Memories of December 7
By Kofi Akordor
Ghanaians were heaping tonnes of praise on themselves. The foreign observer missions were profuse in their commendation at the turn of events on Sunday, December 7, 2008. All were unanimous — the presidential and parliamentary elections had been held in a peaceful atmosphere without any violence or intimidation and the outcome was a free and fair. Whether everything had been transparent could, however, not be told with any conviction.
The country succeeded in maintaining a record as one of the few countries on this turbulent continent called Africa where catapults, machetes, bows and arrows, guns and military armoured vehicles were not deployed into action to complete the unfinished business which the ballot box left undone.
We have emerged from a gruelling electioneering and energy sapping voting process with our national pride intact, even though one could not discount some disappointments and bruised or dented egos.
Sunday, December 7, 2008 is now history and we can only live with its memories, whether bitter or sweet and some useful lessons to guide us in similar endeavours in future. For the candidates/parties and their die-hard supporters, they must begin to realise that the saying; “All that glitters is not gold”, can have its equivalent on the political battlefield like; “All that crowd at political rallies do not transform into votes”. Otherwise, we would not have been subjected to another round of gruelling campaigning with its insults, lies and vain promises. The consolation is that it is our own decision to go for another round of the exercise so that at the end of the day the final choice will be our own and not an imposition from any quarter.
The two candidates — Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and Professor John Evans Atta Mills — whose inability to cross the 50 per cent plus mark has forced us into the run-off may have to review their campaign strategies. By now it should have dawned on them that distributing fat wads of currency notes to so-called opinion leaders and king makers or bussing thousands of unemployed youth to rally grounds after pumping gallons of hard liquor into them will not do the trick when it matters most. As they always say, ‘it is our own money so if you bring it we shall collect it’.
They should address current problems confronting the people and focus more on their strengths than the perceived weaknesses of the opponent. Trying to undermine an opponent with lies and concocted stories only irritate the electorate and do not bring good returns on the D-day. Some of the adverts in both the print and electronic media are just waste of money and add to the subtractions.
Sometimes it is better they listen to their inner selves, instead of those hordes of advisers who may strip them naked without they knowing. Remember the story of the king with the beautiful cloth? He was told only his enemies would not see the wonderful cloth. In order not to be labelled as an enemy of the king, everybody saw the cloth until an innocent child pointed at the king’s nakedness. By then it was too late. The harm had been done. Once they know the cash is flowing, the advisers and special assistants will be at their best to give you all sorts of assurances and if you fail to put your ears on the ground you will wake up a day after the election laughing at the wrong side of your mouth.
For the party in power or the candidate contesting on the ruling party’s ticket, some of the promises do not make any impression on the electorate. They ask several questions which you may not hear, let alone try to answer. It becomes worse when, in a frenzy, we begin to initiate projects which we well know may never be completed. That amounts to insulting the intelligence of the electorate and they never forgive those who inflict such pain on them.
The use of the tribal or ethnic card can have its boomerang effects. While it may favour you in one area, it may work against you in another area. Moreover, it will be hypocritical to condemn ethnic bias when you think it is working against you but highlight it when you are in the gain. So it is wrong for any candidate to go to his area or home region and tell the people to vote for him because he is one of them and yet complain when the other candidate also makes a similar plea to his people. No President can govern a divided country and, therefore, the candidates must themselves be appealing to all sections of the public. Ethnic messages during campaigns have the potential of dividing the country.
The media received their fair share of praise and commendation from the observer teams that came to monitor the elections. They all concluded that the press is free and vibrant and contributed a lot in information dissemination before, during and after the elections.
In fact, the media played their watchdog role effectively and for this mention must be made of the FM radio stations which kept listeners glued to their radio sets throughout the voting process.
Media practitioners will, notwithstanding the high marks given them, be the first to admit that a lot of them contributed to the heightened tension which preceded the elections and which persisted throughout the exercise.
Some of the media practitioners became more or less propagandists for political parties and contesting candidates and threw the ethics of the profession to the wind in the process. If they do not know by now, some of the materials they release into the public domain do more damage to their clients than good.
The EC has come out again from another electoral process with good testimonials. It still has to improve upon its performance in the run-off. What many do not know is that what was seen as the EC’s good performance was actually a reflection of the patience and tolerance of Ghanaians. Electoral violence seldom occur during the voting. But that should not be taken for granted. It is the counting, collation and announcing of the results which give room for suspicion and trigger violence. This idea of counting, recounting and recounting of ballot papers must be checked.
The EC must also address the long queues which formed at some polling stations, as against the smaller number of voters at certain polling stations. When people stand for long hours in the tropical sun to vote, they are prone to anger at the least provocation and this can be compounded if there should be any electoral dispute.
The National Election Security Task Force has already made that observation and recommended the opening of more polling stations on December 28, 2008 for the run-off of the presidential elections. We hope the EC will listen to good advice.
Many people are of the view that it is time we modernised our electoral system. In this computer age, it is humiliating to stand in the sun for hours to thumbprint a ballot paper. The counting system is another ordeal which creates room for manipulation and unnecessary suspicion. It should be possible to computerise the voting system and no amount spent in this direction will be wasted.
Sunday, December 28, 2008 is not far away. It is the expectation of Ghanaians that it will come to pass peacefully, only this time, there will be a President-elect.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Empty classrooms and desperate parents
By Kofi Akordor
THE beginning of every academic year is a period of mental torture and physical agony to many parents and school authorities. On one side are desperate parents moving up and down looking for suitable schools for their children. Suitable schools here are the well-established ones with long records of good academic performance. Suitable here also means schools that are not only good in terms of academic performance but are also not too far away from concerned and doting parents.
On the other side are headmasters/headmistresses of the so-called well-endowed schools who are at their wits end trying to fend off demands from desperate and aggressive parents who will not take ‘NO’ for an answer if told the school had filled all its admission vacancies. These demands come from old students who cannot be easily ignored because of their contributions to the development of the school, friends, relatives, church members, traditional rulers and the ‘almighty’ political heavyweights.
Sometimes the pressure becomes so great and insurmountable that school heads simply place ‘No vacancy’ notices in front of their administration blocks and vanish into thin air. In the past, when the decision to admit or not to admit lay entirely in the hands of the school authorities, that period was described as the cocoa season of the educational authorities and you either played by the rules or suffered the consequences.
The introduction of the Computerised Schools Selection and Placement System (CSSPS) over the last three academic years or so was made with good intentions to, among other things, ease the pressure on school authorities, reduce the burden of school search on parents, close avenues for shady deals and ensure that students are placed in the right schools as per their performance in the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE).
Unfortunately, like many new things, the computerised placement system ran into difficulties, some of which could not necessarily be placed at the doorstep of the managers. In the process, the relief the CSSPS sought to bring to both candidates and school authorities was virtually blurred. Parents continued to move from one school to another, seeking admission for their children at the beginning of the academic year. School heads, on the other hand, continued to suffer the pain of explaining to frustrated parents why they could not offer admissions to their children.
Despite the assurances that the CSSPS will improve with time, it appears for now the problems associated with fresh admissions will not go away because they go beyond the computerised placement system.
The tragedy of the situation is that while parents are still struggling to place their children in schools, the Ghana Education Service has also made claim that a lot of schools are yet to have their full complement of admissions. According to a report in the Junior Graphic (Wednesday, December 3-9, 2008), with only a few weeks to the end of the first term of the 2008/2009 academic year, most schools in the Volta, Eastern, Ashanti and Brong Ahafo regions are still struggling to fill their classrooms with qualified candidates.
The breakdown shows that in the Volta Region, out of the 72 senior high schools, as many as 64 have vacancies for qualified BECE candidates. In the Eastern Region, the schools with vacancies are 43, out of the existing 78 schools.
In the Ashanti Region, 39 schools have declared vacancies, while in Brong Ahafo 38 schools have vacancies for fresh students. There are 27 schools in the Northern Region with vacancies, while Western Region has 25 schools with similar problems.
In the other regions, Central has 19 schools that could not fill their vacancies; Upper East has nine; Upper West 11, and Greater Accra seven.
By the close of this year’s CSSPS, 16,000 candidates are still searching, notwithstanding the long list of schools still thirsting for new students. The question, then, is, why this puzzle of floating candidates in the midst of vacant schools? A close study of the schools still waiting for the arrival of new students while the first term draws to a close will show a common denominator. All these schools are in the rural areas which share common problems, with a few others in the big towns and cities. They simply do not have the facilities to qualify them as senior high schools.
Most of these schools do not have the requisite infrastructure such as classroom blocks, laboratories, libraries, workshops and dormitories to make academic work exciting and challenging.
Apart from the physical infrastructure and learning materials which these schools are lacking, getting qualified teachers for them has always been a problem. Under the circumstances, most parents will do anything to avoid these schools, if even that means waiting for another academic year.
The decision to build more senior high schools in the rural communities was laudable and well-intentioned, to primarily stem the exodus to the urban centres and cities to seek higher educational laurels. It was also to give more opportunities to the youth in the rural communities to have access to higher education without the drudgery of travelling long distances to other parts of the country.
Unfortunately, these laudable objectives could not be attained because the exercise fell short of expectation. Most of the schools could not mature enough into what they were expected to be — well-equipped and staffed schools to offer quality education to children in the rural communities.
Consequently, students from these schools could hardly make it to the tertiary level, given the competitive environment prevailing in the country, for obvious reasons, hence the reluctance of parents to risk the future of their children by enrolling them in those schools.
Some of the older schools in the urban centres and cities are not insulated from these deprivations. They, therefore, become the last choice for parents who are determined to give their children quality education.
It will, therefore, be wrong for anyone to think that parents are being too demanding when they insist on getting admission for their children in certain particular schools. The Catholic Church, for instance, has been able to put up very good schools in even the rural areas and products from those schools do not find it difficult to rub shoulders with the so-called first-class schools. Other religious institutions are doing the same.
To make the ground level to make it possible for candidates to accept admission to these community schools means adequately resourcing these schools with everything which makes a school a school and not just any confined area for teaching and learning.
Apart from expanding facilities in the well-established schools so that they can take more students, the communities should be given proper facelift so that they can be attractive not only to students but the teaching staff who get frustrated by the poor and inadequate facilities.
As they are now, most of these rural community senior high schools at best only prolong the time these children spend in school without adding any qualitative improvement to their academic career. The result is what we are seeing now — vacant schools and students without schools.
THE beginning of every academic year is a period of mental torture and physical agony to many parents and school authorities. On one side are desperate parents moving up and down looking for suitable schools for their children. Suitable schools here are the well-established ones with long records of good academic performance. Suitable here also means schools that are not only good in terms of academic performance but are also not too far away from concerned and doting parents.
On the other side are headmasters/headmistresses of the so-called well-endowed schools who are at their wits end trying to fend off demands from desperate and aggressive parents who will not take ‘NO’ for an answer if told the school had filled all its admission vacancies. These demands come from old students who cannot be easily ignored because of their contributions to the development of the school, friends, relatives, church members, traditional rulers and the ‘almighty’ political heavyweights.
Sometimes the pressure becomes so great and insurmountable that school heads simply place ‘No vacancy’ notices in front of their administration blocks and vanish into thin air. In the past, when the decision to admit or not to admit lay entirely in the hands of the school authorities, that period was described as the cocoa season of the educational authorities and you either played by the rules or suffered the consequences.
The introduction of the Computerised Schools Selection and Placement System (CSSPS) over the last three academic years or so was made with good intentions to, among other things, ease the pressure on school authorities, reduce the burden of school search on parents, close avenues for shady deals and ensure that students are placed in the right schools as per their performance in the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE).
Unfortunately, like many new things, the computerised placement system ran into difficulties, some of which could not necessarily be placed at the doorstep of the managers. In the process, the relief the CSSPS sought to bring to both candidates and school authorities was virtually blurred. Parents continued to move from one school to another, seeking admission for their children at the beginning of the academic year. School heads, on the other hand, continued to suffer the pain of explaining to frustrated parents why they could not offer admissions to their children.
Despite the assurances that the CSSPS will improve with time, it appears for now the problems associated with fresh admissions will not go away because they go beyond the computerised placement system.
The tragedy of the situation is that while parents are still struggling to place their children in schools, the Ghana Education Service has also made claim that a lot of schools are yet to have their full complement of admissions. According to a report in the Junior Graphic (Wednesday, December 3-9, 2008), with only a few weeks to the end of the first term of the 2008/2009 academic year, most schools in the Volta, Eastern, Ashanti and Brong Ahafo regions are still struggling to fill their classrooms with qualified candidates.
The breakdown shows that in the Volta Region, out of the 72 senior high schools, as many as 64 have vacancies for qualified BECE candidates. In the Eastern Region, the schools with vacancies are 43, out of the existing 78 schools.
In the Ashanti Region, 39 schools have declared vacancies, while in Brong Ahafo 38 schools have vacancies for fresh students. There are 27 schools in the Northern Region with vacancies, while Western Region has 25 schools with similar problems.
In the other regions, Central has 19 schools that could not fill their vacancies; Upper East has nine; Upper West 11, and Greater Accra seven.
By the close of this year’s CSSPS, 16,000 candidates are still searching, notwithstanding the long list of schools still thirsting for new students. The question, then, is, why this puzzle of floating candidates in the midst of vacant schools? A close study of the schools still waiting for the arrival of new students while the first term draws to a close will show a common denominator. All these schools are in the rural areas which share common problems, with a few others in the big towns and cities. They simply do not have the facilities to qualify them as senior high schools.
Most of these schools do not have the requisite infrastructure such as classroom blocks, laboratories, libraries, workshops and dormitories to make academic work exciting and challenging.
Apart from the physical infrastructure and learning materials which these schools are lacking, getting qualified teachers for them has always been a problem. Under the circumstances, most parents will do anything to avoid these schools, if even that means waiting for another academic year.
The decision to build more senior high schools in the rural communities was laudable and well-intentioned, to primarily stem the exodus to the urban centres and cities to seek higher educational laurels. It was also to give more opportunities to the youth in the rural communities to have access to higher education without the drudgery of travelling long distances to other parts of the country.
Unfortunately, these laudable objectives could not be attained because the exercise fell short of expectation. Most of the schools could not mature enough into what they were expected to be — well-equipped and staffed schools to offer quality education to children in the rural communities.
Consequently, students from these schools could hardly make it to the tertiary level, given the competitive environment prevailing in the country, for obvious reasons, hence the reluctance of parents to risk the future of their children by enrolling them in those schools.
Some of the older schools in the urban centres and cities are not insulated from these deprivations. They, therefore, become the last choice for parents who are determined to give their children quality education.
It will, therefore, be wrong for anyone to think that parents are being too demanding when they insist on getting admission for their children in certain particular schools. The Catholic Church, for instance, has been able to put up very good schools in even the rural areas and products from those schools do not find it difficult to rub shoulders with the so-called first-class schools. Other religious institutions are doing the same.
To make the ground level to make it possible for candidates to accept admission to these community schools means adequately resourcing these schools with everything which makes a school a school and not just any confined area for teaching and learning.
Apart from expanding facilities in the well-established schools so that they can take more students, the communities should be given proper facelift so that they can be attractive not only to students but the teaching staff who get frustrated by the poor and inadequate facilities.
As they are now, most of these rural community senior high schools at best only prolong the time these children spend in school without adding any qualitative improvement to their academic career. The result is what we are seeing now — vacant schools and students without schools.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
DARING INTO FORBIDDEN TERRITORIES (NOV 25)
IN this job, there are certain areas I dread to go, but when compelled by uncontrollable circumstances, I do so with a lot of caution and great circumspection. This is because whether we like it or not, certain issues are realities of life that must be confronted, no matter the dangers inherent in the attempt.
Take religion, for example. For years we have watched in silent submission while many questionable churches and numerous pseudo-religious bodies have mushroomed all around us.
Any person who can recite a few biblical quotes from his lips could hold thousands or even millions captive, bestowing on himself/herself every title imaginable — bishop, prophet/prophetess, general overseer, chairman, president, etc — short of the ultimate, God, the Father Himself. In fact, some have come close to making that declaration, except that they have toned it down to God’s Representative on earth.
Indeed, some have claimed to be the Messiah himself. Remember Jesus Christ of Dzorwulu?
We have all, in our desperation to satisfy our divine and spiritual needs, one way or another, fallen victim to these Men of God whose activities defy any control or state intervention, and any attempt to bring some kind of order and decency into matters of religion is likely to draw severe rebukes from so-called believers. That is forbidden territory and no one should question those who put themselves between us sinners and God.
In other words, anyone discussing religion risks being labelled the devil incarnate if there is any attempt to question the status quo. The state itself has been forced into impotence, while persons claiming to be men and women of God exploit innocent people and amass wealth they are not under any obligation to account for or pay tax on.
While these saviours stuff their pockets with millions from their adherents for their personal aggrandisement, they expect the state to use the taxpayer’s money to build schools, hospitals and roads and provide cheap power and water systems for their comfort.
Today, so infectious is the salvation message that most of our productive hours are spent clapping, shouting and singing in search of the ever-elusive redemption.
Try talking about polygamy and you will come under an avalanche of verbal attacks, especially from those married women who value monopoly, even though a good number of them would prefer perching to remaining single if they were to find themselves on the other side of the river. We never want to take a closer look at the option to see whether there are any advantages.
We never want to accept the fact that considering the female/male ratio, many of our women, through no fault of theirs, will forever remain unmarried. But since everybody is entitled to the good things of life and it is the right of everyone to get attached, there will naturally be stampede and gatecrashing into some marital homes.
Our various traditional systems recognise this fact and abhor adultery, fornication and all other illicit sexual escapades and, therefore, encourage men to do things in the open and responsibly so that relationships are legitimised and recognised by society, instead of being operated in the shadows. In some religions, polygamy is recognised but with an injunction that the man must be fair to all and give equal respect and treatment to his wives. What more can there be in a good marriage, apart from security, mutual love and respect?
