Continuation from part 1
Intellectual Dishonesty:
The NDC government has proven to be a disappointment on nearly every count, not least of all in confronting the canker of corruption but instead of calling them out for what the government is i.e. corrupt and incompetent, we have an intellectually impotent enablers parading around with academic titles, churning out hollow incomprehensible and incoherent rants as analytical justification for that incompetence. They are an embarrassment to whatever political appointment they are shamefully holding on to. Most Ghanaians are very ashamed and offended to be preached and lectured on by individuals masquerading as intellectuals who are clearly lacking in intellect.
These sycophantic intellectuals think by contradicting themselves with straight face arrogance while hiding behind a smokescreen of obfuscation, manipulation and impunity they avoid demonstrating their intellectual bankruptcy. No, they just display the opposite – wanton intellectual dishonesty. These apologists are free to continue doing their master’s (NDC) bidding by publishing nonsense as facts but don’t they ever dare think all Ghanaians are as gullible as their NDC supporters and sympathizers, and therefore they can continue to throw dust into the eyes of well-meaning Ghanaians.
The nation’s democratic institutions are also not exempt/immune from the corrupting toxic influence of mediocrity, incompetence, sycophancy and dishonesty under the P/NDC governments either.
Didn’t the EC promised the Ghanaian electorate “the moon and the stars” – that our electoral system is not fraudulent but competent prior to the last election (2012) – but what happened afterwards? The revelations at the Supreme Court were staggeringly scandalous to say the least, and it’s not rocket science for any discerning individual to deduce why most Ghanaians are always seeking international support especially that of developed countries to help manage and supervise our electoral system during election years, because unlike these developed countries, our electoral system is proving to be bogus and somehow managed by unscrupulous people who keep on making the same mistakes in every election cycle. Look and listen to the EC preparation and pronouncement in this election year, they leave much to be desired. The EC keeps on doing the same thing over and over again and expects a different result, this is called insanity! The least said about this institution the better.
Prior events and recent discoveries by Anas Aremeyaw Anas (an investigative journalist) show that our judicial system is riddled with corruption and ineptitude. The discovery showed the endemic susceptibility of some senior judges and judicial functionaries to bribery and scandals.
The P/NDC governments create the enabling environment for their surrogates to malign, intimidate, insult, threaten and scandalize members of the Supreme Court of Ghana with impunity – A case in point was when NDC surrogates insulted and threatened the lives of certain members of the Supreme Court on a radio station, they were charged with contempt of court, tried under court of competent jurisdiction, found guilty of scandalizing the court and sentenced to 4 months imprisonment but then a month later they received a presidential pardon from the current NDC president who, incidentally, owes his presidency to the very Supreme Court his action encouraged to defame. Where is that separation of powers? Maybe, a big thank you to the Supreme Court which – in spite of the preponderance of evidence produced by the NPP opposition – allegedly decided to go on “Jury Nullification” and ruled otherwise to save his presidential existence. The reason why the Supreme Court went that way is still beyond human understanding. Perhaps the court did that to spite the opposition NPP for daring to gather enough evidence that exposed the subtle way the EC helped to rig the 2012 election for the NDC.
The state intelligence agency, BNI (Bureau of National Investigation) also joins the fray from time to time by constantly defying court orders and detaining suspects and government critics beyond the legal period – apparently at the government’s behest – with impunity.
Even the central bank, BOG (Bank of Ghana) is not left out in this wastage – absurdly wasting public funds to purchase Gold watches as remuneration for end of service benefits for retiring employees in the midst of economic hardship.
Sadly, the fear of NDC money and power has made cowards out of people and state institutions that are supposed – to have the ability and the responsibility – to know better.
To all those intellectual apologists and surrogates of NDC as well as those enablers in state institutions, I quote you Shakespeare from “Julius Ceaser” – “Cowards die many times before their deaths / the valiant never taste of death but once”.
The Opposition NPP:
The NPP (New Patriotic Party) entity is from the Danquah-Busia tradition of UGCC/UP (United Gold Coast Convention/United Party) extraction which believed in freedom of speech and association, multi-party democracy, individual liberty and responsibility, liberal market-economy, private property ownership, private business/enterprises, entrepreneurship, investment and development of individuals to reach their full potentials.
The tradition first came to power through a democratic elections under PP (Progress Party) led by Dr. Kofi Abrefa Busia during the 2nd Republic. Unfortunately, the PP was just in power for only 2 years when it was overthrown by a military junta in 1972. For the second time since Ghana’s independence, its successor NPP led by John Agyekum Kuffour was elected into office through a democratic elections in 2000 to come to power for the first time during the 4th Republic.
When the NPP assumed office the Ghanaian economy was in shambles and the coffers in deep red. The country was consumed by crippling debts and suffocated by high deficit and interest payments. The meager foreign exchange was being used to service high interest payments with nothing left to support agriculture, education and healthcare sectors or for infrastructural and other social developments. Private businesses and enterprises were collapsing and those that seemed like surviving were moribund as a result of astronomically high interest rates in double digits. The Ghanaian currency, the Cedi, was in free-fall and destructive black-market devaluation of the Cedi was the norm rather than an exception. Hospitals were ‘graveyards’ with the ‘cash and carry’ system in vogue manifested by unacceptable high infant and maternal mortality rate. Many rural areas were still without electricity as its expansion was being staggered for political expediency. The transportation system was abysmal, and the educational system was bleeding with lack of basic resources with high truancy rate among pupils/students. With the economy in tatters and in dire straits, majority of Ghanaians resigned themselves to hopelessness and despair with no end in sight.
