By Kofi Akordor
THE Arab world is in turmoil and nobody needs a soothsayer to tell that centuries-old monarchies face imminent collapse.
What began as one person’s expression of frustration and anger has turned into a hurricane blowing away once very powerful rulers in the Arab world.
On December 17, 2010, Tarek el-Tayyib Mohamed Ben Bouazizi, a street vendor in Tunis, Tunisia, set himself on fire in protest over the confiscation of his wares and the humiliation that was inflicted on him by a female official of the municipal authority.
Anger and violence flared when Bouazizi died. The violent streets protests and riots over social and political issues that followed forced President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali to flee Tunisia on January 14, 2011. Strangely, Ben Ali had, a year earlier on October 25, 2009, won with a landslide at the polls, taking 89.6 per cent of the votes, while three other candidates shared the rest of the votes.
The contagion that has become known as the Tunisian or the Jasmine Revolution has spread to other Arab countries and claimed another casualty, Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian President who had been in power since 1979.
From North Africa to the Gulf Region, citizens who, for years, have lived under authoritarian regimes and absolute monarchies are battling their leaders not only for political reforms but accountability — a fair share of the vast national resources that have remained in the hands of a few office holders and members of the royal families.
Incidentally, maybe with the exception of Libya, all these dictatorships are staunch allies of the United States of America. Col Muamar al-Qathafi, the man who has been in office for 42 years and who many see as a benevolent dictator, is in a battle for survival. He is confronting the protesters with brute force which has left many people dead. How long he will continue with the killing remains to be seen.
Some of the leaders who have seen the writing on the wall have started their own reforms, but whether that will appease the angry population is very much in doubt, since it is now or never.
For African leaders south of the Sahara, events up north may seem far away, but the wise among them will begin to realise that just like the Arabs, many blacks will soon begin to question the legitimacy of their leaders who have been in office for years and who have turned political office into dynasties.
Mubarak never dreamt that his rule will come to such a miserable end. At the age of 82, he was still preparing to contest the sham elections his tenure had inflicted on Egyptians until his son, Gamal Mubarak, takes over.
All over the continent there are leaders like Mubarak who have outlived their usefulness but who still cling on to power. The new phenomenon which is gaining ground is the father-to-son craze. Joseph Kabila has done it in the Democratic Republic of Congo, succeeding his father Laurent Kabila; Faure Gnasingbe has succeeded his father Gnasingbe Eyadema in Togo, while Omar Bongo was succeeded by his son, Ali Bongo.
Laurent Gbagbo has ignored the electoral process and defied international opinion to remain in power in Cote d’Ivoire when he should have respected the sovereign will of the people who voted for Allassane Ouattara in the presidential polls.
A former UN Secretary-General, Mr Kofi Annan, made an observation that Gbagbo’s refusal to concede defeat was a threat to democracy and peace.
“Africa and the world cannot afford such a development because if Gbagbo is allowed to prevail, elections as instruments of peaceful change in Africa will suffer a serious set-back,” Mr Annan told an audience at the Oxford University in a lecture on: “The future of Africa: Challenges and Opportunities”.
He said if there was one area which would determine the direction of Africa’s future, it was the quality of its governance and leadership. Apart from its challenges with democracy, Africa has a bigger problem that has undermined its development.
The quality of leadership is definitely not the best, as most of the leaders on the continent hardly appreciate the problems confronting their countries, let alone have any idea how to solve them. It is, therefore, not surprising that in the midst of abundance, African countries are the poorest in the world. Apart from South Africa, which was an observer at a meeting of the world’s top 20 economies, African countries have remained in their self-imposed Third-World status, always loudly begging other countries on other continents for basics.
Whoever thinks democracy will solve the continent’s development problems may be making a big mistake. Mismanagement and corruption are the twin evils destroying African countries. Governments have devised ways of siphoning national revenue into private pockets. So for a country like Ghana which is still fighting poverty and deprivation, it is not strange to see some of the best of vehicles on our poor roads belonging to people without any identifiable sources of income.
Our politics has become a do-or-die affair because political power means an opportunity to pillage, plunder and rape the economy. That is why politicians are able to vow that they are prepared to lay down their lives if that will be the only way to gain political power.
It is only a matter of time when the masses will begin to realise their folly in pledging their lives to a few persons who will turn round to strip them bare of their sustenance. They will begin to realise that while it took almost half of the voting population to bring a party into power, national resources are clandestinely utilised by a few in their hundreds.
It took one street vendor, Bouazizi, to trigger a chain reaction with historical consequences among Arabs. We in Ghana may be happy that we have got our democracy. Very soon, the people will demand good governance and accountability.
What we are seeing today as the phenomenon of the foot soldiers may be the signal of things to come when the masses will begin to demand a fairer share of what belongs to all. They will begin to demand answers to several questions. They would want to know why some of them cannot get a square meal when others have got more than enough to feed their pets from the supermarket. They would want to know why the classroom buildings are collapsing over their children while others, with no extra effort, can afford fees in dollars for their children. The time will come when they will no longer accept the ‘no money’ excuse because they can smell and see money all around them.