That brings us to the main subject for this discussion — prostitution — another forbidden territory. A few months ago, the subject came up for public discussion to determine how best to address the phenomenon of prostitution.
Some were of the opinion that it was time we confronted prostitution frontally and accepted it as part of human behaviour that could not be done away with, whether through religious pontification or legal restriction. Already, it has been described by many as the oldest profession, lending credence to those who argue that having stayed with mankind for as long as human beings have been on this earth, it is time prostitution was accorded its proper place and given the necessary legislation.
To these people, legalising it will bring about some amount of checks and balances and inject some kind of sanity to protect the interest of both the client and the service provider. They argue further that sex is an integral part of our lives as human beings and that whether married or not, man will always find an avenue to satisfy this important biological demand through fair or foul means. That is why we have crimes like rape, defilement and even incest. So why pretend that a serious thing like prostitution, which provides an avenue for tension release, can be outlawed to make society better of?
As is expected, there were those in the other camp who were shouting themselves hoarse condemning this view and quoting some religious verses or moral codes. How could you make commercial sex a legitimate business? they questioned. It would destroy the moral fibre of our daughters and sisters and bring total damnation to our society, they chorused. HIV/AIDS and other sexually-transmitted diseases would have a field day and transport a big chunk of the population to their premature deaths, the voices of dissent continued to vibrate all over. Those loudest in that crusade were the men in collar and cassock.
But how many of them can stand out as role models when it comes to such matters of morality?
Those against the legislation have valid points because legalising a bad thing does not make it good. But the truth is that the more we condemn it and shy away from its legislation, the more prostitution flourishes and engulfs more and more of the population, especially the younger generation. This is because apart from satisfying a biological function, prostitution also has something to do with our socio-economic environment.
Prostitution is simply defined as exchanging sex for money. Going by that, there are many people, both men and women, who are engaged in prostitution of a sort. We may go to Soldier Bar at the Kwame Nkrumah Circle or any other cheap brothel and raid the place and parade some poor girls as prostitutes. But are we telling all the full story?
Are we oblivious to the fact that many men, high and low and cutting across all professions and vocations, engage women in sex and in return pay them or offer them some kind of gifts, services or favours? Most of these women look quite respectable in the eyes of the public as working professionals, students, traders and what have you but they are always at the beck and call of men of all types for a good day’s business. Unfortunately, both married men and women cannot be counted out of the business.
Are we blind to see the so-called respectable men in government and business who drive those expensive vehicles stopping to pick the women who stand sentry around the Togo Embassy every evening? Do we know that some young women stand at strategic locations in Accra and other big towns pretending to be looking for lifts but are actually looking for a sexual business partner?
The business has become even more brisk and more convenient with the entry of the cellular phone into our lives. As long as it is agreed that these women and their male counterparts are not couples, whatever they do in the form of intimacy is illicit and cannot be distanced from those poor souls we occasionally arrest, harass and describe as prostitutes.
The difference is that one group has declared its position — demonstrating their services openly for those who are ready to pay — while the other is living behind a facade of respectability, decency, chastity, celibacy, name them, but doing the same thing, maybe in its most serious and crudest form. So whom are we deceiving?
Are we ready to call a spade a spade and not just a digging tool? Are we going to pretend that we can stop a vocation which was initiated by our great, great, great, grandfathers and grandmothers? Are we ready to face the issue squarely and come to terms with its reality and inevitability so that, somehow, there can be a control and regulatory mechanism to protect and safeguard all those involved in it?
I know this is forbidden territory, but what needs to be told must be told. At the end of the day, we cannot claim to be better off than those who have taken the lead to stare the truth in the face.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
Take religion, for example. For years we have watched in silent submission while many questionable churches and numerous pseudo-religious bodies have mushroomed all around us.
Any person who can recite a few biblical quotes from his lips could hold thousands or even millions captive, bestowing on himself/herself every title imaginable — bishop, prophet/prophetess, general overseer, chairman, president, etc — short of the ultimate, God, the Father Himself. In fact, some have come close to making that declaration, except that they have toned it down to God’s Representative on earth.
Indeed, some have claimed to be the Messiah himself. Remember Jesus Christ of Dzorwulu?
We have all, in our desperation to satisfy our divine and spiritual needs, one way or another, fallen victim to these Men of God whose activities defy any control or state intervention, and any attempt to bring some kind of order and decency into matters of religion is likely to draw severe rebukes from so-called believers. That is forbidden territory and no one should question those who put themselves between us sinners and God.
In other words, anyone discussing religion risks being labelled the devil incarnate if there is any attempt to question the status quo. The state itself has been forced into impotence, while persons claiming to be men and women of God exploit innocent people and amass wealth they are not under any obligation to account for or pay tax on.
While these saviours stuff their pockets with millions from their adherents for their personal aggrandisement, they expect the state to use the taxpayer’s money to build schools, hospitals and roads and provide cheap power and water systems for their comfort.
Today, so infectious is the salvation message that most of our productive hours are spent clapping, shouting and singing in search of the ever-elusive redemption.
Try talking about polygamy and you will come under an avalanche of verbal attacks, especially from those married women who value monopoly, even though a good number of them would prefer perching to remaining single if they were to find themselves on the other side of the river. We never want to take a closer look at the option to see whether there are any advantages.
We never want to accept the fact that considering the female/male ratio, many of our women, through no fault of theirs, will forever remain unmarried. But since everybody is entitled to the good things of life and it is the right of everyone to get attached, there will naturally be stampede and gatecrashing into some marital homes.
Our various traditional systems recognise this fact and abhor adultery, fornication and all other illicit sexual escapades and, therefore, encourage men to do things in the open and responsibly so that relationships are legitimised and recognised by society, instead of being operated in the shadows. In some religions, polygamy is recognised but with an injunction that the man must be fair to all and give equal respect and treatment to his wives. What more can there be in a good marriage, apart from security, mutual love and respect?
That brings us to the main subject for this discussion — prostitution — another forbidden territory. A few months ago, the subject came up for public discussion to determine how best to address the phenomenon of prostitution.
Some were of the opinion that it was time we confronted prostitution frontally and accepted it as part of human behaviour that could not be done away with, whether through religious pontification or legal restriction. Already, it has been described by many as the oldest profession, lending credence to those who argue that having stayed with mankind for as long as human beings have been on this earth, it is time prostitution was accorded its proper place and given the necessary legislation.
To these people, legalising it will bring about some amount of checks and balances and inject some kind of sanity to protect the interest of both the client and the service provider. They argue further that sex is an integral part of our lives as human beings and that whether married or not, man will always find an avenue to satisfy this important biological demand through fair or foul means. That is why we have crimes like rape, defilement and even incest. So why pretend that a serious thing like prostitution, which provides an avenue for tension release, can be outlawed to make society better of?
As is expected, there were those in the other camp who were shouting themselves hoarse condemning this view and quoting some religious verses or moral codes. How could you make commercial sex a legitimate business? they questioned. It would destroy the moral fibre of our daughters and sisters and bring total damnation to our society, they chorused. HIV/AIDS and other sexually-transmitted diseases would have a field day and transport a big chunk of the population to their premature deaths, the voices of dissent continued to vibrate all over. Those loudest in that crusade were the men in collar and cassock.
But how many of them can stand out as role models when it comes to such matters of morality?
Those against the legislation have valid points because legalising a bad thing does not make it good. But the truth is that the more we condemn it and shy away from its legislation, the more prostitution flourishes and engulfs more and more of the population, especially the younger generation. This is because apart from satisfying a biological function, prostitution also has something to do with our socio-economic environment.
Prostitution is simply defined as exchanging sex for money. Going by that, there are many people, both men and women, who are engaged in prostitution of a sort. We may go to Soldier Bar at the Kwame Nkrumah Circle or any other cheap brothel and raid the place and parade some poor girls as prostitutes. But are we telling all the full story?
Are we oblivious to the fact that many men, high and low and cutting across all professions and vocations, engage women in sex and in return pay them or offer them some kind of gifts, services or favours? Most of these women look quite respectable in the eyes of the public as working professionals, students, traders and what have you but they are always at the beck and call of men of all types for a good day’s business. Unfortunately, both married men and women cannot be counted out of the business.
Are we blind to see the so-called respectable men in government and business who drive those expensive vehicles stopping to pick the women who stand sentry around the Togo Embassy every evening? Do we know that some young women stand at strategic locations in Accra and other big towns pretending to be looking for lifts but are actually looking for a sexual business partner?
The business has become even more brisk and more convenient with the entry of the cellular phone into our lives. As long as it is agreed that these women and their male counterparts are not couples, whatever they do in the form of intimacy is illicit and cannot be distanced from those poor souls we occasionally arrest, harass and describe as prostitutes.
The difference is that one group has declared its position — demonstrating their services openly for those who are ready to pay — while the other is living behind a facade of respectability, decency, chastity, celibacy, name them, but doing the same thing, maybe in its most serious and crudest form. So whom are we deceiving?
Are we ready to call a spade a spade and not just a digging tool? Are we going to pretend that we can stop a vocation which was initiated by our great, great, great, grandfathers and grandmothers? Are we ready to face the issue squarely and come to terms with its reality and inevitability so that, somehow, there can be a control and regulatory mechanism to protect and safeguard all those involved in it?
I know this is forbidden territory, but what needs to be told must be told. At the end of the day, we cannot claim to be better off than those who have taken the lead to stare the truth in the face.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
FIXING SQUARE PEGS IN ROUND HOLES (NOV 18)
While delivering a lecture to mark the 10th anniversary of the Central University College in Accra on Tuesday, October 21, 2008, Mr Kwame Pianim, a very respected economist, made an observation which cannot be glossed over.
The eminent economic consultant, while talking on the topic, “Training transformational leaders; Paradigm shift in tertiary education; developments in the national economy; implications for tertiary education”, called on the government to ensure that persons appointed to chair the boards of state enterprises were competent and had the requisite expertise for such positions.
He did not mince words when he acknowledged that “until the government learns to put round pegs in round holes, state enterprises will continue to perform below expectation”.
Closely linked to Mr Pianim’s observation is that of Professor James Hawkings Emphraim, the Vice-Chancellor of the Catholic University at Fiapre in the Brong Ahafo Region.
While addressing the 48th annual conference of Heads of Assisted Secondary Schools (CHASS), Prof. Emphraim also raised issue with the mode of appointment to very important positions in the public service.
Very often, he said, those appointments were based on loyalty to the appointing authority, not ability and competence. What that means is that while the loyalists who are deficient get the job, qualified and competent people remain on the sidelines.
We all know the story of state enterprises. They are all associated with inefficiency, mismanagement, losses, low profit returns and, in extreme cases, total bankruptcy. In all cases, the prescriptions have been the same — bring foreign management consultants, download government shares or do an outright sale of the enterprise.
While we all seem to know the problems and are ready to offer solutions, we pretend not to know their causes, and even if we know, we are not bold enough to confront them in a pragmatic manner.
Over the years, the fate of most state enterprises had hung perilously on the shoulders of men and women in political power. Going by what may be described as Mr Pianim’s lamentations, most members of boards are appointed without consideration for expertise, dedication and commitment.
It is not only questionable, the membership of the boards ; sometimes the management staff may not be the best, but somehow they find their way into top management positions via routes other than qualification, competence and expertise.
Most of the state enterprises which have collapsed or have found their way into the waiting hands of foreign companies could have been money-spinning enterprises offering employment to our professionals but for interference from the powers that be. This is the naked truth we have been shying away from.
Ghana Airways, the Ghana Film Industry Corporation, Tema Food Complex and many others that have been divested of and Ghana Telecom in which Vodafone International recently acquired a 70 per cent share are just a few of the state enterprises that could have been making it big if only they had been left in competent hands without governmental interference which made them operate more or less like extensions of the ministries or as appendages of somebody’s private business empire.
There are many Ghanaians whose competencies are not under question but who never come near certain public positions because they are achievers who will not compromise their principles and objectives for charitable favours. The few who get certain positions on merit realise, sooner than later, that the appointing authorities are not going to leave them alone to perform according to the demands of the office.
There are many foreign companies operating here that are being managed by Ghanaians creditably. Mr Ishmael Yamson, for many years the Chairman of Unilever; Mr Kobina Richardson of the then Pioneer Tobacco Company, now British-American Tobacco, and the largely known Sir Dr Sam Jonah of Anglogold Ashanti fame, are some of the personalities in industry who have made this country proud.
They derived their appointment purely on merit and they remained in office because of their performance and not because of bootlicking. They were given set targets and all the necessary support to achieve those targets. There was no excuse for failure and they did not offer any. So who says our state enterprises cannot perform in the same way if the right things are done?
There are many young men and women with the requisite qualifications and expertise who can do wonders for this country if given the opportunity. Unfortunately, because they do not respond to certain names or wear particular party badges, they may never get the chance to put their talents to the test. Unfortunately, we think the remedy for such a self-inflicted damage to our national development lies in foreign consultants who come to fleece us without responding to our needs.
It is one thing expecting our state enterprises to perform profitably and efficiently and another saddling these enterprises with the wrong leadership. In many ways, we have sacrificed the progress of our state enterprises and that of the nation on the altar of cronyism, favouritism, blind loyalty and nepotism.
Both Mr Pianim and Prof. Emphraim cannot be wrong on the same matter. Our abiding faith in foreign consultancy firms stems from the fact that we do not want to use the local expertise that is available in abundance. Most often, we are torn between the national interest and individual and parochial interests and whenever we have our own way, we go for the latter.
We will be on the way to progress if we utilise the human resource at our disposal to the fullest in the national interest, against all interests.
The eminent economic consultant, while talking on the topic, “Training transformational leaders; Paradigm shift in tertiary education; developments in the national economy; implications for tertiary education”, called on the government to ensure that persons appointed to chair the boards of state enterprises were competent and had the requisite expertise for such positions.
He did not mince words when he acknowledged that “until the government learns to put round pegs in round holes, state enterprises will continue to perform below expectation”.
Closely linked to Mr Pianim’s observation is that of Professor James Hawkings Emphraim, the Vice-Chancellor of the Catholic University at Fiapre in the Brong Ahafo Region.
While addressing the 48th annual conference of Heads of Assisted Secondary Schools (CHASS), Prof. Emphraim also raised issue with the mode of appointment to very important positions in the public service.
Very often, he said, those appointments were based on loyalty to the appointing authority, not ability and competence. What that means is that while the loyalists who are deficient get the job, qualified and competent people remain on the sidelines.
We all know the story of state enterprises. They are all associated with inefficiency, mismanagement, losses, low profit returns and, in extreme cases, total bankruptcy. In all cases, the prescriptions have been the same — bring foreign management consultants, download government shares or do an outright sale of the enterprise.
While we all seem to know the problems and are ready to offer solutions, we pretend not to know their causes, and even if we know, we are not bold enough to confront them in a pragmatic manner.
Over the years, the fate of most state enterprises had hung perilously on the shoulders of men and women in political power. Going by what may be described as Mr Pianim’s lamentations, most members of boards are appointed without consideration for expertise, dedication and commitment.
It is not only questionable, the membership of the boards ; sometimes the management staff may not be the best, but somehow they find their way into top management positions via routes other than qualification, competence and expertise.
Most of the state enterprises which have collapsed or have found their way into the waiting hands of foreign companies could have been money-spinning enterprises offering employment to our professionals but for interference from the powers that be. This is the naked truth we have been shying away from.
Ghana Airways, the Ghana Film Industry Corporation, Tema Food Complex and many others that have been divested of and Ghana Telecom in which Vodafone International recently acquired a 70 per cent share are just a few of the state enterprises that could have been making it big if only they had been left in competent hands without governmental interference which made them operate more or less like extensions of the ministries or as appendages of somebody’s private business empire.
There are many Ghanaians whose competencies are not under question but who never come near certain public positions because they are achievers who will not compromise their principles and objectives for charitable favours. The few who get certain positions on merit realise, sooner than later, that the appointing authorities are not going to leave them alone to perform according to the demands of the office.
There are many foreign companies operating here that are being managed by Ghanaians creditably. Mr Ishmael Yamson, for many years the Chairman of Unilever; Mr Kobina Richardson of the then Pioneer Tobacco Company, now British-American Tobacco, and the largely known Sir Dr Sam Jonah of Anglogold Ashanti fame, are some of the personalities in industry who have made this country proud.
They derived their appointment purely on merit and they remained in office because of their performance and not because of bootlicking. They were given set targets and all the necessary support to achieve those targets. There was no excuse for failure and they did not offer any. So who says our state enterprises cannot perform in the same way if the right things are done?
There are many young men and women with the requisite qualifications and expertise who can do wonders for this country if given the opportunity. Unfortunately, because they do not respond to certain names or wear particular party badges, they may never get the chance to put their talents to the test. Unfortunately, we think the remedy for such a self-inflicted damage to our national development lies in foreign consultants who come to fleece us without responding to our needs.
It is one thing expecting our state enterprises to perform profitably and efficiently and another saddling these enterprises with the wrong leadership. In many ways, we have sacrificed the progress of our state enterprises and that of the nation on the altar of cronyism, favouritism, blind loyalty and nepotism.
Both Mr Pianim and Prof. Emphraim cannot be wrong on the same matter. Our abiding faith in foreign consultancy firms stems from the fact that we do not want to use the local expertise that is available in abundance. Most often, we are torn between the national interest and individual and parochial interests and whenever we have our own way, we go for the latter.
We will be on the way to progress if we utilise the human resource at our disposal to the fullest in the national interest, against all interests.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
WHAT OBAMA VICTORY MEANS TO AFRICA (NOV 11, 2008)
THE atrocities and hardships in Darfur, the killings and despair that have gripped DR Congo as a result of renewed fighting in that country and other conflict areas on the continent briefly lost space on our memory chips.
It was as if Africans were going to the polls to elect a continental leader. Everybody who cares about politics and appreciates the racial equations in American politics was on edge.
The question being asked at the turn of every corner was: Will it happen in our time? Even though the polls which are conducted scientifically, not like the guess work we do here, were pointing to victory, there was that lingering uncertainty that something will happen in the last minute to turn the tables and bring the African dream to a sad end.
