or her tribe is superior to all Ghana’s other tribes, is a contemptible individual – and completely unworthy of leading Nkrumah’s Ghana. Such divisive politicians are unlikely to be voted into power in the Ghana of today – particularly after the divisive and tribalistic “Kokofu-football” politricks of the Kufuor regime
The time has now come for the progeny of the Akan pre-colonial feudal ruling elites (for whom the parties that evolved out of the Busia-Danquah tradition over the years, have always been mere vehicles to enable them ascend political power and dominate Ghana) to stop deluding themselves that they have a divine right to rule Ghana – for they do not.
No tribe can ever successfully dominate Ghana – and the sooner the few powerful Akan tribal-supremacists (who have had such an iron-grip on the NPP) understand that and begin to genuinely respect all the other tribes in Ghana as equals, the better will it be for them politically.
If they maintain their attavistic worldview, they will never be allowed by Ghana’s patriots, to rule our nation again.
Incidentally, when they were in power, those selfsame NPP Akan tribal-supremacists, loathed Ghanaian media professionals who criticized them for patriotic reasons, and did all they could to subtly repress critical voices – and thus ignored whatever little wisdom was contained in those criticisms.
One hopes that having lost power because they were hard of hearing, they will now listen to those who criticize them constructively during their years in the political wilderness, going forward into the future.
It is important that the NPP understands clearly that the Ghana of today is not a nation that unprincipled and self-seeking individuals who neither believe in the rule of law nor the concept of constitutional democracy can take for a ride. Politicians masquerading as individuals committed to constitutional democracy (but who in reality are not) have no future in this country.
The NPP has no option but to change if it wants to be returned to power again – and to do so it must force those powerful Akan tribal-supremacist members who dominate it to shed their secret tribal-supremacist agenda.
Above all, the NPP must never allow itself to be dominated by the kind of dishonest and unprincipled men and women (driven by such unfathomable greed) who constituted the powerful cabal that operated in the presidency during the tenure of the Kufuor administration. A word to the wise...
The fact that an African-American is now the US Republican Party’s chairperson ought to be food for thought for Ghana’s New Patriotic Party (NPP). For, if the NPP is to succeed in returning to power again, it is crucial that the party loosens the iron-grip that today’s narrow-minded tribal-supremacist descendants of the pre-colonial Akan feudal ruling elites (with whom they share a similar worldview) have on it.
It is vital that Ghana’s political equivalent of the white-supremacist Establishment elites that dominate the societies of the West, who control the NPP, shed the absurd notion that somehow Akans are superior to all the other tribes in Ghana – and that they, the arrogant and archetypal beneficiaries of inherited privilege, in turn, are superior to all ordinary Akans: and therefore, a priori, have a divine right to rule Ghana.
That pure-nonsense-on-bamboo-stilts notion was what informed the attempt by the NPP’s desperate Akan tribal-supremacists to rig the rerun of the December 28th presidential election. Those who listened to the infamous tape-recordings played on the Radio Gold FM programme “Election Forensics” will recall Atta Akyea's astonishing statement in Twi: “…saa democracy nonsense yi…” For non-Twi speakers, translated, what he said meant: “…this democracy nonsense…”
(Incidentally, essentially your typical elitist Akan tribal-supremacist does not believe in democracy – and they never have: it being merely a cloak of respectability designed and donned to enable them hide their lust for dictatorial power successfully.)
But I digress. To be successful in future elections, the NPP must become a truly multi-ethnic political party – not just a vehicle that in reality is simply a cloak to hide the secret agenda of the party’s Akan tribal-supremacists: whose desire is to ultimately dominate Ghana permanently by stealth. The fair-minded and non-tribalistic Akans who have some influence in the party ought to work hard to rid their party of the baleful influence of the few powerful Akan tribal-supremacists who now dominate their party so completely.
Clearly, the NPP cannot continue deluding itself that it is still a very popular political party simply because its large army of “My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong” myrmidon-types (who wear blinkers permanently and are too thick to think for themselves – and whose blind support for Ghana’s governing political parties encourages much of the corruption and incompetence in our public life), turn up at their “thank-you” rallies in droves.