When that day comes, it will take one Bouazizi to trigger events. We could avoid that day if our leaders will be more transparent in the way they handle state resources and improve upon state governance. Otherwise, North Africa may not be far away, after all.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Hypocritical voices in the West
By Kofi Akordor
Once again the United States of America has demonstrated that it has permanent interests and not permanent friends when it joined protesting Egyptians to give a final push to Hosni Mubarak’s regime. In the last days of Mubarak’s administration, he struggled desperately to hang onto the powerful shoulders of the US, its main sponsor and supporter for well over 30 years but realised rather disappointingly that when it matters most, the US looks towards the direction where it will find protection for its interests.
In 2003, the US tried and succeeded somehow to whip up international sentiment against President Saddam Hussein of Iraq, describing him as a maniac who will bring the world to destruction because of his large stockpile of weapons of mass destruction.
Saddam was accused of being dictator who was oppressing his people and annihilating some with chemical weapons. Without any UN mandate, the US, supported by Tony Blair’s Britain and some of their appendages launched an attack on Iraq.
They succeeded in toppling Saddam, which was the main objective but failed to find any weapons of mass destruction, because there was none. They also succeeded in destroying the infrastructure of Iraq, one of the best in the Middle East and pushing backwards centuries-old civilisation if that will secure them the oilfields of Iraq and give the Jewish State of Israel the leverage it requires to maintain its dominance in the Middle East.
In a way, the invasion of Iraq by the US and Britain exposed the hypocrisy of the West regarding their international diplomacy. At the time the US was waging war in Iraq to save the people from dictatorship, it had been busy over the last three decades propping up dictators such as Hosni Mubarak of Egypt who never shared power with anybody and suppressed all forms of dissent.
Democracy was not an important commodity for the people of Egypt and Hosni Mubarak was a good leader so long as he served the US interest of policing the Middle East and giving protective cover to Israel, a protégé of the US.
Mubarak himself was a consequence of the Camp David Accord signed on September 17, 1978 between Anwar El Sadat, President of Egypt and Menachem Begin, Prime Minister of Israel and witnessed by President Jimmy Carter of the US. This led to the 1979 Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty. The two leaders were jointly honoured subsequently with the Nobel Peace Prize for 1978.
Even though Egypt regained control over the Sinai Peninsula as part of the peace accord, Egyptians in particular and Arabs in general never forgave Sadat for the Camp David Accord, which to them was a kind of betrayal of the Arab cause. On October 6, 1981, while reviewing a military parade, shots rang out and Sadat was airlifted away in a military helicopter. The man was dead. That was how Hosni Mubarak, an air force general who became vice president six years earlier became the President of Egypt, three years after the Camp David Accord.
It did not take long for Mubarak to stir himself into the saddle and proved wrong, all those including the Americans who doubted his ability to hold onto the peace treaty with Israel and to steer the affairs of Egypt in a volatile region with its power play dynamics.
The US did not take long to embrace Mubarak and made him one their allies alongside Israel in the Middle East. With Egypt effectively compromised through the Camp David Accord, the US was left with Iraq and Iran as the only dangerous countries to contend with as far as its interest and that of Israel are concerned.
The 10-year 1979-1989 Iran-Iraq war over a piece of land was not accidental but had the remote hands of the US and its allies in it to weaken the two countries. It was not surprising that soon after that the first Gulf War – Operation Desert Storm – was fought between the US and her allies and Iraq. The 2003 invasion was to finish what President George Bush started in 1991 and which never came to any definitive conclusion.
For 30 years, Mubarak was the darling of the US and its Western allies. Then the unexpected happened. First President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, another US ally in the Arab was toppled suddenly by what started as a normal street demonstration. Then the Egyptian protests began but the Americans confident that Mubarak will deal with the situation viciously with dispatch just as he had done in the past decided to play the cautious game.
From a distance, they started urging Mubarak to avoid violence and enact reforms. One may ask, since did it occur to the West that Mubarak had been ruling for over 30 years without even a vice President? Meanwhile the West started to denounce deposed Ben Ali and all his close associates and relations. The Canadian government for example, declared its intention to arrest and depot Belhassen Trabelsi, the brother-in-law of Ben Ali when he arrived in Montreal in a private jet.
“He is not welcome, we are going to find in the context obviously of current legislation, ways to assure as quickly as possible that we might comply with the demand from the Tunisian government”, Lawrence Cannon, Canadian Foreign Minister said.
Immediately, Interpol also issued an alert for the arrest of Mr Ben Ali and six family members on request from Tunisia which accused them of property theft and illegal transfer of foreign currency, among other charges. Where was the West’s sense of fairness when Ben Ali was in power and amassing wealth at the expense of the state of Tunisia?
As the protests continued in Cairo continued and it was becoming increasingly obvious that Mubarak’s days as President were numbered, the US changed its tone and started mounting pressure on the beleaguered leader to quit.
On Thursday, February 11, 2011, the day Mubarak was expected to announce his resignation, President Barack Obama delivered a speech which virtually denounced the former Egyptian President and threw him over to the dogs.
“The Egyptian government must put forward a credible, concrete an unequivocal path toward genuine democracy and they have not yet seized that opportunity. As we said from the beginning of this unrest, the future of Egypt will be determined by the Egyptian people” Barack Obama stated.