When the results came out on Wednesday morning, the reaction was explosive, infectious and spontaneous. A whole continent, the whole Black race, heaved a heavy sigh of relief.
The Black man has finally crossed a formidable psychological barrier and can now move forward without any inhibitions or complexes. That was what the Barrack Obama victory for him to become the 44th President of the United States of America (USA) has done to a people still struggling for recognition and self-esteem.
The Obama story started about four years ago, when he delivered a fiery and thought-provoking speech at his party’s convention. The party chiefs sensed immediately that in Obama, there was a potential leader. But even then, probably apart from Obama himself, I do not think there was any remote dream that four years later he would be the President of the US.
When he launched himself onto the campaign for the party’s nomination for the presidency, it was like one of those things to spice the racial menu and affirm that declaration that every American has equal opportunities to aspire to any height, no matter how quixotic some of the ambitions may sound. The odds were heavily against him. He was too young — 47. And, above all, had a Black man’s blood flowing through his veins.
Typical of us, and drawing on our inferiority complex, we Africans were the first to dismiss Obama’s ambitions. He is a day-dreamer. How can White America vote for an African-American as President to sit in the Oval Office in the White House? Most people kept asking. Others said the Whites would only tolerate him to a point to give some faint hope to the Blacks and other minorities before tossing him somewhere to return no more.
Even as the gruelling Democratic primaries between Obama and Hillary Clinton gathered steam and everything was pointing to an Obama victory, most Africans were still not ready to come to terms with reality.
We were not prepared to accept the fact that there is a big determination and yearning on the part of Americans to move away from their past and build a new national image. We did not want to believe that the present generation of Americans are not entangled in the racial prejudices of the past and that their quest for change cannot be sacrificed on the altar of racism. We did not want to believe that Obama is not a descendant of freed African slaves, but the son of a Kenyan and a White American and, therefore, he cannot be seen as a servant trying to rule over his master.
When the endorsements started to pour in from all corners, it should have given us the clue that something is taking place in America and Obama is the vehicle driving that force — a force of change.
The Obama/Hillary Clinton primaries had been described as one of the fiercest and longest and when it ended with Mrs Clinton conceding defeat, it became obvious that change was on its way. How ironical that that change should fall on the shoulders of a relatively young African-American!
The truth is that the US misused its sole superpower status to bully the whole world. It went to war against Iraq without justification or UN mandate. It went to Afghanistan under a flimsy excuse and realised rather too late that that mountainous, rugged country hastened the collapse of the Soviet Empire. The US has become like Cyclopes, a wounded, blind giant destroying everything on its path in search of solutions to its imaginary problems.
The only remedy is for the US to break from its past and chart a new path. That was how Obama came into existence and took the US by storm. It is good for mankind that when the world came to the cross-roads, it took a Black/White man to redirect its course.
The greatest benefit of the Obama phenomenon is to Africa. Ever since Africa and its people and natural resources were ‘discovered’ by White adventurers, ever since Africans were shipped into slavery and ever since some Europeans met in Berlin in 1844 and shared Africa among themselves, the continent and its people have been struggling for a psychological valve to redeem their image.
Apart from its rich natural resources, nothing good comes from Africa. So intense was the brainwashing and the psychological bombardment that Africans themselves gave up and accepted their fate as third-class citizens. Their leaders are always on the move, seeking solutions to local problems from foreigners.
They are excited the more if they receive glowing praises from foreign leaders, even though they will be the first to admit that they least deserve those titles bestowed on them. Our professionals lack self-confidence, unless they attach some qualification from a foreign university to their name.
Our intellectuals cannot lead the people to self-discovery because they have become slaves to foreign cultures and values. The three-piece suit is a mark of civilisation, affluence and influence. The Africanness is gone and the search for self-identity has become the order of the day.
The Obama victory, it is hoped, has restored the confidence of the African. If great America can see something good in the African, to the extent that it is ready to entrust its destiny into his care, what about the African? How does he see himself? A miserable being who cannot survive without foreign assistance?
If Obama has been elected to govern America, why can’t Africa get leaders who can shepherd it into glory? That is one big challenge for the political leadership of the continent. We need selfless leaders who have vision.
We need leaders who can nurture dreams into reality. We need leaders who can bring a change to a continent bogged down by conflicts, hunger and starvation, disease, poverty, squalor, ignorance and other deprivations.
We have a lot of Obamas on this continent, only if in choosing our leaders we will put things in their right perspective and choose leaders based on quality and no other considerations.
Some may argue that Obama is a hybrid of White and Black. That is true. But we have many of such hybrids on the continent who are yet to make their mark. That means we have a lot of capable men and women on the continent who can move Africa from its current sordid state.
To our African-American brothers and sisters in the US and other places, they have no excuse to remain where they are now. Obama has shown that they can go beyond the boxing ring, the tracks and the musical stages just entertaining others. They can also reach the top.
That barrier of inferiority complex, that barrier of inadequacy, that barrier of self-pity and dependency has been broken. Shall we begin to see ourselves in a different world, a world of hope, prosperity and progress after Obama’s achievement?
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
It was as if Africans were going to the polls to elect a continental leader. Everybody who cares about politics and appreciates the racial equations in American politics was on edge.
The question being asked at the turn of every corner was: Will it happen in our time? Even though the polls which are conducted scientifically, not like the guess work we do here, were pointing to victory, there was that lingering uncertainty that something will happen in the last minute to turn the tables and bring the African dream to a sad end.
When the results came out on Wednesday morning, the reaction was explosive, infectious and spontaneous. A whole continent, the whole Black race, heaved a heavy sigh of relief.
The Black man has finally crossed a formidable psychological barrier and can now move forward without any inhibitions or complexes. That was what the Barrack Obama victory for him to become the 44th President of the United States of America (USA) has done to a people still struggling for recognition and self-esteem.
The Obama story started about four years ago, when he delivered a fiery and thought-provoking speech at his party’s convention. The party chiefs sensed immediately that in Obama, there was a potential leader. But even then, probably apart from Obama himself, I do not think there was any remote dream that four years later he would be the President of the US.
When he launched himself onto the campaign for the party’s nomination for the presidency, it was like one of those things to spice the racial menu and affirm that declaration that every American has equal opportunities to aspire to any height, no matter how quixotic some of the ambitions may sound. The odds were heavily against him. He was too young — 47. And, above all, had a Black man’s blood flowing through his veins.
Typical of us, and drawing on our inferiority complex, we Africans were the first to dismiss Obama’s ambitions. He is a day-dreamer. How can White America vote for an African-American as President to sit in the Oval Office in the White House? Most people kept asking. Others said the Whites would only tolerate him to a point to give some faint hope to the Blacks and other minorities before tossing him somewhere to return no more.
Even as the gruelling Democratic primaries between Obama and Hillary Clinton gathered steam and everything was pointing to an Obama victory, most Africans were still not ready to come to terms with reality.
We were not prepared to accept the fact that there is a big determination and yearning on the part of Americans to move away from their past and build a new national image. We did not want to believe that the present generation of Americans are not entangled in the racial prejudices of the past and that their quest for change cannot be sacrificed on the altar of racism. We did not want to believe that Obama is not a descendant of freed African slaves, but the son of a Kenyan and a White American and, therefore, he cannot be seen as a servant trying to rule over his master.
When the endorsements started to pour in from all corners, it should have given us the clue that something is taking place in America and Obama is the vehicle driving that force — a force of change.
The Obama/Hillary Clinton primaries had been described as one of the fiercest and longest and when it ended with Mrs Clinton conceding defeat, it became obvious that change was on its way. How ironical that that change should fall on the shoulders of a relatively young African-American!
The truth is that the US misused its sole superpower status to bully the whole world. It went to war against Iraq without justification or UN mandate. It went to Afghanistan under a flimsy excuse and realised rather too late that that mountainous, rugged country hastened the collapse of the Soviet Empire. The US has become like Cyclopes, a wounded, blind giant destroying everything on its path in search of solutions to its imaginary problems.
The only remedy is for the US to break from its past and chart a new path. That was how Obama came into existence and took the US by storm. It is good for mankind that when the world came to the cross-roads, it took a Black/White man to redirect its course.
The greatest benefit of the Obama phenomenon is to Africa. Ever since Africa and its people and natural resources were ‘discovered’ by White adventurers, ever since Africans were shipped into slavery and ever since some Europeans met in Berlin in 1844 and shared Africa among themselves, the continent and its people have been struggling for a psychological valve to redeem their image.
Apart from its rich natural resources, nothing good comes from Africa. So intense was the brainwashing and the psychological bombardment that Africans themselves gave up and accepted their fate as third-class citizens. Their leaders are always on the move, seeking solutions to local problems from foreigners.
They are excited the more if they receive glowing praises from foreign leaders, even though they will be the first to admit that they least deserve those titles bestowed on them. Our professionals lack self-confidence, unless they attach some qualification from a foreign university to their name.
Our intellectuals cannot lead the people to self-discovery because they have become slaves to foreign cultures and values. The three-piece suit is a mark of civilisation, affluence and influence. The Africanness is gone and the search for self-identity has become the order of the day.
The Obama victory, it is hoped, has restored the confidence of the African. If great America can see something good in the African, to the extent that it is ready to entrust its destiny into his care, what about the African? How does he see himself? A miserable being who cannot survive without foreign assistance?
If Obama has been elected to govern America, why can’t Africa get leaders who can shepherd it into glory? That is one big challenge for the political leadership of the continent. We need selfless leaders who have vision.
We need leaders who can nurture dreams into reality. We need leaders who can bring a change to a continent bogged down by conflicts, hunger and starvation, disease, poverty, squalor, ignorance and other deprivations.
We have a lot of Obamas on this continent, only if in choosing our leaders we will put things in their right perspective and choose leaders based on quality and no other considerations.
Some may argue that Obama is a hybrid of White and Black. That is true. But we have many of such hybrids on the continent who are yet to make their mark. That means we have a lot of capable men and women on the continent who can move Africa from its current sordid state.
To our African-American brothers and sisters in the US and other places, they have no excuse to remain where they are now. Obama has shown that they can go beyond the boxing ring, the tracks and the musical stages just entertaining others. They can also reach the top.
That barrier of inferiority complex, that barrier of inadequacy, that barrier of self-pity and dependency has been broken. Shall we begin to see ourselves in a different world, a world of hope, prosperity and progress after Obama’s achievement?
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
RIPPLES OF THE GREAT DEBATE (NOV 4, 2008)
IT was a novelty that kept everybody — the flag bearers of four political parties, the moderators, the audience in the auditorium and the rest of us privileged to listen to our radio sets and view on the television screens — in suspense.
When the zero-hour approached, supporters of the main actors — Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo of the New Patriotic Party (NPP); Dr Paa Kwesi Nduom of the Convention People’s Party (CPP); Prof. John Evans Atta-Mills of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and Dr Edward Mahama of the People’s National Convention (PNC) — were on edge wondering how their idols, sitting before a select audience of distinguished personalities, were going to perform before live cameras that will beam proceedings on television channels.
You know talking on campaign platforms at rallies is very easy. Most members of the crowd are actually not listening. They are only cheering or screaming because that is what they are really there (or is it paid?) to do. That is why it is easy for the principal characters to spew out anything that crosses their mind and which can spill out through their mouths — insults, threats, vain promises, a few plain truths — to their charged listeners. After that the jamma, borborbor and kpanlogo groups will lead what is commonly described as teeming supporters who are now drenched in sweat and alcohol, all the way home. A job has been accomplished and the politicians, satisfied with the attendance, will begin to count their chickens even before they are hatched.
As for the masses, their sweat-soaked T-shirts and if lucky, a few wads for the evening’s kenkey plus heavy doses of promises and comforting words assuring them of a better future are all that they gained. But that is even enough to incite some of them into violent confrontation with supporters of rival parties.
This time the setting was quite different and there was no room for vituperative language. There were no teeming crowds to cheer or jeer at the least opportunity and the main actors on stage cannot take things for granted and make loose talks. The whole nation was watching and they had to make every conscious effort to score as much points as possible.
Ours could not match those we are used to seeing on Cable News Network (CNN) or the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), judging from its formal setting and selected and restricted audience. All the same, it came out well and the next one will surely be better.
Seriously, I am not interested very much in what the gentlemen on stage said and I believe many voters may not switch allegiance because of what somebody said or did not say. They all said the same things differently.
My interest, therefore, lies in the spirit behind the exercise. So if those noble men could face millions of Ghanaians in that subdued manner and dole out their promises in civil language, how come that when they mount campaign platforms and stare at the crowd, they turn into a different breed of people?
Why do they take us many, many years back, when the majority of today’s generation were not born? Why do they try to take credit for policies and projects that they condemned in the past? And why do they promise us what, deep down in their hearts, they know they cannot deliver? Why do they have to insult and attack others when the focus should be their own capabilities? We can continue asking more questions whose answers we may never get.
I also see the hands of money rakers who parade as journalists and social commentators in the tension and violence that show up in our political campaigns. The presidential debate has proved that our future leaders can still carry their message across in a language devoid of rancour and acrimony, and it is possible for them to comport themselves on platforms so that they can articulate their vision and mission objectives clearer and better.
As stated earlier, our version of the presidential debate may not come near what we see between say, Barack Obama and John MacCain on international networks, given our deficiencies in technology and funding. But the stage has been set for more of such debates in future.
It is also the wish of many Ghanaians that the candour and civility which prevailed at the presidential debate last Wednesday, will be extended to the final stages of the campaign so as to bring some relief to a tensed nation ready to explode.
Apart from the flag bearers who showed a lot of respect to each other, members of the audience could also be seen after the presentations mixing freely and sharing the conviviality the Ghanaian way. Surely, they all came out of their artificial or imaginary trenches to be what they actually are — Ghanaians.
Our democracy has also taken another giant step forward. What more can we wish for ourselves, if we are assured by Dr Nduom, that his administration will ensure that we receive our pension, the very day we drop dead? That is what makes us an interesting people and we cannot afford to wipe away the humour from our faces.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
When the zero-hour approached, supporters of the main actors — Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo of the New Patriotic Party (NPP); Dr Paa Kwesi Nduom of the Convention People’s Party (CPP); Prof. John Evans Atta-Mills of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and Dr Edward Mahama of the People’s National Convention (PNC) — were on edge wondering how their idols, sitting before a select audience of distinguished personalities, were going to perform before live cameras that will beam proceedings on television channels.
You know talking on campaign platforms at rallies is very easy. Most members of the crowd are actually not listening. They are only cheering or screaming because that is what they are really there (or is it paid?) to do. That is why it is easy for the principal characters to spew out anything that crosses their mind and which can spill out through their mouths — insults, threats, vain promises, a few plain truths — to their charged listeners. After that the jamma, borborbor and kpanlogo groups will lead what is commonly described as teeming supporters who are now drenched in sweat and alcohol, all the way home. A job has been accomplished and the politicians, satisfied with the attendance, will begin to count their chickens even before they are hatched.
As for the masses, their sweat-soaked T-shirts and if lucky, a few wads for the evening’s kenkey plus heavy doses of promises and comforting words assuring them of a better future are all that they gained. But that is even enough to incite some of them into violent confrontation with supporters of rival parties.
This time the setting was quite different and there was no room for vituperative language. There were no teeming crowds to cheer or jeer at the least opportunity and the main actors on stage cannot take things for granted and make loose talks. The whole nation was watching and they had to make every conscious effort to score as much points as possible.
Ours could not match those we are used to seeing on Cable News Network (CNN) or the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), judging from its formal setting and selected and restricted audience. All the same, it came out well and the next one will surely be better.
Seriously, I am not interested very much in what the gentlemen on stage said and I believe many voters may not switch allegiance because of what somebody said or did not say. They all said the same things differently.
My interest, therefore, lies in the spirit behind the exercise. So if those noble men could face millions of Ghanaians in that subdued manner and dole out their promises in civil language, how come that when they mount campaign platforms and stare at the crowd, they turn into a different breed of people?
Why do they take us many, many years back, when the majority of today’s generation were not born? Why do they try to take credit for policies and projects that they condemned in the past? And why do they promise us what, deep down in their hearts, they know they cannot deliver? Why do they have to insult and attack others when the focus should be their own capabilities? We can continue asking more questions whose answers we may never get.
I also see the hands of money rakers who parade as journalists and social commentators in the tension and violence that show up in our political campaigns. The presidential debate has proved that our future leaders can still carry their message across in a language devoid of rancour and acrimony, and it is possible for them to comport themselves on platforms so that they can articulate their vision and mission objectives clearer and better.
As stated earlier, our version of the presidential debate may not come near what we see between say, Barack Obama and John MacCain on international networks, given our deficiencies in technology and funding. But the stage has been set for more of such debates in future.
It is also the wish of many Ghanaians that the candour and civility which prevailed at the presidential debate last Wednesday, will be extended to the final stages of the campaign so as to bring some relief to a tensed nation ready to explode.
Apart from the flag bearers who showed a lot of respect to each other, members of the audience could also be seen after the presentations mixing freely and sharing the conviviality the Ghanaian way. Surely, they all came out of their artificial or imaginary trenches to be what they actually are — Ghanaians.
Our democracy has also taken another giant step forward. What more can we wish for ourselves, if we are assured by Dr Nduom, that his administration will ensure that we receive our pension, the very day we drop dead? That is what makes us an interesting people and we cannot afford to wipe away the humour from our faces.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
HEAR THE CRIES OF TOMATO FARMERS (PAGE 7)
ABOUT four weeks ago, there were desperate cries from tomato farmers in certain parts of the country who could not sell their produce. There was prompt reaction from Trusty Foods Company, an agro-processing firm based in Tema, when it offered to purchase the produce directly from the farmers.
That was commendable. There was some comfort in that offer, even though it did not meet the full aspirations of the farmers. But for how long shall our farmers continue to rely on such sporadic and unpredictable gestures from individuals and firms to sustain their business?