With Kuffour administration finding the economy in deep crises and eager to prevent it from further collapse under their watch and, more importantly, in order to fulfill its manifesto pledges, the administration had no credible choice but to take the country to HIPC (Heavily Indebted Poor Countries) status – The eligibility to this status itself was a testament to the deplorable state of the economy and, at the same time, the confidence the international credit institutions had in the then in-coming NPP government to solve the nation’s economic and financial problems. The HIPC status allowed the NPP government some debt relief and cancellation and hence freed precious foreign exchange for social, economic and infrastructural developments which would’ve otherwise been used for debt servicing and payments.
Within a short space of time the above economic gloom and decay left by the NDC administration was reversed by the NPP government with solid, sound policies and sheer competence. For instance, interest rates were reduced to single digits with strict fiscal discipline. Through prudent monetary and fiscal policies the free-fall of the Cedi was halted and the currency revalued at par with the U. S dollar and stabilized as such. The banks started lending again to businesses and enterprises, and mortgages (hitherto reserved for the rich with connections and politicians) became available to ordinary individuals gainfully employed. Government started making investment in the public sector; in education, healthcare and infrastructure. Capitation grants, School feeding and free Pre- and Post-natal care programmes were introduced to help the poor and needy. The NHIS was established to get rid of the notorious ‘cash and carry’ system that turned hospitals into ‘graveyards’. The economy was flourishing and booming with a lot of success choked under the new NPP government, capped by a successful discovery of crude oil in commercial quantities. Just under 8 years in office the country came out from the HIPC status and was ushered into a low middle income country status.
Time and experience (in that order) have shown and taught us that political emancipation without economic emancipation is meaningless, and thus with the NPP, Ghanaians could clearly see, at long last, the path to economic emancipation!! Furthermore, Ghanaians could confidently and gladly state that, finally there was light at the end of the tunnel for economic progress and social welfare with NPP government.
But president Kuffour’s desire to end his presidency as a true democrat of Danquah-Busia tradition and of course as a ‘gentle giant’ of impeccable democratic credentials and a fine gentleman imperiled his legacy as a president and enabled this incompetent lot (NDC) to come to power again under somehow dubious circumstances with the slimmest of margins for a presidential election ever in Africa’s history. His inability to stand up to the shenanigans of the EC and its NDC agitators in the 2008 presidential election didn’t help to advance the democratic nor the economic dispensation Ghanaians once enjoyed as it’s amply evidenced and demonstrated by the almost 8 years of this corrupt incompetent NDC government.
Desperate Need For Change:
If Ghana as a country is ever to advance further in economic, social, democratic and infrastructure developments then Kuffour’s policies and legacy – steeped in Danquah-Busia tradition (which are now just footnotes in our body-politic, thanks to him in part as described above for not doing enough to insure his legacy) – need to be revived, fine-tuned and sustained. And at this juncture in Ghana’s history, the only entity capable of doing this, fortunately, is the NPP.
Therefore, there is the need for the NPP and the electorate to do whatever legal to ensure that change is effected in this year’s election. The NPP shouldn’t sit on its ivory tower and expects EC or for that matter NDC to do the right thing, that will be a fatal error on their part. They have to be guarded by the saying “once bitten, twice shy” and refrain from deceiving themselves into trusting the impartiality of EC or for that matter other state institutions to be fair minded in this election. They would have to match the NDC boot for boot, and go for an eye for an eye. The NPP should get down and dirty, and get under the skin of NDC. No more NPP diplomacy and refusing to descend to their level would be a grave mistake. Desperate times require desperate measures and “going high when they go low” mantra hasn’t helped NPP in the past neither would it work with this NDC folks.
The bottom line is NDC is bad for Ghana considering its rampant economic and political mismanagement. One wonders sometimes whether the NDC and its enablers and apologists are capable of any self introspection at all. It isn’t surprising therefore not to hear the term “probity and accountable” passing their lips nowadays. The cheek of it all, how dare they seek to plunge the country into unnecessary crisis? And, if we’re not very careful as a country, then that’s exactly where the NDC appears to be heading the country to with its insistence to hang on to power by hook or crook. If there is any justice left in this world, they’ll be held to account one day “Isha Allah”.
With the soaring national debts under P/NDC administrations and nothing meaningful to show for, sometimes it’s very hard not to sympathize or even agree more with the controversial but arguable sentiments that we would’ve been far better off economically and of course politically if we were still under colonial rule. Particularly, when you think of the fact that, even the British colonialists – whose ultimate purpose was to plunder the wealth and resources of the colony – were able to leave our economy in surplus i.e. tens of billions of British pound sterling of our own money in current terms without bankrupting us. The country Ghana was graciously awash with money at the time of our independence thanks to the British colonialists. We only started getting into serious debt as soon as we got our so-called independence. Yea right, making nonsense of the saying “Africa is capable of managing its own affairs”. Are we going or coming? Disgrace, ‘Tweaaa’!!
This apocalyptic rhetoric would seem far-fetched but the nation Ghana is teetering on the brink of international irrelevance and, of course, national oblivion. Let’s hope, NPP’s determination, goodwill and common sense prevail and triumph over NDC’s propaganda, deception and plain stupidly with the electorate. It’ll be difficult and certainly take time but it’ll surely happen.
Finally to conclude, look majority of Ghanaians happen to believe that Nana Addo Dankwa Akuffo Addo would be a good president for Ghana, some people may disagree, but no one seriously doubts his competence or his ability to do the job. In contrast, even the NDC’s enablers and its gullible supporters don’t really believe in the competence of John Dramani Mahama nor the NDC government to efficiently manage the country and solve its increasing economic and social problems.
So above all and most saliently, vote wisely and be super extra-vigilant on December 7, 2016!!
“Facts Are Sacred But Opinions Are Free”