He went on: “But the US has also been clear that we stand for a set of core principles. We believe that the universal rights of the Egyptian people must be respected and their aspirations must be met. We believe that this transition must immediately demonstrate irreversible political change and a negotiated path to democracy. To that end, we believe that the emergency law should be lifted. We believe that meaningful negotiations with the broad opposition and Egyptian civil society should address the key questions
Once again the United States of America has demonstrated that it has permanent interests and not permanent friends when it joined protesting Egyptians to give a final push to Hosni Mubarak’s regime. In the last days of Mubarak’s administration, he struggled desperately to hang onto the powerful shoulders of the US, its main sponsor and supporter for well over 30 years but realised rather disappointingly that when it matters most, the US looks towards the direction where it will find protection for its interests.
In 2003, the US tried and succeeded somehow to whip up international sentiment against President Saddam Hussein of Iraq, describing him as a maniac who will bring the world to destruction because of his large stockpile of weapons of mass destruction.
Saddam was accused of being dictator who was oppressing his people and annihilating some with chemical weapons. Without any UN mandate, the US, supported by Tony Blair’s Britain and some of their appendages launched an attack on Iraq.
They succeeded in toppling Saddam, which was the main objective but failed to find any weapons of mass destruction, because there was none. They also succeeded in destroying the infrastructure of Iraq, one of the best in the Middle East and pushing backwards centuries-old civilisation if that will secure them the oilfields of Iraq and give the Jewish State of Israel the leverage it requires to maintain its dominance in the Middle East.
In a way, the invasion of Iraq by the US and Britain exposed the hypocrisy of the West regarding their international diplomacy. At the time the US was waging war in Iraq to save the people from dictatorship, it had been busy over the last three decades propping up dictators such as Hosni Mubarak of Egypt who never shared power with anybody and suppressed all forms of dissent.
Democracy was not an important commodity for the people of Egypt and Hosni Mubarak was a good leader so long as he served the US interest of policing the Middle East and giving protective cover to Israel, a protégé of the US.
Mubarak himself was a consequence of the Camp David Accord signed on September 17, 1978 between Anwar El Sadat, President of Egypt and Menachem Begin, Prime Minister of Israel and witnessed by President Jimmy Carter of the US. This led to the 1979 Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty. The two leaders were jointly honoured subsequently with the Nobel Peace Prize for 1978.
Even though Egypt regained control over the Sinai Peninsula as part of the peace accord, Egyptians in particular and Arabs in general never forgave Sadat for the Camp David Accord, which to them was a kind of betrayal of the Arab cause. On October 6, 1981, while reviewing a military parade, shots rang out and Sadat was airlifted away in a military helicopter. The man was dead. That was how Hosni Mubarak, an air force general who became vice president six years earlier became the President of Egypt, three years after the Camp David Accord.
It did not take long for Mubarak to stir himself into the saddle and proved wrong, all those including the Americans who doubted his ability to hold onto the peace treaty with Israel and to steer the affairs of Egypt in a volatile region with its power play dynamics.
The US did not take long to embrace Mubarak and made him one their allies alongside Israel in the Middle East. With Egypt effectively compromised through the Camp David Accord, the US was left with Iraq and Iran as the only dangerous countries to contend with as far as its interest and that of Israel are concerned.
The 10-year 1979-1989 Iran-Iraq war over a piece of land was not accidental but had the remote hands of the US and its allies in it to weaken the two countries. It was not surprising that soon after that the first Gulf War – Operation Desert Storm – was fought between the US and her allies and Iraq. The 2003 invasion was to finish what President George Bush started in 1991 and which never came to any definitive conclusion.
For 30 years, Mubarak was the darling of the US and its Western allies. Then the unexpected happened. First President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, another US ally in the Arab was toppled suddenly by what started as a normal street demonstration. Then the Egyptian protests began but the Americans confident that Mubarak will deal with the situation viciously with dispatch just as he had done in the past decided to play the cautious game.
From a distance, they started urging Mubarak to avoid violence and enact reforms. One may ask, since did it occur to the West that Mubarak had been ruling for over 30 years without even a vice President? Meanwhile the West started to denounce deposed Ben Ali and all his close associates and relations. The Canadian government for example, declared its intention to arrest and depot Belhassen Trabelsi, the brother-in-law of Ben Ali when he arrived in Montreal in a private jet.
“He is not welcome, we are going to find in the context obviously of current legislation, ways to assure as quickly as possible that we might comply with the demand from the Tunisian government”, Lawrence Cannon, Canadian Foreign Minister said.
Immediately, Interpol also issued an alert for the arrest of Mr Ben Ali and six family members on request from Tunisia which accused them of property theft and illegal transfer of foreign currency, among other charges. Where was the West’s sense of fairness when Ben Ali was in power and amassing wealth at the expense of the state of Tunisia?
As the protests continued in Cairo continued and it was becoming increasingly obvious that Mubarak’s days as President were numbered, the US changed its tone and started mounting pressure on the beleaguered leader to quit.
On Thursday, February 11, 2011, the day Mubarak was expected to announce his resignation, President Barack Obama delivered a speech which virtually denounced the former Egyptian President and threw him over to the dogs.
“The Egyptian government must put forward a credible, concrete an unequivocal path toward genuine democracy and they have not yet seized that opportunity. As we said from the beginning of this unrest, the future of Egypt will be determined by the Egyptian people” Barack Obama stated.