The complaints of all the team players in the tomato industry are varied and multifaceted, but they collectively raise the question of our sincere commitment to agricultural development.
From the Upper East Region came the plea for credit facilities. Tomato farmers in that part of the country complained severely of lack of credit facilities which, they claimed, were undermining their operations.
According to them, the high cost of land preparation and of fertiliser and the non-availability of improved seeds are affecting their production capacity and consequently reducing their incomes and thus exposing them to poverty and hunger.
The problem, they claimed, began way back in the late 1980s when support for the agriculture sector was withdrawn as part of the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP). The resultant reduction in local production opened the floodgates for the importation of tomato and tomato paste into the country.
The solution, they believe, lies in the Agricultural Credit Fund which will open access to credit facilities for farmers. The bill for this fund is still at the gestation stage and the farmers are calling for expeditious action to activate the fund to bring some relief to the farmers.
Until the government intervention comes, most of the farmers have to rely on the tomato queens, who are into big-time tomato business, to prefinance their production costs. That also means the queens have a bigger say in the price of the produce at harvest time.
While the Upper East farmers are lamenting production costs, there is another group with a different problem altogether. These are tomato farmers in the southern part of the country who could not find market for their produce.
From Keta, Tegbi, Woe, Anloga to Ada, the problem is the same — no market for the produce after a bumper harvest — forcing the price to plummet from GH¢60 to GH¢20 a crate. With the glut comes the added pressure of finding money to settle loan repayments and other monetary obligations.
By some strange irony, while the farmers are crying for market and good price for their produce, the processing plants are also claiming that they do not have enough raw materials for their factories. The queens, who do a lot of the prefinancing, are also complaining of unfair prices from the factories.
The country is, therefore, caught in a vicious circle. Our farmers struggle against all odds to produce the crop; then when it is harvest time there is no market. The produce then rots away, serving as a big disincentive to the farmers. A few weeks later, we spend a lot of foreign exchange to import the same produce that was rotting away a few weeks earlier.
While our farmers are crying for market, and while the few agro-processing factories are claiming inadequate raw materials for their factories, our country has become a big importer of tomatoes from outside. Our shops hardly sell tomato paste processed locally. Some of these imported pastes are labelled with local names as a deception. But that does not take away our dependency syndrome.
The Americans have a saying: “We eat what we can and can what we can’t.” That is common sense. The greatness of a country does not come by accident. You do not produce to throw away and go back to buy the same thing from another person a few days later and expect to develop.
Every year we experience bumper harvests. Every year we throw away farm produce, with its attendant loss to farmers. Every year we import food thrown away earlier. So what do we think of ourselves? When mango is in season, you see farmers begging people to buy the fruit. The same can be said of oranges, bananas, pineapples, pear and watermelon.
But enter any supermarket; you see only imported canned fruit juices on the shelves. While our farmers are licking their wounds, worried over how to raise funds to settle their debts, the farmers of South Africa, Brazil, Spain, Portugal, France, China and South Korea are laughing all the way to their holiday resorts.
Our agricultural sector has not recorded any significant successes to give credibility to that huge bureaucracy called the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA). Other ministries such as Trade and Industry, Private Sector Development and PSI, Manpower, Youth and Employment and Local Government, Rural Development and Environment have not been able to give MoFA the necessary back-up to make agricultural production lucrative and attractive for employment generation.
We are still lagging behind in storage and processing facilities. The only way we can encourage local production is when farmers can be assured of reasonable guarantee prices for their produce. That will also be possible only if we have facilities to store and preserve excess farm produce for the lean season.
We do not need huge factories with sophisticated machinery to do most of these things. There should be a national agenda to establish agro-processing plants in all the major food growing areas to add value to our farm produce.
The added benefit is that a lot of our young men and women will be engaged in something productive at the local level. Other countries have done it and their products are in our shops. So why can’t we do the same?
A nation’s strength lies in its ability to produce what its citizens eat and the capacity to save the surplus for the rainy day. So far, apart from the unending promises and pledges, there is nothing on the ground to show that as a people we are ready to take full control of our destiny, food sufficiency wise.
For a country our size, and the land resources available, our food imports are just too many. Once we are able to stop the post-harvest losses and reduce the food imports, we will be in a better position to deploy precious cash into areas where we are naturally weak.
The tomato farmers and sellers may not be crying for themselves alone. They are also crying for agriculture, a sector which holds so much promise but which is doing more talking than acting.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
That was commendable. There was some comfort in that offer, even though it did not meet the full aspirations of the farmers. But for how long shall our farmers continue to rely on such sporadic and unpredictable gestures from individuals and firms to sustain their business?
The complaints of all the team players in the tomato industry are varied and multifaceted, but they collectively raise the question of our sincere commitment to agricultural development.
From the Upper East Region came the plea for credit facilities. Tomato farmers in that part of the country complained severely of lack of credit facilities which, they claimed, were undermining their operations.
According to them, the high cost of land preparation and of fertiliser and the non-availability of improved seeds are affecting their production capacity and consequently reducing their incomes and thus exposing them to poverty and hunger.
The problem, they claimed, began way back in the late 1980s when support for the agriculture sector was withdrawn as part of the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP). The resultant reduction in local production opened the floodgates for the importation of tomato and tomato paste into the country.
The solution, they believe, lies in the Agricultural Credit Fund which will open access to credit facilities for farmers. The bill for this fund is still at the gestation stage and the farmers are calling for expeditious action to activate the fund to bring some relief to the farmers.
Until the government intervention comes, most of the farmers have to rely on the tomato queens, who are into big-time tomato business, to prefinance their production costs. That also means the queens have a bigger say in the price of the produce at harvest time.
While the Upper East farmers are lamenting production costs, there is another group with a different problem altogether. These are tomato farmers in the southern part of the country who could not find market for their produce.
From Keta, Tegbi, Woe, Anloga to Ada, the problem is the same — no market for the produce after a bumper harvest — forcing the price to plummet from GH¢60 to GH¢20 a crate. With the glut comes the added pressure of finding money to settle loan repayments and other monetary obligations.
By some strange irony, while the farmers are crying for market and good price for their produce, the processing plants are also claiming that they do not have enough raw materials for their factories. The queens, who do a lot of the prefinancing, are also complaining of unfair prices from the factories.
The country is, therefore, caught in a vicious circle. Our farmers struggle against all odds to produce the crop; then when it is harvest time there is no market. The produce then rots away, serving as a big disincentive to the farmers. A few weeks later, we spend a lot of foreign exchange to import the same produce that was rotting away a few weeks earlier.
While our farmers are crying for market, and while the few agro-processing factories are claiming inadequate raw materials for their factories, our country has become a big importer of tomatoes from outside. Our shops hardly sell tomato paste processed locally. Some of these imported pastes are labelled with local names as a deception. But that does not take away our dependency syndrome.
The Americans have a saying: “We eat what we can and can what we can’t.” That is common sense. The greatness of a country does not come by accident. You do not produce to throw away and go back to buy the same thing from another person a few days later and expect to develop.
Every year we experience bumper harvests. Every year we throw away farm produce, with its attendant loss to farmers. Every year we import food thrown away earlier. So what do we think of ourselves? When mango is in season, you see farmers begging people to buy the fruit. The same can be said of oranges, bananas, pineapples, pear and watermelon.
But enter any supermarket; you see only imported canned fruit juices on the shelves. While our farmers are licking their wounds, worried over how to raise funds to settle their debts, the farmers of South Africa, Brazil, Spain, Portugal, France, China and South Korea are laughing all the way to their holiday resorts.
Our agricultural sector has not recorded any significant successes to give credibility to that huge bureaucracy called the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA). Other ministries such as Trade and Industry, Private Sector Development and PSI, Manpower, Youth and Employment and Local Government, Rural Development and Environment have not been able to give MoFA the necessary back-up to make agricultural production lucrative and attractive for employment generation.
We are still lagging behind in storage and processing facilities. The only way we can encourage local production is when farmers can be assured of reasonable guarantee prices for their produce. That will also be possible only if we have facilities to store and preserve excess farm produce for the lean season.
We do not need huge factories with sophisticated machinery to do most of these things. There should be a national agenda to establish agro-processing plants in all the major food growing areas to add value to our farm produce.
The added benefit is that a lot of our young men and women will be engaged in something productive at the local level. Other countries have done it and their products are in our shops. So why can’t we do the same?
A nation’s strength lies in its ability to produce what its citizens eat and the capacity to save the surplus for the rainy day. So far, apart from the unending promises and pledges, there is nothing on the ground to show that as a people we are ready to take full control of our destiny, food sufficiency wise.
For a country our size, and the land resources available, our food imports are just too many. Once we are able to stop the post-harvest losses and reduce the food imports, we will be in a better position to deploy precious cash into areas where we are naturally weak.
The tomato farmers and sellers may not be crying for themselves alone. They are also crying for agriculture, a sector which holds so much promise but which is doing more talking than acting.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
MAKING OLD LAWS LOOK NEW (OCTOBER 21, 2008)
Some time ago when Mr Peter Nanfuri was the Inspector-General of Police, a directive was issued banning the use of tinted windows by motorists, with a warning of dire consequences if that directive was flouted. Some quickly responded by removing the tinted films on their windows. Others did not.
At the end of the day, those who respected the order looked like fools because not a single driver or car owner was arrested and prosecuted for illegal use of heavily-tinted windows.
Today, it has become fashionable to drive vehicles with heavily tinted windows on our streets and highways as if nothing is at stake, even though we all know that tinted windows can blur vision and provide criminals the opportunity to do many bad things even in the day time.
This country does not lack road traffic regulations. These are captured in the Road Traffic Act of 2004 (Act 683). These regulations have been designed to ensure road safety, protect motorists and other road users, avoid or minimise accidents and, where accidents occur, reduce their negative impact and ensure that due compensations are paid to victims.
They are also to protect the society from potential criminal activities by miscreants who are likely to use unregistered vehicles, vehicles with false compartments and tinted windows to commit crime. In short, Act 683 has enough safeguards and deterrents to protect lives and property and ensure safety on our roads.
Last Wednesday, the Commander of the Motor Traffic and Transport Unit (MTTU) of the Ghana Police Service, ACP Daniel Julius Avogah, went public again, warning motorists of the consequences of flouting road traffic and driving regulations.
In an interview with the Daily Graphic, ACP Avogah reminded the public of certain actions or inaction which constituted an offence under the Road Traffic Act and which could attract sanctions as prescribed by the act. They include driving without fastening one’s seat belt and carrying a pregnant woman and a nursing mother or a child of five years or below in the front seat.
We also know that there are regulations on driving vehicles without registration numbers, riding motorbikes without helmets, driving with defective lights, overloading and driving without a driver’s licence issued by an accredited body.
The list is tall and to help the police to execute their mandate of ensuring law and order on the roads is the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA), another public institution which is to ensure that even before the vehicles hit the roads they are roadworthy, duly registered and licensed and their passenger and load capacities clearly established and approved.
ACP Avogah was even magnanimous enough to say that the law on the use of seat belts would come into force in January 2009. That is good effort, granted that there remain some legal and technical hurdles to be cleared before full compliance. For instance, which type of vehicles would be affected by the law on the use of seat belts? Will it affect all passenger vehicles? What about the mummy trucks which still carry passengers? These are some of the questions that will require answers.
My problem is that there are old road traffic regulations that are scarcely enforced to the letter.
It is acknowledged that the police are confronted with numerous challenges, including human resource and logistics constraints. The service conditions of personnel can also not be described as the best. Nothwithstanding these obvious constraints, and with the limited available resources, personnel of the MTTU can still do better.
As stated earlier, the directive on the use of tinted windows has been treated with contempt. Meanwhile, it does not take much effort to arrest those flouting this directive. It is a daily occurrence to see motor riders without crash helmets and there are many vehicles on the roads without the appropriate registration numbers.
It is common to see children sitting on the front seat of vehicles every morning while being sent to and from school. These days, tro-tro and taxi drivers have created special lanes for themselves on which they speed recklessly, to the detriment of other road users, with such impunity that they have become a law onto themselves.
Even though ignorance is no excuse before the law, reminders and warnings such as the one issued by ACP Avogah are necessary, at least to keep the general public abreast of events. However, the most important thing is the enforcement of the law. There is too much impunity in the system. We have enough laws which, if enforced, can bring some appreciable amount of sanity and safety on the roads. The problem is that much too often the police are lenient, play ball with offenders or just get overwhelmed by prevailing conditions.
At least it should be possible to remove those vehicles with heavily-tinted windows from our roads. We should be able to rid the roads of unregistered vehicles and we should be able to ensure that motor riders without crash helmets do not have access to our roads.
As a human institution, the police cannot be without their challenges, but these should not overwhelm us into inaction. It will be in the interest of the nation if members of the public support and co-operate with the police. But the first step must be taken by the men in uniform, otherwise we may be sounding as if we are making new road traffic regulations, when all we need is to enforce existing ones.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
At the end of the day, those who respected the order looked like fools because not a single driver or car owner was arrested and prosecuted for illegal use of heavily-tinted windows.
Today, it has become fashionable to drive vehicles with heavily tinted windows on our streets and highways as if nothing is at stake, even though we all know that tinted windows can blur vision and provide criminals the opportunity to do many bad things even in the day time.
This country does not lack road traffic regulations. These are captured in the Road Traffic Act of 2004 (Act 683). These regulations have been designed to ensure road safety, protect motorists and other road users, avoid or minimise accidents and, where accidents occur, reduce their negative impact and ensure that due compensations are paid to victims.
They are also to protect the society from potential criminal activities by miscreants who are likely to use unregistered vehicles, vehicles with false compartments and tinted windows to commit crime. In short, Act 683 has enough safeguards and deterrents to protect lives and property and ensure safety on our roads.
Last Wednesday, the Commander of the Motor Traffic and Transport Unit (MTTU) of the Ghana Police Service, ACP Daniel Julius Avogah, went public again, warning motorists of the consequences of flouting road traffic and driving regulations.
In an interview with the Daily Graphic, ACP Avogah reminded the public of certain actions or inaction which constituted an offence under the Road Traffic Act and which could attract sanctions as prescribed by the act. They include driving without fastening one’s seat belt and carrying a pregnant woman and a nursing mother or a child of five years or below in the front seat.
We also know that there are regulations on driving vehicles without registration numbers, riding motorbikes without helmets, driving with defective lights, overloading and driving without a driver’s licence issued by an accredited body.
The list is tall and to help the police to execute their mandate of ensuring law and order on the roads is the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA), another public institution which is to ensure that even before the vehicles hit the roads they are roadworthy, duly registered and licensed and their passenger and load capacities clearly established and approved.
ACP Avogah was even magnanimous enough to say that the law on the use of seat belts would come into force in January 2009. That is good effort, granted that there remain some legal and technical hurdles to be cleared before full compliance. For instance, which type of vehicles would be affected by the law on the use of seat belts? Will it affect all passenger vehicles? What about the mummy trucks which still carry passengers? These are some of the questions that will require answers.
My problem is that there are old road traffic regulations that are scarcely enforced to the letter.
It is acknowledged that the police are confronted with numerous challenges, including human resource and logistics constraints. The service conditions of personnel can also not be described as the best. Nothwithstanding these obvious constraints, and with the limited available resources, personnel of the MTTU can still do better.
As stated earlier, the directive on the use of tinted windows has been treated with contempt. Meanwhile, it does not take much effort to arrest those flouting this directive. It is a daily occurrence to see motor riders without crash helmets and there are many vehicles on the roads without the appropriate registration numbers.
It is common to see children sitting on the front seat of vehicles every morning while being sent to and from school. These days, tro-tro and taxi drivers have created special lanes for themselves on which they speed recklessly, to the detriment of other road users, with such impunity that they have become a law onto themselves.
Even though ignorance is no excuse before the law, reminders and warnings such as the one issued by ACP Avogah are necessary, at least to keep the general public abreast of events. However, the most important thing is the enforcement of the law. There is too much impunity in the system. We have enough laws which, if enforced, can bring some appreciable amount of sanity and safety on the roads. The problem is that much too often the police are lenient, play ball with offenders or just get overwhelmed by prevailing conditions.
At least it should be possible to remove those vehicles with heavily-tinted windows from our roads. We should be able to rid the roads of unregistered vehicles and we should be able to ensure that motor riders without crash helmets do not have access to our roads.
As a human institution, the police cannot be without their challenges, but these should not overwhelm us into inaction. It will be in the interest of the nation if members of the public support and co-operate with the police. But the first step must be taken by the men in uniform, otherwise we may be sounding as if we are making new road traffic regulations, when all we need is to enforce existing ones.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
BEYOND PRAYER AND FASTING (OCT 14)
Praying is good. At least it gives you the psychological relief that you have laid bare your problems or requests and it gives you hope that redemption is on its way. Jesus Christ, while He was on this earth, taught His disciples how to pray. The fruit of that lesson is what is commonly called the Lord’s Prayer. That, in itself, lends credence to the power of prayer.
Imagine being down and low, wondering where the next meal will come from. Then you pour your feelings out in prayer, leaving the rest to God. Let us assume that soon after that you hear a knock on your door. As you open it, there, standing before you, is a long lost schoolmate you can hardly recognise who has been living outside the country. After all the conviviality and cracking of old jokes, this friend takes you out for a good meal and before he bids you farewell he drops $100 note in your palm.
You cannot but believe that God has answered your prayers. Never mind if that friend was already within a few metres from your house when you knelt down to pray. After all, he could have missed your house or even been diverted by another friend of his.
It will, however, be dangerous or even useless if, after praying, you do not conduct yourself or position yourself in a manner that will allow God’s blessings to shower on you. It is like a driver who, before embarking on a journey, kneels down and prays but fails to change his worn-out tyres. Or, after praying, the driver decides to drive anyhow because God is in control.
Miracles do happen, but in the two scenarios painted here, there is a big possibility of the driver running into serious trouble that may even result in death, prayers notwithstanding.
