Betrayal of the national cause

By Kofi Akordor
THE President, Professor John Evans Atta Mills, was not a happy person when his effort to retool the Ghana Air Force was mired in muddy waters of partisan politics. He got the opportunity to express his displeasure when he toured the flood areas in the Fanteakwa and Atiwa districts in the Eastern Region. He used the disaster situation in the two districts and other parts of the region to draw attention to the need for everyone, especially political leaders, to be circumspect and objective when discussing matters that were purely of national interest and separate them from what were for mere political gratification. In defence of the decision to purchase five aircraft to re-equip the Ghana Air Force, the President wondered why almost all important national issues were given political twists and colouration, saying the five aircrafts were not meant for the comfort of the presidency. Apart from their military use, experience had shown that in times of disaster such as what we are experiencing in most parts of the country now, military aircraft, especially helicopters, come handy to evacuate the injured and stranded and also ferry relief items to victims of national disasters. This is the reality that should inform all our discussions on the subject of equipping all our national institutions. In a similar vein, President Mills will by now begin to appreciate the frustrations and may be the humiliation former President John Agyekum Kufuor went through when he sent a similar application to the House in 2008 and put forward the same arguments that the aircraft earmarked for the Ghana Armed Forces were not for the aggrandisement of the presidency nor the political leadership but in the supreme national interest. There are many in the NPP who have still not forgiven former President Kufuor for introducing that package for the Air Force during those crucial moments close to an election which promised to be close and tough. Some were even more cynical, claiming former President Kufuor did that deliberately to destroy the chances of Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo in the 2008 elections. As a nation, we should decide whether we desire a military establishment with an Air Force or not. If we agree to have an Air Force, we should inform ourselves that the Air Force does not operate with wheelbarrows. It is a unit that executes its military operations mostly from the air and, therefore, necessarily must have military aircraft to execute that mandate. The argument yesterday that there was hunger and poverty in the country and that many schools were without good infrastructure are very relevant today. The most important thing is that every country can march on all fronts at the same time provided it is able to harness its resources and manage them well. We can debate cost and choice of aircraft dispassionately and objectively devoid of partisan motives. If we decide not to have an established military, that will be a different matter. In that case, we should be prepared to mobilise our Asafo companies to defend the country against external aggression whenever it becomes necessary. Until we make that choice, we should be able to equip our Armed Forces to the best of our ability and with enough firepower so that they can provide us with the protection we need as a sovereign nation. Throughout our history as an independent nation, almost every government has suffered condemnation, one way or another, for its plans, programmes and projects. The person who was vilified the most and became the biggest victim of this phenomenon, as many would agree, was Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first President and the man whose vision and ideas became an inspiration to not only countries on the mother continent but also all Black communities globally. Interestingly, almost everything initiated by President Nkrumah was condemned by a section of the population just to make him unpopular. Even the Accra-Tema Motorway, the Tema Harbour, the Volta Dam at Akosombo and the now Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) were described as grandiose, misplaced and not in the national interest at the time. Today, I am wondering if any person with an objective mind can confidently describe any of these national projects as grandiose and not in the interest of the nation. So soon we have come to realise how inadequate the facilities we thought were over abundant yesterday have become today. One of the crimes General Ignatius Kutu Acheampong was accused of committing was the decision to purchase an aircraft for the Ghana Air Force which became the presidential jet. General Acheampong never travelled on that aircraft, partly for his phobia for flying. Incidentally, the person who amplified the accusation of Acheampong for profligacy was Flt Lt. J.J. Rawlings, who made good use of the aircraft from its prime until it became known as the Flying Coffin due to old age. It was this flying coffin that was to be replaced by the Kufuor regime when he ran into problems with the then opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC). As fate would have it, the NDC, now in government, also took a package intended for retooling the Armed Forces to Parliament when the New Patriotic Party (NPP) felt it was an opportune time to return fire. Some of us expected that that chain would be broken, since we know it is not in the national interest. But no! The NPP wants to exact its pound of flesh, if even at great cost to the nation. As to cost and due diligence, some of us would not want go there, since we do not have the competence. But by all means let Parliament do its part by scrutinizing documents before it to ensure that the country is not short-changed in the transaction. But that should not take away the necessity of ordering the aircraft for the Air Force. By now we should be able to determine what we want as a nation and pursue those goals in a non-partisan manner and stop the unnecessary politicisation of serious matters. When the NDC administration first introduced the Value Added Tax (VAT), it was vehemently opposed by elements in the NPP parading under the umbrella of the Alliance for Change (AFC). Precious blood was shed and a few people paid the supreme price for what they thought to be a justifiable cause. The souls of those who died in the Kume Preko demonstrations will be turning in their graves upon the realization that the leadership of those demonstrations which turned violent and cost their lives, including Nana Akufo-Addo, Dr Yves Wereko-Brobby and Dr Nyaho Nyaho-Tamakloe, later were part of a government which increased the percentage of the VAT. We did similar things upon the introduction of the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund) which has proved to be the backbone of the educational sector today. They are dead and gone, leaving behind their friends and relatives in misery, while their leaders have lived long enough to taste the sweetness of political power for eight years and are preparing feverishly for another round if Ghanaians so permit. The NDC, while in opposition, also walked out of Parliament when the debate on the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), which was its own baby when the party was in government, got to its crucial stage. Now back in government, the NDC is doing everything to streamline the operations of the NHIS. Maybe things would have been better for the scheme, and for that matter Ghanaians, if the party had allowed its input to enrich the debate. Our lives as a people cannot be allowed to go on this way. In a democratic environment, there is bound to be disagreements. In fact, disagreements and dissent generally are some of the strong pillars on which rest the fundamentals of democracy. These disagreements, therefore, if genuinely informed by the quest for accountability and concern for the general good of the people, will be articulated in a manner as will enrich debates on national issues, at the end of which the ultimate objective of making this country a better place will triumph. We may score cheap political points today, but if disagreements are not based on objective analysis of things but bear the fruits of mischief, malice and self-interest, it will always bring us to the situation where, instead of moving forward, we will constantly retrace our footsteps. If the NPP will admit that they made a mistake during the introduction of the VAT and the NDC will admit mixing serious national issues with narrow political interests during former President Kufuor’s attempt to purchase aircraft for the Air Force, this country will be learning useful lessons that will propel it to move on in the right direction. There are numerous examples but the few mentioned will illustrate the phenomenon which is not healthy for our political and overall national life. The politics of tit for tat is negative, must be condemned and not countenanced by all serious-minded people. If we continue to pursue that path, we will only succeed in betraying the national cause for the sake of narrow and sectional interests. Political parties are national institutions that are supposed to make the national interest the core agenda. If we depart from this goal and adorn party garbs at the least opportunity, we will do more harm to the democracy we claim to cherish so much and in effect destabilise the national development agenda. fokofi@yahoo.co.uk kofiakordor.blogspot.com