He went on: “But the US has also been clear that we stand for a set of core principles. We believe that the universal rights of the Egyptian people must be respected and their aspirations must be met. We believe that this transition must immediately demonstrate irreversible political change and a negotiated path to democracy. To that end, we believe that the emergency law should be lifted. We believe that meaningful negotiations with the broad opposition and Egyptian civil society should address the key questions
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Weep not, Mr President
By Kofi Akordor
There was no doubt the President was in a foul mood. His voice could be heard trembling with emotion that was fully charged with anguish and despair.
President John Evans Atta Mills was a near-nervous wreck triggered by an Anas Aremeyaw Anas documentary which catalogued some of the malpractice going on at the Tema Port, with officials of the Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) being the main characters.
“Why couldn’t I receive reports on these wrongdoings from the numerous security agents operating at the ports, instead of relying on an Anas documentary?” the President asked himself in disbelief.
Any person in the President’s position will see his blood pressure rising to astronomical heights seeing so much horse-trading going on with national revenue, which is like the blood running through the country’s arteries and veins, being the main commodity. No leader desperately looking for cash to tackle serious development challenges will feel comfortable at the sight of the bargaining that was captured in the documentary.
I do not know how the President’s countenance would be like if he were told that most of what he saw in that documentary were just scratches on the surface. Seriously, a lot of the money changing hands was peanut. You may describe it as waakye or yor-ke-gari cash that could hardly dent the national cash box.
The real damage is done on paper which even the ubiquitous camera of Anas cannot capture. That is where 20 containers of goods could be cleared by documents covering one container. That is how containers with expensive items which could attract millions of Ghana cedis in duty could be cleared as containing second-hand clothing or used tyres with little or no value.
These are some of the ways in which the nation loses huge sums of revenue running into millions of Ghana cedis and the monetary benefits accruing to officials involved cannot be counted before any cameras. These is money that could buy vehicles, build the houses that the President made reference to during his visit to the Tema Port and not the pittance for buying fruit juice by the roadside that was captured in the documentary.
Those instances of malpractice have been part and parcel of customs business at the entry points, especially the main ones at Elubo, Aflao, the Kotoka International Airport and the Takoradi and Tema ports. Occasionally a few officials are caught and used as sacrificial lambs. Others may suffer punitive transfers. But, generally, the ports are money-spinning zones and the few dedicated ones are hardly noticed and recognised.
Those who have worked assiduously at the ports or in CEPS generally will tell you that the more hardworking and dedicated you are, the odder you become and the more you are likely to lose your job because you are seen as an enemy of an establishment in which bribery and corruption has been institutionalised.
The GRA has started initiating some measures against officials suspected to have played a part in the rape of the country of its revenue resources. In the coming days, some officials may be asked to proceed on transfer to areas where the grass is less green, all in the name of clearing the mess and making officers to be alive to their responsibilities.
Time will tell whether these measures will make the desired impact or not. The truth is that the system is fraught with so many loopholes to be exploited for personal aggrandisement that it will take more than presidential lamentations and a few spade works here and there to make any meaningful change overnight.
We will be making a sad mistake if we put all the blame on the doorstep of Customs officials. The chain is very long and the Customs officials are just only one of the conduits. There are the big-time importers with their agents in government who are always breathing down hard on the necks of Customs officials who want to do genuine work. As stated earlier, some Customs officials have lost their jobs or positions in the past not because they were corrupt, incompetent or inefficient. They were too good, dedicated and committed to pander to the corrupt whims of superior officers and politicians. So they had to suffer for being too honest.
It is good to ask GRA workers to fill asset declaration forms. It may deter some and make some more cautious. Beyond that, I am yet to be convinced that it will end the pillage. Remember — ministers and other top government officials have been enjoined by a constitutional provision to declare their assets before and after living office. But since the 1992 Constitution came into existence, are we saying all our political office holders have been saints and do not put a pesewa of state money into their pockets? Some have even refused to fill the forms and damned the consequences.
Are we saying those beautiful buildings in plush areas and the flashy vehicles being driven about were acquired from the public servants’ salary which everybody is complaining about every day? The President may want to know why people are ready to kill to attain political power, if it is only about serving the people.
President Mills should save his tears yet. He should spend one weekend at the Peduase Lodge and go through the Auditor-General’s annual report over the last 10 years. If he finds the documents too voluminous to digest, he should concentrate on the latest on the 2009 financial report of the country. He will realise, that is, if he had not come to that realisation already, that the monetary donations we have been so eager to receive, even at the expense of sacrificing our national sovereignty, are nothing compared to the money that has been siphoned out of our public funds.
We have paid millions of Ghana cedis for contracts poorly executed. We have even paid for contracts that were never executed. There are cases of the same project being awarded on several occasions to different contractors and huge sums paid. If he cares to find out, he will realise that some projects always feature in the country’s budget statements as being at various levels of execution. The truth is that some projects, away from the President’s eyes, have become regular sources of income for some people.
Our President should find out those who benefit most from exemptions on imported goods. He will be surprised to notice that far from being an instrument to assist charitable organisations and certain vulnerable sectors of the economy, the tax exemption regime has benefited many of those who have pledged to serve the people, even at the peril of their own lives.
Apart from dealing with the Customs officials, what happens to the National Security agents with the big titles who have, either through negligence or collusion, failed to live up to their national responsibilities? Will they continue to hold on to their titles at state expense?