As we approach the parliamentary and presidential elections, there are genuine concerns, for obvious reasons, for the security of the state. The utterances of some people and the physical confrontations between supporters of some political parties in certain parts of the country lend credence to fears that we need to be extra careful to avoid any dislocation in our national equilibrium.
Appeals spearheaded by several civil society organisations and religious bodies have gone to the leadership of the various political parties and their supporters to exercise moderation and exhibit decency in their campaigns. They have been advised to avoid using inflammatory words that could incite people and trigger a chain of events that could endanger the peace of the nation.
Those more religiously inclined have committed everything to prayer and fasting, seeking divine intervention. Some churches have organised special services for God’s guidance, while imploring members of their congregations to keep praying for the bountiful mercies of the Holy Spirit in these turbulent times.
On Sunday, October 5, 2008, a national thanksgiving service was held at the Independence Square to express our gratitude to God for His kind mercies and to supplicate for peaceful and incident-free elections in December. That church service was attended by key personalities from all the political parties and other noble men and women who have something to do with the stability of this nation.
But what happens after that? Do we just fold our arms and give everything to God, without applying the rules of natural justice?
While it is good to pray, at least to give us that spiritual and psychological boost, we need to do more to protect our individual and collective integrity and well-being. This we can do by applying the simple rules that govern parties.
It is no credit to us as a people if we are known to behave like savages when campaigning for political office. It does not speak well of us to be reminded every time that elections are never over in Africa until a few jaws have been smashed and bones broken. Why should desperation become the driving force behind political campaigns if the mission is truly to serve this country and make it a better place for all of us? That behaviour only betrays our hidden intentions for bidding for political office.
Apart from declarations by political leaders of their commitment to peace, there is very little to show that our politicians are actually speaking in the interest of the generality of Ghanaians. We expect to hear from our aspiring leaders what they will do to solve problems that are real and staring us in the face today, instead of what somebody could not do or did many, many years ago.
We cannot spend all our time trading insults and making baseless accusations when there are a lot of challenges confronting us as a nation. For a small population like ours, it is sad that we still rely on food imports to feed ourselves. We do not have any excuse. We have abundant land and enough water resources to make all-year farming possible. We have people who are ready to take agriculture seriously if only they can get support and direction.
Recently there was this story about rice donation from Japan. The donation of 8,060 metric tonnes of rice, which was worth US$6 million, formed part of Japan’s Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) to poor countries such as Ghana to ensure peace and stability in the world. Should we be excited about that donation? Japan is a cluster of earthquake-prone islands, so why should we be excited about rice donation from such a country when, aggregately, we have more fertile land and a smaller population to feed than Japan? These are the real issues.
Conditions in our health facilities do not offer us any solace. The National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) has come to fill a void — no two ways about that. The free medical care for pregnant women is also commendable. But what about the facilities and the professionals who are to man them. Do we have enough of them?
Can we seriously be proud of our educational system as it is now? Standards in the public schools are so bad that all the first-class senior high schools are gradually becoming the preserve of BECE candidates from the private schools. We are watching as if nothing is wrong when we know that most of the leaders of today attended humble schools in their villages but managed to enter Achimota, Prempeh, Mfantsipim, Mawuli, Bishop Herman and other top schools to become what they are today. The doors to these schools are fast closing in on majority of our children. Not that these senior high schools themselves are in top shape any way. But at least they are far way ahead of most of the schools that offer sanctuaries to our children, but which may not lead them anywhere. We want to hear how this anomaly will be redressed.
We have on our hands a new breed of armed robbers who are yet to enter their 20s. Majority of them could be taken off the list if there is a sound policy direction on how to mould our children into useful adults. Youth and graduate unemployment is a reality that cannot be wished away. The urban centres that held promise for the rural youth in the past are no longer attractive because of overcrowding. Now the craze is to do everything possible to leave this country.
We still import everything conceivable and export raw materials, which do not fetch much on the international market. Our towns and cities are engulfed in filth and our streets are jammed with unnecessary traffic. The challenges are many but the remedies seem to be limited. This is where we expect our politicians to tell us how they are going to address these challenges, not try to outmatch one another in vain promises and outrageous allegations.
There are many things we dream of doing tomorrow that should have been done many years ago. We are now dreaming of going nuclear by 2015 when there was the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission and the Kwabenya Atomic Reactor Project during the days of Dr Kwame Nkrumah. By now we should have been thinking beyond nuclear! We have suffered from poor leadership and that should be our utmost concern now.
This country has everything to be a tourist paradise, which can bring in foreign cash and give employment to a good number of our people, if only we can add value to what nature has given us. Yet here we are, always begging for foreign support.
It seems desperation is setting in and we are only being fed with insults on a daily basis. This country, relative to its size and resources, should not be in this state and so we need a political leadership that will redirect things for the better.
Praying is good, but it is even more important that we remove all obstacles that stand in the way of peace and stability. That means we cultivate the culture of tolerance, moderation, mutual respect and humility, otherwise even as we are locked up in our chapels speaking in tongues, our homes will be on fire. The reckless phone-in programmes must cease and the sober and level-headed must take control in directing the affairs of state.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
Imagine being down and low, wondering where the next meal will come from. Then you pour your feelings out in prayer, leaving the rest to God. Let us assume that soon after that you hear a knock on your door. As you open it, there, standing before you, is a long lost schoolmate you can hardly recognise who has been living outside the country. After all the conviviality and cracking of old jokes, this friend takes you out for a good meal and before he bids you farewell he drops $100 note in your palm.
You cannot but believe that God has answered your prayers. Never mind if that friend was already within a few metres from your house when you knelt down to pray. After all, he could have missed your house or even been diverted by another friend of his.
It will, however, be dangerous or even useless if, after praying, you do not conduct yourself or position yourself in a manner that will allow God’s blessings to shower on you. It is like a driver who, before embarking on a journey, kneels down and prays but fails to change his worn-out tyres. Or, after praying, the driver decides to drive anyhow because God is in control.
Miracles do happen, but in the two scenarios painted here, there is a big possibility of the driver running into serious trouble that may even result in death, prayers notwithstanding.
As we approach the parliamentary and presidential elections, there are genuine concerns, for obvious reasons, for the security of the state. The utterances of some people and the physical confrontations between supporters of some political parties in certain parts of the country lend credence to fears that we need to be extra careful to avoid any dislocation in our national equilibrium.
Appeals spearheaded by several civil society organisations and religious bodies have gone to the leadership of the various political parties and their supporters to exercise moderation and exhibit decency in their campaigns. They have been advised to avoid using inflammatory words that could incite people and trigger a chain of events that could endanger the peace of the nation.
Those more religiously inclined have committed everything to prayer and fasting, seeking divine intervention. Some churches have organised special services for God’s guidance, while imploring members of their congregations to keep praying for the bountiful mercies of the Holy Spirit in these turbulent times.
On Sunday, October 5, 2008, a national thanksgiving service was held at the Independence Square to express our gratitude to God for His kind mercies and to supplicate for peaceful and incident-free elections in December. That church service was attended by key personalities from all the political parties and other noble men and women who have something to do with the stability of this nation.
But what happens after that? Do we just fold our arms and give everything to God, without applying the rules of natural justice?
While it is good to pray, at least to give us that spiritual and psychological boost, we need to do more to protect our individual and collective integrity and well-being. This we can do by applying the simple rules that govern parties.
It is no credit to us as a people if we are known to behave like savages when campaigning for political office. It does not speak well of us to be reminded every time that elections are never over in Africa until a few jaws have been smashed and bones broken. Why should desperation become the driving force behind political campaigns if the mission is truly to serve this country and make it a better place for all of us? That behaviour only betrays our hidden intentions for bidding for political office.
Apart from declarations by political leaders of their commitment to peace, there is very little to show that our politicians are actually speaking in the interest of the generality of Ghanaians. We expect to hear from our aspiring leaders what they will do to solve problems that are real and staring us in the face today, instead of what somebody could not do or did many, many years ago.
We cannot spend all our time trading insults and making baseless accusations when there are a lot of challenges confronting us as a nation. For a small population like ours, it is sad that we still rely on food imports to feed ourselves. We do not have any excuse. We have abundant land and enough water resources to make all-year farming possible. We have people who are ready to take agriculture seriously if only they can get support and direction.
Recently there was this story about rice donation from Japan. The donation of 8,060 metric tonnes of rice, which was worth US$6 million, formed part of Japan’s Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) to poor countries such as Ghana to ensure peace and stability in the world. Should we be excited about that donation? Japan is a cluster of earthquake-prone islands, so why should we be excited about rice donation from such a country when, aggregately, we have more fertile land and a smaller population to feed than Japan? These are the real issues.
Conditions in our health facilities do not offer us any solace. The National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) has come to fill a void — no two ways about that. The free medical care for pregnant women is also commendable. But what about the facilities and the professionals who are to man them. Do we have enough of them?
Can we seriously be proud of our educational system as it is now? Standards in the public schools are so bad that all the first-class senior high schools are gradually becoming the preserve of BECE candidates from the private schools. We are watching as if nothing is wrong when we know that most of the leaders of today attended humble schools in their villages but managed to enter Achimota, Prempeh, Mfantsipim, Mawuli, Bishop Herman and other top schools to become what they are today. The doors to these schools are fast closing in on majority of our children. Not that these senior high schools themselves are in top shape any way. But at least they are far way ahead of most of the schools that offer sanctuaries to our children, but which may not lead them anywhere. We want to hear how this anomaly will be redressed.
We have on our hands a new breed of armed robbers who are yet to enter their 20s. Majority of them could be taken off the list if there is a sound policy direction on how to mould our children into useful adults. Youth and graduate unemployment is a reality that cannot be wished away. The urban centres that held promise for the rural youth in the past are no longer attractive because of overcrowding. Now the craze is to do everything possible to leave this country.
We still import everything conceivable and export raw materials, which do not fetch much on the international market. Our towns and cities are engulfed in filth and our streets are jammed with unnecessary traffic. The challenges are many but the remedies seem to be limited. This is where we expect our politicians to tell us how they are going to address these challenges, not try to outmatch one another in vain promises and outrageous allegations.
There are many things we dream of doing tomorrow that should have been done many years ago. We are now dreaming of going nuclear by 2015 when there was the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission and the Kwabenya Atomic Reactor Project during the days of Dr Kwame Nkrumah. By now we should have been thinking beyond nuclear! We have suffered from poor leadership and that should be our utmost concern now.
This country has everything to be a tourist paradise, which can bring in foreign cash and give employment to a good number of our people, if only we can add value to what nature has given us. Yet here we are, always begging for foreign support.
It seems desperation is setting in and we are only being fed with insults on a daily basis. This country, relative to its size and resources, should not be in this state and so we need a political leadership that will redirect things for the better.
Praying is good, but it is even more important that we remove all obstacles that stand in the way of peace and stability. That means we cultivate the culture of tolerance, moderation, mutual respect and humility, otherwise even as we are locked up in our chapels speaking in tongues, our homes will be on fire. The reckless phone-in programmes must cease and the sober and level-headed must take control in directing the affairs of state.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
CELEBRATING WITH CAUTION (OCT. 7, 2008)
Ghanaians are fun-loving people. It is no exaggeration that visitors to this country depart with fond memories of a people who do not allow the hardships of this world to extinguish in them their spirit to celebrate. Not even death. That is why funerals are gradually taking the form of festivals and are being euphemistically described as celebrations of life.
So whether it is a religious or traditional festival or the celebration of the life of a departed relation, Ghanaians are quick to rise to the occasion to burn all their energies to fill themselves with food and alcohol.
After all, what is life if you have to allow poverty and other vicissitudes of life to deprive you of fun or allow sorrow and misery emanating from the death of a dear one to reduce you to tatters when life must go on?
But these days, either out of excitement or out of desperation, we descend to the extreme. Those selected to go to the mortuary to collect bodies are sometimes so drenched in alcohol that they easily pick the wrong corpses. It has happened several times and relatives only realise, deep into the funeral rites, that they have been mourning the wrong person.
The drivers conveying bodies from the mortuaries usually get carried away by sorrow fuelled by alcohol and drive so recklessly that sometimes more lives are lost, turning a rather sombre observation of death into a bigger nightmarish experience.
The funeral ground itself is something like a picnic, with different live bands or spinning groups competing for attraction. Depending on the stature of the dead and the financial weight of those in charge of the funeral, the celebrants could be assured of a free flow of torrents of alcoholic beverages. Then starts careless and loose talks and irresponsible behaviour.
Some mourners never return home in piece because the reflexes of their drivers have been numbed by excess alcohol and, therefore, they could not make a difference between an approaching articulated truck and a wheelbarrow. Some of the women who take delight in competing with the men in alcohol consumption lose control and do not remember the vehicles they sat in to the funerals and naturally end up sitting by the wrong men. It is a common allegation that some marriages suffer after funerals.
Some wake up after a funeral with missing teeth or swollen jaws because they had over-indulged in the celebrations. What should have been a solemn occasion to pay last respects to a lost one ends up with the deceased forgotten and the things we can remember are the losses and the pains.
If funerals have assumed the status of carnivals, it is not difficult to picture what happens at festivals. It is the same drinking and eating and the vulgar display of recklessness. The joy and togetherness these festivals were designed to bring to us are most often lost in the midst of accidents, quarrels, broken limbs and sometimes death.
It is sad that religious rites or festivals have not escaped this menace. Christmas, which is an important event on the Christian calendar marking the birth of Jesus Christ, lacks, in most part, any religious fervour.
Apart from the ritualistic church services which many do not miss, the merry-making associated with Christmas may not make Jesus Christ, wherever he may be sitting, happy in Heaven.
The same can be said of Easter, which commemorates the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Where Christians have failed, we thought Muslims will show the way. But once a Ghanaian, always a Ghanaian. Eid-ul-Fitr is a sacred festival on the Islamic calendar, observed to mark the end of the month of fasting and prayers. Yes, it is a joyous occasion, having renewed our faith and strengthening us to count on the bountiful blessings of Allah.
However, we need not dilute this special occasion with any unnecessary antics. What I saw last Tuesday in some parts of Accra unnerved me — motor riders zig-zagging in the middle of roads. Some people were hanging perilously on moving vehicles being driven as if the concrete roads have been padded with foam. Accidents have been recorded in the past and I will not be surprised if this year’s celebration was not without its casualties.
The Jama sessions which followed in the afternoon, with loud music and intricate body movements, could not hide from even the casual observer that some people have over-indulged in alcohol consumption. It is true.
By all means we must have fun, no matter the occasion. That is the only way we can ease tension and rejuvenate our bodies from this earthly stress. But moderation should be the watchword.
There is no need to wake up with a severe hangover after celebrating. It will be even worse if we should be struck by one calamity or another just because we could not control ourselves when celebrating. That is why we should celebrate with caution.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
So whether it is a religious or traditional festival or the celebration of the life of a departed relation, Ghanaians are quick to rise to the occasion to burn all their energies to fill themselves with food and alcohol.
After all, what is life if you have to allow poverty and other vicissitudes of life to deprive you of fun or allow sorrow and misery emanating from the death of a dear one to reduce you to tatters when life must go on?
But these days, either out of excitement or out of desperation, we descend to the extreme. Those selected to go to the mortuary to collect bodies are sometimes so drenched in alcohol that they easily pick the wrong corpses. It has happened several times and relatives only realise, deep into the funeral rites, that they have been mourning the wrong person.
The drivers conveying bodies from the mortuaries usually get carried away by sorrow fuelled by alcohol and drive so recklessly that sometimes more lives are lost, turning a rather sombre observation of death into a bigger nightmarish experience.
The funeral ground itself is something like a picnic, with different live bands or spinning groups competing for attraction. Depending on the stature of the dead and the financial weight of those in charge of the funeral, the celebrants could be assured of a free flow of torrents of alcoholic beverages. Then starts careless and loose talks and irresponsible behaviour.
Some mourners never return home in piece because the reflexes of their drivers have been numbed by excess alcohol and, therefore, they could not make a difference between an approaching articulated truck and a wheelbarrow. Some of the women who take delight in competing with the men in alcohol consumption lose control and do not remember the vehicles they sat in to the funerals and naturally end up sitting by the wrong men. It is a common allegation that some marriages suffer after funerals.
Some wake up after a funeral with missing teeth or swollen jaws because they had over-indulged in the celebrations. What should have been a solemn occasion to pay last respects to a lost one ends up with the deceased forgotten and the things we can remember are the losses and the pains.
If funerals have assumed the status of carnivals, it is not difficult to picture what happens at festivals. It is the same drinking and eating and the vulgar display of recklessness. The joy and togetherness these festivals were designed to bring to us are most often lost in the midst of accidents, quarrels, broken limbs and sometimes death.
It is sad that religious rites or festivals have not escaped this menace. Christmas, which is an important event on the Christian calendar marking the birth of Jesus Christ, lacks, in most part, any religious fervour.
Apart from the ritualistic church services which many do not miss, the merry-making associated with Christmas may not make Jesus Christ, wherever he may be sitting, happy in Heaven.
The same can be said of Easter, which commemorates the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Where Christians have failed, we thought Muslims will show the way. But once a Ghanaian, always a Ghanaian. Eid-ul-Fitr is a sacred festival on the Islamic calendar, observed to mark the end of the month of fasting and prayers. Yes, it is a joyous occasion, having renewed our faith and strengthening us to count on the bountiful blessings of Allah.
However, we need not dilute this special occasion with any unnecessary antics. What I saw last Tuesday in some parts of Accra unnerved me — motor riders zig-zagging in the middle of roads. Some people were hanging perilously on moving vehicles being driven as if the concrete roads have been padded with foam. Accidents have been recorded in the past and I will not be surprised if this year’s celebration was not without its casualties.
The Jama sessions which followed in the afternoon, with loud music and intricate body movements, could not hide from even the casual observer that some people have over-indulged in alcohol consumption. It is true.
By all means we must have fun, no matter the occasion. That is the only way we can ease tension and rejuvenate our bodies from this earthly stress. But moderation should be the watchword.