The truth of the matter, is that to win elections in the Ghana of today, political parties need to take the opinions of the independent-minded and discerning voters, the so-called “floating-voters” (patriots who actually love Ghana and care about its future) into account – because political parties that ignore the invariably sensible opinions of such key voters, do so at their own peril.
Unlike the narrow-minded and blind-multitudes who follow our political parties, the “floating-voter”, when casting his or her vote, takes into account factors such as: the respect politicians have for all of Ghana’s ethnic groups; the competence and integrity of our political leaders; whether or not they are stooges for neocolonialism, who will collaborate with foreign interests to gang-rape our country – and above all, the effect a ruling regime’s economic policies have on the quality of life of all Ghanaians and the well-being of the Ghanaian nation-state: particularly the preservation of its biodiversity at a time of global climate change.
It is instructive that the defeated presidential candidate of the NPP in the December 2008 election, won in only two of the ten regions of Ghana – and that both were regions in which Akans form overwhelming majorities. As things currently stand, the painful truth is that the NPP, like all the parties that over the years have evolved from the Busia-Danquah political tradition, has become the natural home of Ghana’s equivalent of the Western world’s racist Establishment elites.
On the 19th of October 2007 I wrote an article entitled: “The Disrespect Shown to Alhaji Aliu Mahama.” In it, I made the point that if Alhaji Aliu Mahama had been an Akan, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) would have found a way of making him succeed President Kufuor.
Today, true to form, and even at this early stage, there apparently are some members within the party who, in 2009, want Nana Akufo Addo to be proclaimed the NPP’s presidential candidate for the December 2012 presidential election.
If a section of the NPP membership is now minded to make him the party’s presidential candidate again to contest the December 2012 presidential election, the question that needs answering is: Just why did they not save themselves the zillions of old cedis they frittered away, by allowing the former vice-president, Alhaji Aliu Mahama, to succeed President Kufuor in similar fashion for the December 2008 election?
Perhaps there are still some people amongst the Akan elite who dominate the NPP, who also secretly share Dr. J. B. Danquah’s contempt for non-Akans (evidenced by Danquah’s outrageous dismissal of the Convention Peoples Party regime as a government with “veranda boys” and “Ntafuor” in it), for whom that contempt for non-Akans resonates – in as far as the tribalistic “Ntafuor” bit goes?
In the 21st century ICT age, any Ghanaian politician who thinks that his or her tribe is superior to all Ghana’s other tribes, is a contemptible individual – and completely unworthy of leading Nkrumah’s Ghana. Such divisive politicians are unlikely to be voted into power in the Ghana of today – particularly after the divisive and tribalistic “Kokofu-football” politricks of the Kufuor regime
The time has now come for the progeny of the Akan pre-colonial feudal ruling elites (for whom the parties that evolved out of the Busia-Danquah tradition over the years, have always been mere vehicles to enable them ascend political power and dominate Ghana) to stop deluding themselves that they have a divine right to rule Ghana – for they do not.
No tribe can ever successfully dominate Ghana – and the sooner the few powerful Akan tribal-supremacists (who have had such an iron-grip on the NPP) understand that and begin to genuinely respect all the other tribes in Ghana as equals, the better will it be for them politically.
If they maintain their attavistic worldview, they will never be allowed by Ghana’s patriots, to rule our nation again.
Incidentally, when they were in power, those selfsame NPP Akan tribal-supremacists, loathed Ghanaian media professionals who criticized them for patriotic reasons, and did all they could to subtly repress critical voices – and thus ignored whatever little wisdom was contained in those criticisms.
One hopes that having lost power because they were hard of hearing, they will now listen to those who criticize them constructively during their years in the political wilderness, going forward into the future.
It is important that the NPP understands clearly that the Ghana of today is not a nation that unprincipled and self-seeking individuals who neither believe in the rule of law nor the concept of constitutional democracy can take for a ride. Politicians masquerading as individuals committed to constitutional democracy (but who in reality are not) have no future in this country.
The NPP has no option but to change if it wants to be returned to power again – and to do so it must force those powerful Akan tribal-supremacist members who dominate it to shed their secret tribal-supremacist agenda.
Above all, the NPP must never allow itself to be dominated by the kind of dishonest and unprincipled men and women (driven by such unfathomable greed) who constituted the powerful cabal that operated in the presidency during the tenure of the Kufuor administration. A word to the wise...
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