We may also have to take a critical look at the bureaucracy at the ports. When simple things are made to look complex, it creates avenues for corruption. Our tax regime for imported items, especially second-hand vehicles which have become the mainstay of the majority of Ghanaians, should be given a second look.
This country, by its size and the resources God has given it, should not be where it is today. There are very few checks and balances, leaving room for too much illicit money in the system. The honest ones are the fools who make all the sacrifices so that this country does not grind to a halt. They have nothing to show for truth, honesty and dedication.
We may be making the mistake in thinking that Customs officials are the entire problem. They constitute a small fraction.
Mr. President, weep not. Start looking critically at some of the men and women very close to you. Start from the BIG House towards the ministries, departments and agencies. Many who profess your virtues are not only milking this country dry but also bleeding it slowly to death.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
There was no doubt the President was in a foul mood. His voice could be heard trembling with emotion that was fully charged with anguish and despair.
President John Evans Atta Mills was a near-nervous wreck triggered by an Anas Aremeyaw Anas documentary which catalogued some of the malpractice going on at the Tema Port, with officials of the Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) being the main characters.
“Why couldn’t I receive reports on these wrongdoings from the numerous security agents operating at the ports, instead of relying on an Anas documentary?” the President asked himself in disbelief.
Any person in the President’s position will see his blood pressure rising to astronomical heights seeing so much horse-trading going on with national revenue, which is like the blood running through the country’s arteries and veins, being the main commodity. No leader desperately looking for cash to tackle serious development challenges will feel comfortable at the sight of the bargaining that was captured in the documentary.
I do not know how the President’s countenance would be like if he were told that most of what he saw in that documentary were just scratches on the surface. Seriously, a lot of the money changing hands was peanut. You may describe it as waakye or yor-ke-gari cash that could hardly dent the national cash box.
The real damage is done on paper which even the ubiquitous camera of Anas cannot capture. That is where 20 containers of goods could be cleared by documents covering one container. That is how containers with expensive items which could attract millions of Ghana cedis in duty could be cleared as containing second-hand clothing or used tyres with little or no value.
These are some of the ways in which the nation loses huge sums of revenue running into millions of Ghana cedis and the monetary benefits accruing to officials involved cannot be counted before any cameras. These is money that could buy vehicles, build the houses that the President made reference to during his visit to the Tema Port and not the pittance for buying fruit juice by the roadside that was captured in the documentary.
Those instances of malpractice have been part and parcel of customs business at the entry points, especially the main ones at Elubo, Aflao, the Kotoka International Airport and the Takoradi and Tema ports. Occasionally a few officials are caught and used as sacrificial lambs. Others may suffer punitive transfers. But, generally, the ports are money-spinning zones and the few dedicated ones are hardly noticed and recognised.
Those who have worked assiduously at the ports or in CEPS generally will tell you that the more hardworking and dedicated you are, the odder you become and the more you are likely to lose your job because you are seen as an enemy of an establishment in which bribery and corruption has been institutionalised.
The GRA has started initiating some measures against officials suspected to have played a part in the rape of the country of its revenue resources. In the coming days, some officials may be asked to proceed on transfer to areas where the grass is less green, all in the name of clearing the mess and making officers to be alive to their responsibilities.
Time will tell whether these measures will make the desired impact or not. The truth is that the system is fraught with so many loopholes to be exploited for personal aggrandisement that it will take more than presidential lamentations and a few spade works here and there to make any meaningful change overnight.
We will be making a sad mistake if we put all the blame on the doorstep of Customs officials. The chain is very long and the Customs officials are just only one of the conduits. There are the big-time importers with their agents in government who are always breathing down hard on the necks of Customs officials who want to do genuine work. As stated earlier, some Customs officials have lost their jobs or positions in the past not because they were corrupt, incompetent or inefficient. They were too good, dedicated and committed to pander to the corrupt whims of superior officers and politicians. So they had to suffer for being too honest.
It is good to ask GRA workers to fill asset declaration forms. It may deter some and make some more cautious. Beyond that, I am yet to be convinced that it will end the pillage. Remember — ministers and other top government officials have been enjoined by a constitutional provision to declare their assets before and after living office. But since the 1992 Constitution came into existence, are we saying all our political office holders have been saints and do not put a pesewa of state money into their pockets? Some have even refused to fill the forms and damned the consequences.
Are we saying those beautiful buildings in plush areas and the flashy vehicles being driven about were acquired from the public servants’ salary which everybody is complaining about every day? The President may want to know why people are ready to kill to attain political power, if it is only about serving the people.
President Mills should save his tears yet. He should spend one weekend at the Peduase Lodge and go through the Auditor-General’s annual report over the last 10 years. If he finds the documents too voluminous to digest, he should concentrate on the latest on the 2009 financial report of the country. He will realise, that is, if he had not come to that realisation already, that the monetary donations we have been so eager to receive, even at the expense of sacrificing our national sovereignty, are nothing compared to the money that has been siphoned out of our public funds.
We have paid millions of Ghana cedis for contracts poorly executed. We have even paid for contracts that were never executed. There are cases of the same project being awarded on several occasions to different contractors and huge sums paid. If he cares to find out, he will realise that some projects always feature in the country’s budget statements as being at various levels of execution. The truth is that some projects, away from the President’s eyes, have become regular sources of income for some people.