There is no need to wake up with a severe hangover after celebrating. It will be even worse if we should be struck by one calamity or another just because we could not control ourselves when celebrating. That is why we should celebrate with caution.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
THE SEPTEMBER RESIGNATIONS (SEPT. 30, 2008)
ON Sunday, September 22, 2008, Thabo Mbeki announced his resignation as President of the Republic of South Africa (RSA). Not that it came as a shock. The announcement just took many by surprise because that action is not common on the continent of Africa. That decision followed accusations that Mbeki was using political pressure and manipulations to pursue corruption charges against Jacob Zuma, the African National Congress (ANC) Chairman who is generally tipped to succeed him.
In June 2005, Zuma was relieved of his post as Vice-President of RSA following the conviction of his close financial advisor, Schabir Shaik, for corruption and fraud and sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment. Even though that decision did not go down well with many South Africans, Mbeki defended his position by saying that he wanted to protect South Africa’s young democracy and prove that no one was above the law. That was good, especially in the eyes of the Western countries who are now showing a keen interest in matters concerning democracy on the continent.
Suspicion heightened when, on December 6, 2005, rape charges were filed against Zuma for having an illicit affair with a 31-year-old woman who is a daughter of a dead comrade. That case was dismissed on May 8, 2006.
The rivalry between Mbeki and Zuma got to fever pitch in December 2007 when the two fought for the leadership of the ANC. Zuma won overwhelmingly and put to an end any ambitions Mbeki was nurturing of playing a leading role in party or government affairs after the elections in 2009.
So when, soon after the bitter and acrimonious elections, corruption charges were brought against Zuma, there were good grounds to suspect that Mbeki was up to some mischief and deliberately trying to derail Zuma’s presidential ambitions. His case was not made any better when, on September 22, 2008, Judge Chris Nicholson threw out the corruption and racketeering charges against Zuma, on the grounds that there had been strong political interference in the case and cited Mbeki.
It became a commonly acknowledged belief that Mbeki wanted to use his presidential powers to suffocate Zuma and dim his presidential ambitions. The ANC, within which Zuma commands a huge following, went into action and called for Mbeki’s resignation or risk impeachment.
Even though Mbeki denied the accusation, he decided to step down because, according to him, he was a member of the ANC and, therefore, he had to respect its wishes.
A new President, in the person of Kgalema Motlanthe, the deputy ANC leader, has since been sworn in.
Around the same time, the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert resigned as head of the ruling Kadima Party, paving the way for Tzipi Livini, the Foreign Minister, to be elected as the new Kadima leader to become the first female Prime Minister in 34 years after Golda Meir left that office.
Olmert had been battling with corruption allegations, having been accused of misusing cash payments from a US businessman and double-billing government agencies for his foreign trips. He finally bowed to pressure and resigned so that he could face his accusers squarely.
On September 1, 2008, the Japanese Prime Minister, Yasuo Fukuda, resigned, complaining of frustrations from the Upper House of Parliament, which is under the control of the opposition. Fukuda’s popularity nose dived when the economy started to backslide and he was accused of presiding over the loss of pension records and a controversial healthcare scheme.
Taro Aso took over as the fourth Japanese Prime Minister in two years.
In the same month, the Thai Prime Minister, Samak Sundaravej, was forced to resign when a court ruled that he acted in conflict of interest when he appeared on television for a fee to exhibit his cooking talents.
On a lesser note but no less significant was the resignation of Li Changjiang, the head of China’s quality watchdog, following the growing scandal over melamine-contaminated baby milk, which has killed some children in China and made over 53,000 ill.
These events may appear far and remote from us but they share certain things in common, which are relevant to our situation here and from which we can draw some useful lessons. First is the need to hold our leaders accountable and demand the best from them. They should not be allowed to take us for granted but should at all times live above reproach.
What Olmert is being accused of — diverting or misusing public funds and making false claims — are daily occurrences in our part of the world over which we have very little control, if any. That is why we have made politics a lucrative business here. No one cares to know why someone who was struggling to survive can, within a matter of months, be swimming in funds and start grabbing property left and right. Any feeble voice attempting to draw attention to such a sudden windfall and to question its source is quickly drowned in a barrage of insults and name-calling. Through a well-rehearsed manipulation, the very people whose interests are being subverted are split along political or ethnic lines, allowing a corrupt official to escape with his ill-gotten booty.
The Israeli experience has proved that no matter one’s status, one cannot run away from accountability and that when it comes to the national interest, one’s own party will be the first to smoke one out. That is the only way we can ensure sanity in politics and get only the best and most committed to aspire to national leadership positions.
We have created a situation where most of the people who parade as politicians and want to lead this country are nothing more than mercenaries who want to feast on our national resources. Only a few have the interest of this nation at heart.
The current struggle going on among the various political parties for the attention of the electorate has very little to do with the welfare of the people and the development of this country. It is a fight to control our national resources and dissipate them in a manner they choose. Otherwise, what is the need for these life-or-death confrontations if the nation’s progress is the main objective of seeking political office?
What caused the Thai Prime Minister his office could have been brushed aside here. Elsewhere, you cannot take the high office of Prime Minister for granted and certain things cannot be allowed to compromise the position of the Prime Minister who had no business going to display his cooking abilities on national television. It also shows the independence of the judiciary in that country.
This is not the first time Japan has changed prime ministers in rapid succession. But it still remains the most powerful economy in the world. That confirms the fact that what we describe here as stability — allowing one person or group of persons to remain in power for many, many years — does not add to development if there is no clear national development agenda. Individuals may come and go but the state machinery remains intact once a path has been beaten and the national goals have been spelt out without relying on the whims and caprices of a few individuals.
Fukuda’s resignation again had its lessons. Leaders must be prepared to bow out honourably after they have realised that for some reasons they could not realise their objectives. It does not help the state if you remain in office and blame imaginary enemies for your failure.
The Chinese watchdog man who resigned over the contaminated baby milk has sent a signal that people should be ready to take responsibility for failures that are remotely linked to them. Here, we like taking all the glory but when it is the other way round, then a poor worker somewhere must be made to suffer the pain.
Nearer home, Mbeki’s resignation has taught us a lesson. He could have stayed on in office until next year, when South Africans go to the polls, or fight impeachment proceedings in Parliament. He chose a shorter route because that eliminates any bruises to party solidarity and national image. At least his honour is intact and South Africa marches on. Once it has been done in one African country, it means it can be done in other countries.
It means we should stop personalising public offices and try to exit when the applause is loudest. All the countries that experienced the September resignations — Japan, China, Israel, South Africa and Thailand — are far ahead of Ghana in terms of development, an indication that we need to change our style of leadership if we want to join the developed league.
We also need a well-informed and enlightened population that will eschew hero-worshipping and spare national leaders no room to abuse their welcome.
The spontaneous outpour of grief from all sections of the Ghanaian public at the sudden death of Mr Kwadwo Baah-Wiredu, the former Finance and Economic Planning Minister, in faraway South Africa is ample testimony that partisan politics has not beclouded our sense of recognition and appreciation and that putting political rivalry aside, Ghanaians still know those who are committed to the affairs of this nation.
The late Baah-Wiredu was a rare species who did not belong to that group of noisy politicians who always draw attention to themselves, instead of the issues. A few may not be happy with him because he did not want to turn the national treasury into a war chest to be dissipated carelessly by a few. And that is exactly why almost every Ghanaian is mourning his death. May his soul rest in peace.
In June 2005, Zuma was relieved of his post as Vice-President of RSA following the conviction of his close financial advisor, Schabir Shaik, for corruption and fraud and sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment. Even though that decision did not go down well with many South Africans, Mbeki defended his position by saying that he wanted to protect South Africa’s young democracy and prove that no one was above the law. That was good, especially in the eyes of the Western countries who are now showing a keen interest in matters concerning democracy on the continent.
Suspicion heightened when, on December 6, 2005, rape charges were filed against Zuma for having an illicit affair with a 31-year-old woman who is a daughter of a dead comrade. That case was dismissed on May 8, 2006.
The rivalry between Mbeki and Zuma got to fever pitch in December 2007 when the two fought for the leadership of the ANC. Zuma won overwhelmingly and put to an end any ambitions Mbeki was nurturing of playing a leading role in party or government affairs after the elections in 2009.
So when, soon after the bitter and acrimonious elections, corruption charges were brought against Zuma, there were good grounds to suspect that Mbeki was up to some mischief and deliberately trying to derail Zuma’s presidential ambitions. His case was not made any better when, on September 22, 2008, Judge Chris Nicholson threw out the corruption and racketeering charges against Zuma, on the grounds that there had been strong political interference in the case and cited Mbeki.
It became a commonly acknowledged belief that Mbeki wanted to use his presidential powers to suffocate Zuma and dim his presidential ambitions. The ANC, within which Zuma commands a huge following, went into action and called for Mbeki’s resignation or risk impeachment.
Even though Mbeki denied the accusation, he decided to step down because, according to him, he was a member of the ANC and, therefore, he had to respect its wishes.
A new President, in the person of Kgalema Motlanthe, the deputy ANC leader, has since been sworn in.
Around the same time, the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert resigned as head of the ruling Kadima Party, paving the way for Tzipi Livini, the Foreign Minister, to be elected as the new Kadima leader to become the first female Prime Minister in 34 years after Golda Meir left that office.
Olmert had been battling with corruption allegations, having been accused of misusing cash payments from a US businessman and double-billing government agencies for his foreign trips. He finally bowed to pressure and resigned so that he could face his accusers squarely.
On September 1, 2008, the Japanese Prime Minister, Yasuo Fukuda, resigned, complaining of frustrations from the Upper House of Parliament, which is under the control of the opposition. Fukuda’s popularity nose dived when the economy started to backslide and he was accused of presiding over the loss of pension records and a controversial healthcare scheme.
Taro Aso took over as the fourth Japanese Prime Minister in two years.
In the same month, the Thai Prime Minister, Samak Sundaravej, was forced to resign when a court ruled that he acted in conflict of interest when he appeared on television for a fee to exhibit his cooking talents.
On a lesser note but no less significant was the resignation of Li Changjiang, the head of China’s quality watchdog, following the growing scandal over melamine-contaminated baby milk, which has killed some children in China and made over 53,000 ill.
These events may appear far and remote from us but they share certain things in common, which are relevant to our situation here and from which we can draw some useful lessons. First is the need to hold our leaders accountable and demand the best from them. They should not be allowed to take us for granted but should at all times live above reproach.
What Olmert is being accused of — diverting or misusing public funds and making false claims — are daily occurrences in our part of the world over which we have very little control, if any. That is why we have made politics a lucrative business here. No one cares to know why someone who was struggling to survive can, within a matter of months, be swimming in funds and start grabbing property left and right. Any feeble voice attempting to draw attention to such a sudden windfall and to question its source is quickly drowned in a barrage of insults and name-calling. Through a well-rehearsed manipulation, the very people whose interests are being subverted are split along political or ethnic lines, allowing a corrupt official to escape with his ill-gotten booty.
The Israeli experience has proved that no matter one’s status, one cannot run away from accountability and that when it comes to the national interest, one’s own party will be the first to smoke one out. That is the only way we can ensure sanity in politics and get only the best and most committed to aspire to national leadership positions.
We have created a situation where most of the people who parade as politicians and want to lead this country are nothing more than mercenaries who want to feast on our national resources. Only a few have the interest of this nation at heart.
The current struggle going on among the various political parties for the attention of the electorate has very little to do with the welfare of the people and the development of this country. It is a fight to control our national resources and dissipate them in a manner they choose. Otherwise, what is the need for these life-or-death confrontations if the nation’s progress is the main objective of seeking political office?
What caused the Thai Prime Minister his office could have been brushed aside here. Elsewhere, you cannot take the high office of Prime Minister for granted and certain things cannot be allowed to compromise the position of the Prime Minister who had no business going to display his cooking abilities on national television. It also shows the independence of the judiciary in that country.
This is not the first time Japan has changed prime ministers in rapid succession. But it still remains the most powerful economy in the world. That confirms the fact that what we describe here as stability — allowing one person or group of persons to remain in power for many, many years — does not add to development if there is no clear national development agenda. Individuals may come and go but the state machinery remains intact once a path has been beaten and the national goals have been spelt out without relying on the whims and caprices of a few individuals.
Fukuda’s resignation again had its lessons. Leaders must be prepared to bow out honourably after they have realised that for some reasons they could not realise their objectives. It does not help the state if you remain in office and blame imaginary enemies for your failure.
The Chinese watchdog man who resigned over the contaminated baby milk has sent a signal that people should be ready to take responsibility for failures that are remotely linked to them. Here, we like taking all the glory but when it is the other way round, then a poor worker somewhere must be made to suffer the pain.
Nearer home, Mbeki’s resignation has taught us a lesson. He could have stayed on in office until next year, when South Africans go to the polls, or fight impeachment proceedings in Parliament. He chose a shorter route because that eliminates any bruises to party solidarity and national image. At least his honour is intact and South Africa marches on. Once it has been done in one African country, it means it can be done in other countries.
It means we should stop personalising public offices and try to exit when the applause is loudest. All the countries that experienced the September resignations — Japan, China, Israel, South Africa and Thailand — are far ahead of Ghana in terms of development, an indication that we need to change our style of leadership if we want to join the developed league.
We also need a well-informed and enlightened population that will eschew hero-worshipping and spare national leaders no room to abuse their welcome.
The spontaneous outpour of grief from all sections of the Ghanaian public at the sudden death of Mr Kwadwo Baah-Wiredu, the former Finance and Economic Planning Minister, in faraway South Africa is ample testimony that partisan politics has not beclouded our sense of recognition and appreciation and that putting political rivalry aside, Ghanaians still know those who are committed to the affairs of this nation.
The late Baah-Wiredu was a rare species who did not belong to that group of noisy politicians who always draw attention to themselves, instead of the issues. A few may not be happy with him because he did not want to turn the national treasury into a war chest to be dissipated carelessly by a few. And that is exactly why almost every Ghanaian is mourning his death. May his soul rest in peace.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
A RETURN TO AN OLD STORY (SEPT 23, 2008)
When, last year, an American molecular biologist, James Dewey Watson, tried to connect race with development (or underdevelopment), the reaction of Blacks was predictable. Instead of reflecting soberly and pondering over what could have made them the poorest everywhere they found themselves on the globe, they cast racial invectives at the Nobel laureate.
Who said Blacks are inferior to Whites? many queried, and came to the conclusion that Professor Watson’s observation that Blacks, genetically, had a problem which had inhibited development and advancement was laden with racial undertones and should, therefore, not only be condemned but dismissed.
We have still not been able to explain why Blacks everywhere, from Africa, the mother continent, to the US, Jamaica, Cuba, Trinidad and Tobago, the Virgin Islands, Haiti, Brazil, name them, have not exhibited the same development acumen as others, even though in some cunning way nature’s resources are available to them in abundance.
Blacks have never failed to remind the rest of the world that the evil effects of colonialism, slavery, racial discrimination and unfair trade practices have collectively conspired to impede their progress.
While blaming these external forces, which are real in a way, we have never been able to look at ourselves to determine how far our actions and inaction have contributed to the perpetuation of our underdevelopment and impoverishment. We did not want to find out why a country like Zimbabwe (until it gained Black majority rule), with a small minority White population could have a vibrant economy in the midst of other poor neighbours.
In the same way, we did not bother to find out why South Africa, with its minority White population, could command an economy comparable to those in the so-called First World countries when the rest of the countries in southern Africa could hardly feed their populations. No one should tell me there is gold in South Africa. Our own Obuasi, one of the richest gold mines in the world, is here and there is nothing to show for it.
The problem can, therefore, not be just about slavery, colonialism, unfair trade practices and lack of natural resources. It goes deeper than these things. And that is the cruel reality. I listened to Mr Joris Watenberg, the guest on the Kwaku-One-On-One programme on TV3 on Sunday, September 14, 2008 and what he said set me thinking.
He said Blacks had KNOWLEDGE, while Whites had INTELLIGENCE. He equated Knowledge to Energy which is static and Intelligence to Light which is in motion. So while the former is static, the latter is always on the move. He gave an example. Ask a Black person to move from Accra to Tema and he will give you a thousand and one excuses why that assignment cannot be executed — the road is rough, the weather is unfriendly or the task is just impossible. On the other hand, tell a White man to travel to Tamale and he will do everything to get to Tamale and even go beyond, without offering excuses for failure.
You cannot call this racial prejudice because Watenberg is a Black man and a Ghanaian, so you cannot say he wants to spite Blacks. May be he is just trying to tell us the truth, the naked truth. To us, everything is IMPOSSIBLE. To others, it may be difficult but it could be done. The result is there for all to see. While others have overcome the deficiencies of their miserable past to become great nations, we still continue to blame the past for today’s problems.
Japan has emerged from the devastation of two atomic bomb attacks in 1945 to become the second most powerful economy in the world. China accepted the challenge when the West described it as backward and primitive to become the miracle nation of the 21st century. During the Cultural Revolution, when China closed its doors to the outside world, Chairman Mao Zedung urged his people to prove either of two things: Either to prove the West right that they (the Chinese) are good-for-nothing or prove them wrong. With their national pride at stake, and their very existence on this earth as human beings under question, the Chinese accepted the challenge and went into action.
Today, every Western company worth its sort is struggling to have a foothold on Chinese territory and capture a piece of that huge market. With Hong Kong and Macao back to Chinese control and Taiwan likely to follow soon, China is the next world superpower in the making.
What the US and its allies did not know at the time was that most of the so-called dissidents who sought refuge in the West were brilliant Chinese students who were deliberately sent out to study science and technology in American and European universities. The US and its allies welcomed those so-called dissidents and gave them access to all their training facilities, while indoctrinating them on the virtues of capitalism in the hope that they would return to China to change the system.
The so-called dissidents actually returned home in a way the Americans thought was clandestine. What they did not know was that those Chinese returned home with special skills. Today, when they look back, the Americans have realised rather too late that all their secrets in science and technology, all their business and trade tricks, all their military and intelligence gathering secrets have been acquired by the Chinese.