Our President should find out those who benefit most from exemptions on imported goods. He will be surprised to notice that far from being an instrument to assist charitable organisations and certain vulnerable sectors of the economy, the tax exemption regime has benefited many of those who have pledged to serve the people, even at the peril of their own lives.
Apart from dealing with the Customs officials, what happens to the National Security agents with the big titles who have, either through negligence or collusion, failed to live up to their national responsibilities? Will they continue to hold on to their titles at state expense?
We may also have to take a critical look at the bureaucracy at the ports. When simple things are made to look complex, it creates avenues for corruption. Our tax regime for imported items, especially second-hand vehicles which have become the mainstay of the majority of Ghanaians, should be given a second look.
This country, by its size and the resources God has given it, should not be where it is today. There are very few checks and balances, leaving room for too much illicit money in the system. The honest ones are the fools who make all the sacrifices so that this country does not grind to a halt. They have nothing to show for truth, honesty and dedication.
We may be making the mistake in thinking that Customs officials are the entire problem. They constitute a small fraction.
Mr. President, weep not. Start looking critically at some of the men and women very close to you. Start from the BIG House towards the ministries, departments and agencies. Many who profess your virtues are not only milking this country dry but also bleeding it slowly to death.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
CALM, AFTER THE STORM
By Kofi Akordor
THE Cote d’Ivoire electoral impasse has predictably but miserably dragged on. As the days roll into weeks, the militant voices which are very loudly calling for military intervention to enforce what they describe as the people’s choice are becoming fainter and fainter, being taken over, surprisingly, by voices of moderation. Those who made it look so easy to walk into another man’s country, change the government and walk out in no time, without a scratch, have been unfair to ECOWAS countries.
As we reflect, we begin to wonder where those machoistic voices calling for war to enforce election results came from. The Americans and the French, who were goading ECOWAS countries into battle against recalcitrant Laurent Gbagbo, seem to have lost interest and diplomacy, like the stone the builders rejected, is gradually being accepted as the surest way to resolve the impasse.
On hindsight, President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda said something which made some sense, considering the way the international effort at solving the problem was handled. He said ECOWAS was too quick to reject Gbagbo for Allassane Ouattara when the sub-regional body’s neutrality and mediating role should have been manifest.
ECOWAS and the other international bodies such as the AU and the UN should, first of all, have shown more interest in the election results to determine whether there were genuine grievances from both sides to be addressed. After clearing all doubts about the validity of the results, pressure could then be mounted to get all the parties to accept them and for Gbagbo to abide by the decision of the majority of the people, if that was what the results meant.
Unfortunately, ECOWAS, pushed by the AU, the UN, the US and its allies, dangled the military option before the diplomatic offensive. If the idea was to use the military option as a threat to cajole Gbagbo into submission, we have all realised, rather too late, that it was a miserable failure.
For the Prime Minister of Kenya, Raila Odinga, to issue military threats to Gbagbo and turn out to become an emissary of the AU was one of the greatest ironies of the times. Odinga could not be part of the solution, having come out forcefully with his war posture, apparently due to his bitter experiences in 2007 when he saw the presidency of his country slip through his fingers because of a Gbagbo-like Kibaki who defied majority decision and declared himself re-elected.
ECOWAS leaders have not explained the form the military option was going to take — whether to just airlift Gbagbo from the presidential palace in a commando-fashion or confront the Armed Forces of Cote d’Ivoire in a full-scale war which may take days, weeks, months or years to accomplish, with devastating consequences for the sub-region, especially neighbouring countries such as Ghana.
Whatever the strategy, anything with the semblance of a military operation will not offer any solution. One can, therefore, say that ECOWAS leaders have dug in too early. On a continent that has very little to show in terms of democratic credentials, it sounded quixotic to threaten military action for an election dispute when a determined sub-regional group such as ECOWAS has many options open to it to make a more meaningful impact.
At least, thanks to a lone voice which was very loud in the wilderness, ECOWAS has avoided being tele-guided from Washington, New York and Paris into a conflict that would have seen no end but only serve the interest of the metropolitan powers far away from the pain, suffering and destruction in a region already devastated by poverty and bad political leadership.
It is good that the AU, just like the ECOWAS, is now back-tracking more towards a peaceful resolution of the impasse. At the AU Summit in Addis Ababa, African leaders have agreed to set up a panel of mediators to begin another diplomatic offensive towards the resolution of the problem. Clearly, this turn of events will strengthen the hands of Gbagbo, who stood firm and demanded a negotiated settlement rather than stepping down.
In the coming days and weeks, ECOWAS countries will wait anxiously to see how the AU mediating panel will set out to do its work and whether it will achieve results where earlier mediators have failed.
What is encouraging and very much welcome is the fact that the battle drums are falling silent after the initial storm stirred by the US and France, giving way to a comforting calm which will engender more tactful and diplomatic effort to get to the root of the Ivorian crisis and come up with a lasting solution.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com Calm, after the storm
By Kofi Akordor
THE Cote d’Ivoire electoral impasse has predictably but miserably dragged on. As the days roll into weeks, the militant voices which are very loudly calling for military intervention to enforce what they describe as the people’s choice are becoming fainter and fainter, being taken over, surprisingly, by voices of moderation. Those who made it look so easy to walk into another man’s country, change the government and walk out in no time, without a scratch, have been unfair to ECOWAS countries.