Today, the whole world has come to accept the fact that the Chinese are not backward or primitive and they are still progressing. A piece of what they are capable of doing was showcased at the recent Beijing Olympic Games.
With a population of more than 1.3 billion, the Chinese do not rely on food aid to survive. They grow rice, their main staple, in abundance. So they can afford to do what pleases them without any fear of blackmail from any quarter. They are their own masters now. Do we have any lessons to learn as Blacks?
Can we say the same thing about Blacks? Almost everything that one needs to survive on this planet is in Africa, yet this is the continent where poverty, hunger, disease and misery have made their homes. With all the fertile land, its rivers and lakes, Africa is always on donors’ list for food aid.
When parts of the world started experiencing spiralling food prices, our immediate response here in Ghana was not to galvanise the people into action to till the land but to take the short route of reducing import duty on imported food items. By doing so, we have succeeded in making a few food merchants richer and kept in serious business crop farmers in foreign lands. It is sad the way we relish adverts on imported food items on our television screens and radios and in the newspapers.
Our country is among the few in the world where adverts on foreign goods dominate the local media. It is either American Long Grain rice, Thai perfume rice or a special yellow maize from Argentina, South Africa or Brazil. We import tomato paste which is marketed under local names to fool us and to give us a false sense of adequacy. Do we have any excuse for importing onion, pepper, fresh tomato, lettuce and cabbage from a Sahelian country like Burkina Faso?
To come to think of the fact that the Volta River flows from the northern part of the country and drains wastefully into the sea in the south, without any attempt to harness this large volume of water for agriculture, tends to make some of us to believe that, after all, Watenberg may not be wrong.
Our leaders have lost focus and have come to the conclusion that the only way they can deliver this continent from these afflictions is through begging.
Every day our leaders leave behind their rich resources to attend one aid conference or another. Some countries have built multi-lane expressways and are looking forward to super-highways, while, in our case, we make noise, expecting the world to celebrate with us whenever we succeed in pouring bitumen on a few dusty roads. We are excited about very simple things. Look at Tetteh-Quarshie in this 21st century. We do not aim at the best but look at the rest who belong to our miserable class and applaud ourselves.
At the Paralympics in Beijing, we saw people in wheelchairs with various forms of disability playing basketball. Others have taken part in other events, including swimming, racing, discus throw and many others. Here, even persons with the slightest limp stand by the road side begging for alms because our society has not made any serious provision for such people. Our world is always different from that of others.
Recently, the Minister of Trade, Industry and PSI expressed concern over the proliferation of second-hand items, including used pants, socks, brassieres, towels, handkerchiefs, cutlery, mattresses, among many others, on the local market. The minister appealed to the conscience of the importers to halt the importation of those items or face a legal challenge.
But what can we expect in a country where all we know is to import in the name of trade liberalisation, without any effort to feed the local market with locally-produced goods? What can we expect in a country with such an insatiable appetite for anything foreign, including imported orange, apple, pawpaw and mango? What do we expect from a country whose people have lost all sense of national pride and, therefore, see nothing wrong clothing themselves in dresses thrown away by others or eating in plates that were collected from hospitals overseas?
The bottom line is that most of our people cannot afford anything in its brand new form because of poverty. So we all drive second-hand vehicles, wear second-hand clothes and eat in second-hand plates. If the business people stop bringing these things into the country, they themselves and those who rely on them in the business chain will be jobless; many workers may never sit behind the steering wheel of their own vehicles and a lot of us and our children may walk naked on the streets.
It will, therefore, need a serious national effort, not sermons, to rid this country of second-hand goods. Nothing second-hand is justified, not even if it had been used for just a day, and it will be a mistake to make one look dignifying and the other not. No self-respecting people should patronise what has been discarded by others. It means confronting our national problems headlong and solemnly pledging that we shall not continue to live at the mercy of others, nor shall we remain in their shadows for ever.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
Who said Blacks are inferior to Whites? many queried, and came to the conclusion that Professor Watson’s observation that Blacks, genetically, had a problem which had inhibited development and advancement was laden with racial undertones and should, therefore, not only be condemned but dismissed.
We have still not been able to explain why Blacks everywhere, from Africa, the mother continent, to the US, Jamaica, Cuba, Trinidad and Tobago, the Virgin Islands, Haiti, Brazil, name them, have not exhibited the same development acumen as others, even though in some cunning way nature’s resources are available to them in abundance.
Blacks have never failed to remind the rest of the world that the evil effects of colonialism, slavery, racial discrimination and unfair trade practices have collectively conspired to impede their progress.
While blaming these external forces, which are real in a way, we have never been able to look at ourselves to determine how far our actions and inaction have contributed to the perpetuation of our underdevelopment and impoverishment. We did not want to find out why a country like Zimbabwe (until it gained Black majority rule), with a small minority White population could have a vibrant economy in the midst of other poor neighbours.
In the same way, we did not bother to find out why South Africa, with its minority White population, could command an economy comparable to those in the so-called First World countries when the rest of the countries in southern Africa could hardly feed their populations. No one should tell me there is gold in South Africa. Our own Obuasi, one of the richest gold mines in the world, is here and there is nothing to show for it.
The problem can, therefore, not be just about slavery, colonialism, unfair trade practices and lack of natural resources. It goes deeper than these things. And that is the cruel reality. I listened to Mr Joris Watenberg, the guest on the Kwaku-One-On-One programme on TV3 on Sunday, September 14, 2008 and what he said set me thinking.
He said Blacks had KNOWLEDGE, while Whites had INTELLIGENCE. He equated Knowledge to Energy which is static and Intelligence to Light which is in motion. So while the former is static, the latter is always on the move. He gave an example. Ask a Black person to move from Accra to Tema and he will give you a thousand and one excuses why that assignment cannot be executed — the road is rough, the weather is unfriendly or the task is just impossible. On the other hand, tell a White man to travel to Tamale and he will do everything to get to Tamale and even go beyond, without offering excuses for failure.
You cannot call this racial prejudice because Watenberg is a Black man and a Ghanaian, so you cannot say he wants to spite Blacks. May be he is just trying to tell us the truth, the naked truth. To us, everything is IMPOSSIBLE. To others, it may be difficult but it could be done. The result is there for all to see. While others have overcome the deficiencies of their miserable past to become great nations, we still continue to blame the past for today’s problems.
Japan has emerged from the devastation of two atomic bomb attacks in 1945 to become the second most powerful economy in the world. China accepted the challenge when the West described it as backward and primitive to become the miracle nation of the 21st century. During the Cultural Revolution, when China closed its doors to the outside world, Chairman Mao Zedung urged his people to prove either of two things: Either to prove the West right that they (the Chinese) are good-for-nothing or prove them wrong. With their national pride at stake, and their very existence on this earth as human beings under question, the Chinese accepted the challenge and went into action.
Today, every Western company worth its sort is struggling to have a foothold on Chinese territory and capture a piece of that huge market. With Hong Kong and Macao back to Chinese control and Taiwan likely to follow soon, China is the next world superpower in the making.
What the US and its allies did not know at the time was that most of the so-called dissidents who sought refuge in the West were brilliant Chinese students who were deliberately sent out to study science and technology in American and European universities. The US and its allies welcomed those so-called dissidents and gave them access to all their training facilities, while indoctrinating them on the virtues of capitalism in the hope that they would return to China to change the system.
The so-called dissidents actually returned home in a way the Americans thought was clandestine. What they did not know was that those Chinese returned home with special skills. Today, when they look back, the Americans have realised rather too late that all their secrets in science and technology, all their business and trade tricks, all their military and intelligence gathering secrets have been acquired by the Chinese.
Today, the whole world has come to accept the fact that the Chinese are not backward or primitive and they are still progressing. A piece of what they are capable of doing was showcased at the recent Beijing Olympic Games.
With a population of more than 1.3 billion, the Chinese do not rely on food aid to survive. They grow rice, their main staple, in abundance. So they can afford to do what pleases them without any fear of blackmail from any quarter. They are their own masters now. Do we have any lessons to learn as Blacks?
Can we say the same thing about Blacks? Almost everything that one needs to survive on this planet is in Africa, yet this is the continent where poverty, hunger, disease and misery have made their homes. With all the fertile land, its rivers and lakes, Africa is always on donors’ list for food aid.
When parts of the world started experiencing spiralling food prices, our immediate response here in Ghana was not to galvanise the people into action to till the land but to take the short route of reducing import duty on imported food items. By doing so, we have succeeded in making a few food merchants richer and kept in serious business crop farmers in foreign lands. It is sad the way we relish adverts on imported food items on our television screens and radios and in the newspapers.
Our country is among the few in the world where adverts on foreign goods dominate the local media. It is either American Long Grain rice, Thai perfume rice or a special yellow maize from Argentina, South Africa or Brazil. We import tomato paste which is marketed under local names to fool us and to give us a false sense of adequacy. Do we have any excuse for importing onion, pepper, fresh tomato, lettuce and cabbage from a Sahelian country like Burkina Faso?
To come to think of the fact that the Volta River flows from the northern part of the country and drains wastefully into the sea in the south, without any attempt to harness this large volume of water for agriculture, tends to make some of us to believe that, after all, Watenberg may not be wrong.
Our leaders have lost focus and have come to the conclusion that the only way they can deliver this continent from these afflictions is through begging.
Every day our leaders leave behind their rich resources to attend one aid conference or another. Some countries have built multi-lane expressways and are looking forward to super-highways, while, in our case, we make noise, expecting the world to celebrate with us whenever we succeed in pouring bitumen on a few dusty roads. We are excited about very simple things. Look at Tetteh-Quarshie in this 21st century. We do not aim at the best but look at the rest who belong to our miserable class and applaud ourselves.
At the Paralympics in Beijing, we saw people in wheelchairs with various forms of disability playing basketball. Others have taken part in other events, including swimming, racing, discus throw and many others. Here, even persons with the slightest limp stand by the road side begging for alms because our society has not made any serious provision for such people. Our world is always different from that of others.
Recently, the Minister of Trade, Industry and PSI expressed concern over the proliferation of second-hand items, including used pants, socks, brassieres, towels, handkerchiefs, cutlery, mattresses, among many others, on the local market. The minister appealed to the conscience of the importers to halt the importation of those items or face a legal challenge.
But what can we expect in a country where all we know is to import in the name of trade liberalisation, without any effort to feed the local market with locally-produced goods? What can we expect in a country with such an insatiable appetite for anything foreign, including imported orange, apple, pawpaw and mango? What do we expect from a country whose people have lost all sense of national pride and, therefore, see nothing wrong clothing themselves in dresses thrown away by others or eating in plates that were collected from hospitals overseas?
The bottom line is that most of our people cannot afford anything in its brand new form because of poverty. So we all drive second-hand vehicles, wear second-hand clothes and eat in second-hand plates. If the business people stop bringing these things into the country, they themselves and those who rely on them in the business chain will be jobless; many workers may never sit behind the steering wheel of their own vehicles and a lot of us and our children may walk naked on the streets.
It will, therefore, need a serious national effort, not sermons, to rid this country of second-hand goods. Nothing second-hand is justified, not even if it had been used for just a day, and it will be a mistake to make one look dignifying and the other not. No self-respecting people should patronise what has been discarded by others. It means confronting our national problems headlong and solemnly pledging that we shall not continue to live at the mercy of others, nor shall we remain in their shadows for ever.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
THE UNITA SOLUTION (DAILY GRAPHIC, SEPTEMBER 16, 2008, PAGE 7)
Angolans and those who have followed the turbulent and violent history of that country might have taken in a deep breath and heaved a heavy sigh of relief when they heard that the leader of UNITA, the main opposition party in Angola, had conceded defeat in their recent polls.
“Despite everything that happened, the Unita leadership accepts the election results and hopes the winning party, MPLA, will govern in the interest of all Angolans,” the Unita leader, Isaias Samakuva, said in a statement on Monday, August 8, 2008 to put to rest any fears that Angola would go back to war if there should be any dispute after the elections, the first to be held since 1992 and seen to be a crucial step towards the country’s recovery from decades of war.
There was general apprehension and fear during the run-up to the election following accusations that MPLA, the government party, was paying bribes and using the security agencies to intimidate its opponents, who are mainly members of UNITA. With the history of the continent where violence always erupted after any electoral process and the recent bitter experience of Kenya yet to recede from memory, there were genuine fears that Angola, which has spent the greater part of its independent life on war, could degenerate into another battlefield of senseless killings.
When the Portuguese colonialists hurriedly left the country in 1975 under the guise of granting Angola independence, the well-endowed country, in terms of natural resources, exploded into civil war. The Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), under the leadership of Dr Agostino Neto, had to battle the National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA), under Holden Roberto and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) under Dr Jonas Savimbi for territorial control.
It did not take long for the FNLA to fizzle out, but UNITA, with its anti-Communist badge, drew a lot of support from the US and its Western allies to counter MPLA, which drew its support from the then Soviet Union and its allies.
For nearly 17 years, Angola became an ideological battle ground in the superpower rivalry of the Cold War era. Bolstered by money coming from the diamond trade that UNITA controlled, Savimbi ignored all peace overtures until the collapse of the Soviet Empire in 1990, which brought the bitter Cold War to an end.
In 1992, after many attempts at peace making, Angola held its first UN-certified elections, the results of which were disputed by Jonas Savimbi and his UNITA movement and the country was plunged into civil war again.
Fresh attempts culminated in the signing of the Lusaka Peace Accord in 1994, which brought about some appreciable level of peace until 1998, when Savimbi, after repeated violations of the peace accord, went back to war.
The end came on February 22, 2002, when government troops killed Savimbi. The death of the warlord was followed six weeks later with the signing of a ceasefire agreement with UNITA rebels. That signalled the end of a bitter civil war that lasted nearly 30 years and caused the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives and the dissipation of natural resources on the war effort by both sides.
The recent elections were generally seen as a watershed in Angolan politics, which will either consolidate its democracy or trigger another bout of civil conflict. Even though the observer mission from the Southern Africa Development Co-operation (SADC) declared that the polls had been transparent and peaceful, there were various infractions typical of all elections conducted on the continent. And with combatants ready to go back for their arms, there were fears that the Kenya experience would pale into insignificance, if political leaders did not maintain cool heads.
Thank God, the leadership of UNITA did not lose sight of the hardships war had unleashed on their country and its people and, therefore, decided to choose the path of accommodation and tolerance instead of confrontation and violence.
Angola is very rich in terms of natural resources. It is now taking over from Nigeria as sub-Saharan Africa’s largest oil exporter. It is also rich in diamonds, iron ore, phosphate, copper, gold, bauxite, uranium and timber.
Apart from the decades of war that has drained a considerable amount of funds, Angola, like most African countries, could not escape the scourge of massive corruption in official circles. According to International Monetary Fund (IMF) sources, more than US$4 billion got missing from the national treasury over a six-year period. All the same, it has the potential to emerge as one of Africa’s strongest economies once it has attained political stability. And this is what the UNITA gesture has offered.
We in Ghana have only heard of war or seen its devastation via the electronic media. We have not gone beyond isolated ethnic and chieftaincy skirmishes and so we may not appreciate the blessings of peace until it fades away on the altar of intransigence, intolerance and political arrogance.
I have heard almost all the political leaders proclaiming their commitment to peace and tolerance with almost each of them trying to distance themselves from political violence. Meanwhile, none has condemned violence committed in their name or on their behalf.
Violence is not only about machetes, guns or bows and arrows. Violence could mean verbal assaults that could incite people to physical violence. It is hypocritical for political leaders to speak against violence and preach virtue, while operating radio stations whose specific assignment is to launch provocative attacks on political opponents.
It does not augur well for tolerance and peace, if newspapers are established not to inform, educate or entertain but to write scandalous things about others and sometimes fan ethnic and tribal sentiments.
We will not be achieving our objective of a peaceful election, if we are prepared to pay huge sums of money to people whose business it is to move from one radio or television station to another on a smear campaign against perceived political opponents.
Our situation may not be better, if we allow those who have become known as serial callers to use the medium of phone-in programmes to insult others, rake old wounds and indulge in other verbal attacks that have the potential of inciting people to violence. It is in this vein that the concern raised by the security agencies last Wednesday about the abuse of phone-in programmes should be addressed seriously by the hosts of these programmes.
The power of the FM radio stations could be exploited to galvanise the people into action that will bring progress to this nation. In the same way it could be exploited for negative things. That is why political leaders who claim to be committed to the peace and progress of this country should desist from sponsoring people to fan hatred and rancour through the media of radio and television.
The various newspapers that owe allegiance to political parties should be circumspect about the things they publish. They may be scoring high marks with their fanatics but unconsciously they are putting the future of this country in jeopardy.
On their political platforms, politicians are expect to tell us what they can do for us as a people to improve our lot, instead of dwelling on what others failed to do, could not do or had done. History is good to guide us, but it does not benefit us if we continue to think in the past.
It is unfortunate that the political game has become a battle. But it has something to do with how we do our politics here. We take political power to mean power to destroy, undermine and vilify perceived opponents who are seen as enemies. We see it as an opportunity to amass wealth at the expense of the country’s development.
We see it as a superiority contest, so whoever wins must prove how powerful he/she is. So what should have been a national exercise to pick the most dedicated and committed citizens to push this nation forward has become a fight for survival, since winning means a transition from poverty and misery to wealth and opulence, while losing means deprivation and suffering.
If really there is no selfish motives for running for political office, and the mission is only to translate a vision that would transform this country into a prosperous nation, we would be careful the way we talk and behave. We would realise that it does not pay to preside over a divided and disgruntled people. We would realise that the best President is the one loved by all and hated by none.
We expect that from now on, political leaders could boldly disassociate themselves from foul statements and dastardly acts that are made or committed in apparent support of them. Then we will stand convinced by their proclamations that they stand for peace.