As we reflect, we begin to wonder where those machoistic voices calling for war to enforce election results came from. The Americans and the French, who were goading ECOWAS countries into battle against recalcitrant Laurent Gbagbo, seem to have lost interest and diplomacy, like the stone the builders rejected, is gradually being accepted as the surest way to resolve the impasse.
On hindsight, President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda said something which made some sense, considering the way the international effort at solving the problem was handled. He said ECOWAS was too quick to reject Gbagbo for Allassane Ouattara when the sub-regional body’s neutrality and mediating role should have been manifest.
ECOWAS and the other international bodies such as the AU and the UN should, first of all, have shown more interest in the election results to determine whether there were genuine grievances from both sides to be addressed. After clearing all doubts about the validity of the results, pressure could then be mounted to get all the parties to accept them and for Gbagbo to abide by the decision of the majority of the people, if that was what the results meant.
Unfortunately, ECOWAS, pushed by the AU, the UN, the US and its allies, dangled the military option before the diplomatic offensive. If the idea was to use the military option as a threat to cajole Gbagbo into submission, we have all realised, rather too late, that it was a miserable failure.
For the Prime Minister of Kenya, Raila Odinga, to issue military threats to Gbagbo and turn out to become an emissary of the AU was one of the greatest ironies of the times. Odinga could not be part of the solution, having come out forcefully with his war posture, apparently due to his bitter experiences in 2007 when he saw the presidency of his country slip through his fingers because of a Gbagbo-like Kibaki who defied majority decision and declared himself re-elected.
ECOWAS leaders have not explained the form the military option was going to take — whether to just airlift Gbagbo from the presidential palace in a commando-fashion or confront the Armed Forces of Cote d’Ivoire in a full-scale war which may take days, weeks, months or years to accomplish, with devastating consequences for the sub-region, especially neighbouring countries such as Ghana.
Whatever the strategy, anything with the semblance of a military operation will not offer any solution. One can, therefore, say that ECOWAS leaders have dug in too early. On a continent that has very little to show in terms of democratic credentials, it sounded quixotic to threaten military action for an election dispute when a determined sub-regional group such as ECOWAS has many options open to it to make a more meaningful impact.
At least, thanks to a lone voice which was very loud in the wilderness, ECOWAS has avoided being tele-guided from Washington, New York and Paris into a conflict that would have seen no end but only serve the interest of the metropolitan powers far away from the pain, suffering and destruction in a region already devastated by poverty and bad political leadership.
It is good that the AU, just like the ECOWAS, is now back-tracking more towards a peaceful resolution of the impasse. At the AU Summit in Addis Ababa, African leaders have agreed to set up a panel of mediators to begin another diplomatic offensive towards the resolution of the problem. Clearly, this turn of events will strengthen the hands of Gbagbo, who stood firm and demanded a negotiated settlement rather than stepping down.
In the coming days and weeks, ECOWAS countries will wait anxiously to see how the AU mediating panel will set out to do its work and whether it will achieve results where earlier mediators have failed.
What is encouraging and very much welcome is the fact that the battle drums are falling silent after the initial storm stirred by the US and France, giving way to a comforting calm which will engender more tactful and diplomatic effort to get to the root of the Ivorian crisis and come up with a lasting solution.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
THE Cote d’Ivoire electoral impasse has predictably but miserably dragged on. As the days roll into weeks, the militant voices which are very loudly calling for military intervention to enforce what they describe as the people’s choice are becoming fainter and fainter, being taken over, surprisingly, by voices of moderation. Those who made it look so easy to walk into another man’s country, change the government and walk out in no time, without a scratch, have been unfair to ECOWAS countries.
As we reflect, we begin to wonder where those machoistic voices calling for war to enforce election results came from. The Americans and the French, who were goading ECOWAS countries into battle against recalcitrant Laurent Gbagbo, seem to have lost interest and diplomacy, like the stone the builders rejected, is gradually being accepted as the surest way to resolve the impasse.
On hindsight, President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda said something which made some sense, considering the way the international effort at solving the problem was handled. He said ECOWAS was too quick to reject Gbagbo for Allassane Ouattara when the sub-regional body’s neutrality and mediating role should have been manifest.
ECOWAS and the other international bodies such as the AU and the UN should, first of all, have shown more interest in the election results to determine whether there were genuine grievances from both sides to be addressed. After clearing all doubts about the validity of the results, pressure could then be mounted to get all the parties to accept them and for Gbagbo to abide by the decision of the majority of the people, if that was what the results meant.
Unfortunately, ECOWAS, pushed by the AU, the UN, the US and its allies, dangled the military option before the diplomatic offensive. If the idea was to use the military option as a threat to cajole Gbagbo into submission, we have all realised, rather too late, that it was a miserable failure.
For the Prime Minister of Kenya, Raila Odinga, to issue military threats to Gbagbo and turn out to become an emissary of the AU was one of the greatest ironies of the times. Odinga could not be part of the solution, having come out forcefully with his war posture, apparently due to his bitter experiences in 2007 when he saw the presidency of his country slip through his fingers because of a Gbagbo-like Kibaki who defied majority decision and declared himself re-elected.