Angolans had a painful history to guide them. That was why it was easy for them to let sleeping dogs to lie. Nigeria had the memories of a bitter civil war as a guide that was why they tolerated the Yar’dua Verdict, even though it was generally acknowledged that the 2007 general election in that country was seriously flawed. Cote d’Ivoire never had the benefit of history as a guide so when it came, it took everybody by surprise. Kenya never had a serious political problem until the elections of December, 2007. We, in Ghana, can learn from the experiences of others, instead of deluding ourselves into believing that we are unique and insulated from violence. That is why we must tread cautiously.
Again, in conceding defeat, the UNITA leader said something that is also relevant to our circumstances. He expressed the hope that: “The MPLA will govern in the interest of all Angolans.” The philosophy of winner-takes-it-all, which is obvious in our politics should be discarded. That is the only way people will not equate elections to the law of the jungle — survival of the fittest — and, therefore, will do anything in pursuit of victory.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
“Despite everything that happened, the Unita leadership accepts the election results and hopes the winning party, MPLA, will govern in the interest of all Angolans,” the Unita leader, Isaias Samakuva, said in a statement on Monday, August 8, 2008 to put to rest any fears that Angola would go back to war if there should be any dispute after the elections, the first to be held since 1992 and seen to be a crucial step towards the country’s recovery from decades of war.
There was general apprehension and fear during the run-up to the election following accusations that MPLA, the government party, was paying bribes and using the security agencies to intimidate its opponents, who are mainly members of UNITA. With the history of the continent where violence always erupted after any electoral process and the recent bitter experience of Kenya yet to recede from memory, there were genuine fears that Angola, which has spent the greater part of its independent life on war, could degenerate into another battlefield of senseless killings.
When the Portuguese colonialists hurriedly left the country in 1975 under the guise of granting Angola independence, the well-endowed country, in terms of natural resources, exploded into civil war. The Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), under the leadership of Dr Agostino Neto, had to battle the National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA), under Holden Roberto and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) under Dr Jonas Savimbi for territorial control.
It did not take long for the FNLA to fizzle out, but UNITA, with its anti-Communist badge, drew a lot of support from the US and its Western allies to counter MPLA, which drew its support from the then Soviet Union and its allies.
For nearly 17 years, Angola became an ideological battle ground in the superpower rivalry of the Cold War era. Bolstered by money coming from the diamond trade that UNITA controlled, Savimbi ignored all peace overtures until the collapse of the Soviet Empire in 1990, which brought the bitter Cold War to an end.
In 1992, after many attempts at peace making, Angola held its first UN-certified elections, the results of which were disputed by Jonas Savimbi and his UNITA movement and the country was plunged into civil war again.
Fresh attempts culminated in the signing of the Lusaka Peace Accord in 1994, which brought about some appreciable level of peace until 1998, when Savimbi, after repeated violations of the peace accord, went back to war.
The end came on February 22, 2002, when government troops killed Savimbi. The death of the warlord was followed six weeks later with the signing of a ceasefire agreement with UNITA rebels. That signalled the end of a bitter civil war that lasted nearly 30 years and caused the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives and the dissipation of natural resources on the war effort by both sides.
The recent elections were generally seen as a watershed in Angolan politics, which will either consolidate its democracy or trigger another bout of civil conflict. Even though the observer mission from the Southern Africa Development Co-operation (SADC) declared that the polls had been transparent and peaceful, there were various infractions typical of all elections conducted on the continent. And with combatants ready to go back for their arms, there were fears that the Kenya experience would pale into insignificance, if political leaders did not maintain cool heads.
Thank God, the leadership of UNITA did not lose sight of the hardships war had unleashed on their country and its people and, therefore, decided to choose the path of accommodation and tolerance instead of confrontation and violence.
Angola is very rich in terms of natural resources. It is now taking over from Nigeria as sub-Saharan Africa’s largest oil exporter. It is also rich in diamonds, iron ore, phosphate, copper, gold, bauxite, uranium and timber.
Apart from the decades of war that has drained a considerable amount of funds, Angola, like most African countries, could not escape the scourge of massive corruption in official circles. According to International Monetary Fund (IMF) sources, more than US$4 billion got missing from the national treasury over a six-year period. All the same, it has the potential to emerge as one of Africa’s strongest economies once it has attained political stability. And this is what the UNITA gesture has offered.
We in Ghana have only heard of war or seen its devastation via the electronic media. We have not gone beyond isolated ethnic and chieftaincy skirmishes and so we may not appreciate the blessings of peace until it fades away on the altar of intransigence, intolerance and political arrogance.
I have heard almost all the political leaders proclaiming their commitment to peace and tolerance with almost each of them trying to distance themselves from political violence. Meanwhile, none has condemned violence committed in their name or on their behalf.
Violence is not only about machetes, guns or bows and arrows. Violence could mean verbal assaults that could incite people to physical violence. It is hypocritical for political leaders to speak against violence and preach virtue, while operating radio stations whose specific assignment is to launch provocative attacks on political opponents.
It does not augur well for tolerance and peace, if newspapers are established not to inform, educate or entertain but to write scandalous things about others and sometimes fan ethnic and tribal sentiments.
We will not be achieving our objective of a peaceful election, if we are prepared to pay huge sums of money to people whose business it is to move from one radio or television station to another on a smear campaign against perceived political opponents.
Our situation may not be better, if we allow those who have become known as serial callers to use the medium of phone-in programmes to insult others, rake old wounds and indulge in other verbal attacks that have the potential of inciting people to violence. It is in this vein that the concern raised by the security agencies last Wednesday about the abuse of phone-in programmes should be addressed seriously by the hosts of these programmes.
The power of the FM radio stations could be exploited to galvanise the people into action that will bring progress to this nation. In the same way it could be exploited for negative things. That is why political leaders who claim to be committed to the peace and progress of this country should desist from sponsoring people to fan hatred and rancour through the media of radio and television.
The various newspapers that owe allegiance to political parties should be circumspect about the things they publish. They may be scoring high marks with their fanatics but unconsciously they are putting the future of this country in jeopardy.
On their political platforms, politicians are expect to tell us what they can do for us as a people to improve our lot, instead of dwelling on what others failed to do, could not do or had done. History is good to guide us, but it does not benefit us if we continue to think in the past.
It is unfortunate that the political game has become a battle. But it has something to do with how we do our politics here. We take political power to mean power to destroy, undermine and vilify perceived opponents who are seen as enemies. We see it as an opportunity to amass wealth at the expense of the country’s development.
We see it as a superiority contest, so whoever wins must prove how powerful he/she is. So what should have been a national exercise to pick the most dedicated and committed citizens to push this nation forward has become a fight for survival, since winning means a transition from poverty and misery to wealth and opulence, while losing means deprivation and suffering.
If really there is no selfish motives for running for political office, and the mission is only to translate a vision that would transform this country into a prosperous nation, we would be careful the way we talk and behave. We would realise that it does not pay to preside over a divided and disgruntled people. We would realise that the best President is the one loved by all and hated by none.
We expect that from now on, political leaders could boldly disassociate themselves from foul statements and dastardly acts that are made or committed in apparent support of them. Then we will stand convinced by their proclamations that they stand for peace.
Angolans had a painful history to guide them. That was why it was easy for them to let sleeping dogs to lie. Nigeria had the memories of a bitter civil war as a guide that was why they tolerated the Yar’dua Verdict, even though it was generally acknowledged that the 2007 general election in that country was seriously flawed. Cote d’Ivoire never had the benefit of history as a guide so when it came, it took everybody by surprise. Kenya never had a serious political problem until the elections of December, 2007. We, in Ghana, can learn from the experiences of others, instead of deluding ourselves into believing that we are unique and insulated from violence. That is why we must tread cautiously.
Again, in conceding defeat, the UNITA leader said something that is also relevant to our circumstances. He expressed the hope that: “The MPLA will govern in the interest of all Angolans.” The philosophy of winner-takes-it-all, which is obvious in our politics should be discarded. That is the only way people will not equate elections to the law of the jungle — survival of the fittest — and, therefore, will do anything in pursuit of victory.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
THE ACCRA AGENDA FOR ACTION (September 9, 2008)
Last week (September 2-4, 2008) saw Accra, the nation’s capital, hosting a huge gathering of more than 1,200 representatives of governments of aid receiving countries, donor institutions and civil society organisations to deliberate on how to improve the quality and impact of development assistance to recipient countries. That Accra was the venue for the Third High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness, spoke volumes of Ghana’s increasing importance on the global circuit, especially where Third World politics and economic reforms are concerned.
In 2005, a similar forum was held in Paris, France, at the end of which the Paris Declaration was made, where donors and recipients pledged to use aid resources effectively to accelerate growth and achieve better development outcomes to reduce poverty among millions of the world’s population.
The Accra forum, as usual, ended on high expectations with copious pledges to make foreign aid more responsive to the development needs of recipient countries. It was generally agreed that the pace of development in most developing countries, especially those in Africa, had not matched the volume of donor cash, estimated to be about US$120 billion, which flows into these countries annually.
The forum also identified some of the factors that have contributed to the abysmal performance of most developing countries in spite of heavy doses of donor support. It was realised that a big chunk of donor funds go back to their countries of origin or institutions linked to them in the form of expenditures made on consultancy, monitoring and evaluation.
At the recipient level, corrupt practices associated with bureaucracies in the various countries, foot-dragging and red-tapeism collaborate to undermine the effectiveness of funded projects. Another serious observation was that very often, recipient countries are not allowed to make choices. In other words, most of the donor-funded projects have very little relevance to the development aspirations of recipients or at least do not constitute their priority areas.
Even though some civil society organisations and other pressure groups continue to press for better and effective use of donor funding, there are many others who continue to downgrade the role of foreign aid in the development strategies of developing countries. They prefer emphasis being placed on self-reliance and the effective utilisation of the abundant resources at the disposal of developing countries for their national development. The way out, according to them, is a fair and balanced trade arrangements that will enable developing countries to earn good money from their exports on the international market.
According to a report by the World Trade Organisation (WTO), “Trade openness is believed to have been central to the remarkable growth of developed countries since the mid-20th century and an important factor behind the poverty alleviation experienced in most of the developing world since the 1990s.” In other words, aid, it has generally been agreed, is not a solution to poverty alleviation. What developing countries should fight for, is a fair share of world trade.
Unfortunately, the governments of most developing countries, particularly those of Africa are failing to come to terms with this reality and continue to bank their hopes on aid as a solution to their development problems.
Ghana’s Minister for Finance and Economic Planning seems to be embedded in this line of thinking. In an interview prior to the Accra Forum, the finance minister insisted that foreign aid was necessary for the country’s development. He asked; “If we wean ourselves off foreign aid, who will buy our cocoa?” Not that this argument has any relevance to the subject matter, since selling a commodity on the world market is not the same as going round begging for foreign assistance.
If you sell your cocoa on the international market and make a good cash, that is business. Whoever bought that cocoa is not being charitable or magnanimous. He wants your cocoa, you want his money. It is a fair deal. Exchange, they say, is no robbery. That is vastly different from junketing from country to country begging any foreign entity on sight for support regardless of the conditions attached to such assistance.
Dr Ishmael Yamson, Chairman of the Board of Unilever and an advocate of self-reliance, said 50 years after independence, Ghana should have been in a position to wean itself off foreign aid.
Ghana has long depended on multilateral institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the major Western countries like Great Britain, US, Germany, Japan and France for donor support. Unfortunately we have still not been able to come closer to development and to prove how miserable our situation has become, we are now shifting reliance on countries that were in the same trench with us a few years ago.
South Korea, China, India and Malaysia are among countries that have taken giant strides to become influential game players in the economies of African countries. If it is agreed that they also started like us, how come they have succeeded in gaining some appreciable level of economic independence and are able to lend a helping hand to countries such as Ghana and other African countries while we remain virtually in this beggar situation?
The explanation could be attitudinal and our philosophy towards development. We still believe that the rest of the world owe us everything while we remain firmly rooted in that master-servant relationship — a condition that has sapped our self-confidence and consigned us to the dustbin of subservience.
Mr Baah-Wiredu may be right that we still need some amount of foreign assistance and I believe that is a global reality that no country can ignore, no matter how rich or powerful. But foreign assistance should be a secondary source of support. If it becomes the primary, then we have little to be proud of as a sovereign nation.
That makes relevant, Dr Yamson’s argument that the country is putting too much emphasis on foreign aid. He and those who share his view never argued that Ghana and for that matter Africa should live in isolation. That is not possible. Their position is that Africa seems to be the only continent where foreign aid is worshipped with religious fervour. And the difference is clear.
Inter-dependency cannot be the same as over-dependence or total-dependence. When two or more countries strike a business deal as equal partners, there is nothing like master-servant relationship. That definitely cannot be the same as the situation whereby a sovereign nation cannot do anything without the intervention of foreign powers. It cannot be the same as a country that cannot prepare its national budget without factoring in the financial support it expects to receive from outside donors.
The dependency syndrome if not checked, will keep us in perpetual bondage and stifle local initiative. That is why Dr Yamson said that: “If we continue to be aid-dependent, we will continue to be poor.”
Aid debases our nationhood and renders senseless, any claim to sovereignty and independence. As the richest continent in terms of natural resources, African leaders’ concern should be how to harness and utilise these resources and how to capture a big share of the world market and not how to strategise to receive more donations from others.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
In 2005, a similar forum was held in Paris, France, at the end of which the Paris Declaration was made, where donors and recipients pledged to use aid resources effectively to accelerate growth and achieve better development outcomes to reduce poverty among millions of the world’s population.
The Accra forum, as usual, ended on high expectations with copious pledges to make foreign aid more responsive to the development needs of recipient countries. It was generally agreed that the pace of development in most developing countries, especially those in Africa, had not matched the volume of donor cash, estimated to be about US$120 billion, which flows into these countries annually.
The forum also identified some of the factors that have contributed to the abysmal performance of most developing countries in spite of heavy doses of donor support. It was realised that a big chunk of donor funds go back to their countries of origin or institutions linked to them in the form of expenditures made on consultancy, monitoring and evaluation.
At the recipient level, corrupt practices associated with bureaucracies in the various countries, foot-dragging and red-tapeism collaborate to undermine the effectiveness of funded projects. Another serious observation was that very often, recipient countries are not allowed to make choices. In other words, most of the donor-funded projects have very little relevance to the development aspirations of recipients or at least do not constitute their priority areas.
Even though some civil society organisations and other pressure groups continue to press for better and effective use of donor funding, there are many others who continue to downgrade the role of foreign aid in the development strategies of developing countries. They prefer emphasis being placed on self-reliance and the effective utilisation of the abundant resources at the disposal of developing countries for their national development. The way out, according to them, is a fair and balanced trade arrangements that will enable developing countries to earn good money from their exports on the international market.
According to a report by the World Trade Organisation (WTO), “Trade openness is believed to have been central to the remarkable growth of developed countries since the mid-20th century and an important factor behind the poverty alleviation experienced in most of the developing world since the 1990s.” In other words, aid, it has generally been agreed, is not a solution to poverty alleviation. What developing countries should fight for, is a fair share of world trade.
Unfortunately, the governments of most developing countries, particularly those of Africa are failing to come to terms with this reality and continue to bank their hopes on aid as a solution to their development problems.
Ghana’s Minister for Finance and Economic Planning seems to be embedded in this line of thinking. In an interview prior to the Accra Forum, the finance minister insisted that foreign aid was necessary for the country’s development. He asked; “If we wean ourselves off foreign aid, who will buy our cocoa?” Not that this argument has any relevance to the subject matter, since selling a commodity on the world market is not the same as going round begging for foreign assistance.
If you sell your cocoa on the international market and make a good cash, that is business. Whoever bought that cocoa is not being charitable or magnanimous. He wants your cocoa, you want his money. It is a fair deal. Exchange, they say, is no robbery. That is vastly different from junketing from country to country begging any foreign entity on sight for support regardless of the conditions attached to such assistance.
Dr Ishmael Yamson, Chairman of the Board of Unilever and an advocate of self-reliance, said 50 years after independence, Ghana should have been in a position to wean itself off foreign aid.
Ghana has long depended on multilateral institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the major Western countries like Great Britain, US, Germany, Japan and France for donor support. Unfortunately we have still not been able to come closer to development and to prove how miserable our situation has become, we are now shifting reliance on countries that were in the same trench with us a few years ago.
South Korea, China, India and Malaysia are among countries that have taken giant strides to become influential game players in the economies of African countries. If it is agreed that they also started like us, how come they have succeeded in gaining some appreciable level of economic independence and are able to lend a helping hand to countries such as Ghana and other African countries while we remain virtually in this beggar situation?
The explanation could be attitudinal and our philosophy towards development. We still believe that the rest of the world owe us everything while we remain firmly rooted in that master-servant relationship — a condition that has sapped our self-confidence and consigned us to the dustbin of subservience.
Mr Baah-Wiredu may be right that we still need some amount of foreign assistance and I believe that is a global reality that no country can ignore, no matter how rich or powerful. But foreign assistance should be a secondary source of support. If it becomes the primary, then we have little to be proud of as a sovereign nation.
That makes relevant, Dr Yamson’s argument that the country is putting too much emphasis on foreign aid. He and those who share his view never argued that Ghana and for that matter Africa should live in isolation. That is not possible. Their position is that Africa seems to be the only continent where foreign aid is worshipped with religious fervour. And the difference is clear.
Inter-dependency cannot be the same as over-dependence or total-dependence. When two or more countries strike a business deal as equal partners, there is nothing like master-servant relationship. That definitely cannot be the same as the situation whereby a sovereign nation cannot do anything without the intervention of foreign powers. It cannot be the same as a country that cannot prepare its national budget without factoring in the financial support it expects to receive from outside donors.
The dependency syndrome if not checked, will keep us in perpetual bondage and stifle local initiative. That is why Dr Yamson said that: “If we continue to be aid-dependent, we will continue to be poor.”
Aid debases our nationhood and renders senseless, any claim to sovereignty and independence. As the richest continent in terms of natural resources, African leaders’ concern should be how to harness and utilise these resources and how to capture a big share of the world market and not how to strategise to receive more donations from others.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
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