ECOWAS leaders have not explained the form the military option was going to take — whether to just airlift Gbagbo from the presidential palace in a commando-fashion or confront the Armed Forces of Cote d’Ivoire in a full-scale war which may take days, weeks, months or years to accomplish, with devastating consequences for the sub-region, especially neighbouring countries such as Ghana.
Whatever the strategy, anything with the semblance of a military operation will not offer any solution. One can, therefore, say that ECOWAS leaders have dug in too early. On a continent that has very little to show in terms of democratic credentials, it sounded quixotic to threaten military action for an election dispute when a determined sub-regional group such as ECOWAS has many options open to it to make a more meaningful impact.
At least, thanks to a lone voice which was very loud in the wilderness, ECOWAS has avoided being tele-guided from Washington, New York and Paris into a conflict that would have seen no end but only serve the interest of the metropolitan powers far away from the pain, suffering and destruction in a region already devastated by poverty and bad political leadership.
It is good that the AU, just like the ECOWAS, is now back-tracking more towards a peaceful resolution of the impasse. At the AU Summit in Addis Ababa, African leaders have agreed to set up a panel of mediators to begin another diplomatic offensive towards the resolution of the problem. Clearly, this turn of events will strengthen the hands of Gbagbo, who stood firm and demanded a negotiated settlement rather than stepping down.
In the coming days and weeks, ECOWAS countries will wait anxiously to see how the AU mediating panel will set out to do its work and whether it will achieve results where earlier mediators have failed.
What is encouraging and very much welcome is the fact that the battle drums are falling silent after the initial storm stirred by the US and France, giving way to a comforting calm which will engender more tactful and diplomatic effort to get to the root of the Ivorian crisis and come up with a lasting solution.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com Calm, after the storm
By Kofi Akordor
THE Cote d’Ivoire electoral impasse has predictably but miserably dragged on. As the days roll into weeks, the militant voices which are very loudly calling for military intervention to enforce what they describe as the people’s choice are becoming fainter and fainter, being taken over, surprisingly, by voices of moderation. Those who made it look so easy to walk into another man’s country, change the government and walk out in no time, without a scratch, have been unfair to ECOWAS countries.
As we reflect, we begin to wonder where those machoistic voices calling for war to enforce election results came from. The Americans and the French, who were goading ECOWAS countries into battle against recalcitrant Laurent Gbagbo, seem to have lost interest and diplomacy, like the stone the builders rejected, is gradually being accepted as the surest way to resolve the impasse.
On hindsight, President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda said something which made some sense, considering the way the international effort at solving the problem was handled. He said ECOWAS was too quick to reject Gbagbo for Allassane Ouattara when the sub-regional body’s neutrality and mediating role should have been manifest.
ECOWAS and the other international bodies such as the AU and the UN should, first of all, have shown more interest in the election results to determine whether there were genuine grievances from both sides to be addressed. After clearing all doubts about the validity of the results, pressure could then be mounted to get all the parties to accept them and for Gbagbo to abide by the decision of the majority of the people, if that was what the results meant.
Unfortunately, ECOWAS, pushed by the AU, the UN, the US and its allies, dangled the military option before the diplomatic offensive. If the idea was to use the military option as a threat to cajole Gbagbo into submission, we have all realised, rather too late, that it was a miserable failure.
For the Prime Minister of Kenya, Raila Odinga, to issue military threats to Gbagbo and turn out to become an emissary of the AU was one of the greatest ironies of the times. Odinga could not be part of the solution, having come out forcefully with his war posture, apparently due to his bitter experiences in 2007 when he saw the presidency of his country slip through his fingers because of a Gbagbo-like Kibaki who defied majority decision and declared himself re-elected.
ECOWAS leaders have not explained the form the military option was going to take — whether to just airlift Gbagbo from the presidential palace in a commando-fashion or confront the Armed Forces of Cote d’Ivoire in a full-scale war which may take days, weeks, months or years to accomplish, with devastating consequences for the sub-region, especially neighbouring countries such as Ghana.
Whatever the strategy, anything with the semblance of a military operation will not offer any solution. One can, therefore, say that ECOWAS leaders have dug in too early. On a continent that has very little to show in terms of democratic credentials, it sounded quixotic to threaten military action for an election dispute when a determined sub-regional group such as ECOWAS has many options open to it to make a more meaningful impact.
At least, thanks to a lone voice which was very loud in the wilderness, ECOWAS has avoided being tele-guided from Washington, New York and Paris into a conflict that would have seen no end but only serve the interest of the metropolitan powers far away from the pain, suffering and destruction in a region already devastated by poverty and bad political leadership.
It is good that the AU, just like the ECOWAS, is now back-tracking more towards a peaceful resolution of the impasse. At the AU Summit in Addis Ababa, African leaders have agreed to set up a panel of mediators to begin another diplomatic offensive towards the resolution of the problem. Clearly, this turn of events will strengthen the hands of Gbagbo, who stood firm and demanded a negotiated settlement rather than stepping down.
In the coming days and weeks, ECOWAS countries will wait anxiously to see how the AU mediating panel will set out to do its work and whether it will achieve results where earlier mediators have failed.
What is encouraging and very much welcome is the fact that the battle drums are falling silent after the initial storm stirred by the US and France, giving way to a comforting calm which will engender more tactful and diplomatic effort to get to the root of the Ivorian crisis and come up with a lasting solution.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
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