Misdirected aggression

Whoever chose last week to make public that members of the last parliament went home with hefty sums as ex gratia made a wrong decision. It was a week which saw many professional groups making demands for the payment of their salary arrears and better market premiums in relation to their migration onto the single spine pay policy (SSPP). Naturally that piece of information did not go down well with some members of the public and who directed their frustrations at the MPs who had no hand in their predicament. The justification, though very slim, was that if the government could raise GH¢47 million to pay the MPs why was it unable to pay the salary arrears of teachers and other professionals for over one year? Most of the worker groups have legitimate cases but in our desperation, we should be careful not to throw punches at the wrong direction. In fairness to the aggrieved professionals, some of whom have already embarked on strike actions while others have threatened to do so, one would expect that their cases were treated with the same urgency as was attached to that of the MPs and other category of public servants that fall under Article 71 office holders. For the MPs and others who fall under Article 71, we cannot blame them because they are receiving what they are entitled to as spelt out in the 1992 Constitution. If now we have come to the realisation that the arrangement under which every four years, some category of public servants have to go home with huge ex gratia and return to the House to wait for the end of another four years to collect again is bad, we just have to revisit those provisions in the Constitution to streamline things for the betterment of the national interest. We have ourselves to blame for some of the things we are experiencing today especially with regard to the emoluments of the Article 71 office holders. First, we should remember that when the Constituent Assembly was drafting the 1992 Constitution, some key professional groups, notably members of the Ghana Bar Association, boycotted its proceedings. Second, having experienced a long and unpleasant spell under military dictatorship, we were too eager to exit from that political arrangement to the extent that we did not pay attention to details. So a lot of loopholes were created which are being exploited by a few people to make money many think they do not deserve. For instance, under Article 71, the President shall determine the salaries, allowances and other facilities and privileges of certain categories of public office holders including MPs, the Speaker and Deputy Speakers of Parliament on the recommendation of a committee of not more five persons appointed by the President, acting in accordance with the advice of the Council of State. Article 71 (2) says: “The salaries and allowances payable, and the facilities available, to the President, the Vice-President, the Chairman and the other members of the Council of State; Ministers of State and Deputy Ministers, being expenditure charged on the Consolidated Fund, shall be determined by Parliament on the recommendations of the committee referred to in clause (1) of this article. Simply put, the President determines the salaries and other allowances for MPs and others in their category, while MPs also determine that of the President and others in his category. It is simply a matter of “do me well and I will do you even better”. On a continent where public money is easy for the grabs, such a loose mandate will surely be abused and that is exactly what is happening. Instead of making the MPs and others the scapegoats, we should revisit the Constitution on this matter and streamline things for the better. We must also find out whether this nation is deriving the best or the maximum from its resources. There are too many loopholes for some individuals to siphon money from state coffers without any fear of exposure or sanctions. The revelations at the sittings of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament have proved that most of the external assistance we have been receiving are not necessary if only we could use locally-generated revenue judiciously for national development. We are gradually being devoured by democracy, an institution we have nurtured with passion, which instead of ensuring our national success has rather opened the floodgates for vampires, marauders and rapists to plunder our national resources for selfish gain. Every corrupt person can conveniently seek refuge under the banner of a political party, whether in government or in opposition. So the incentive to loot is there. The professional groups are on the warpath because they have come to the realisation that the claims by our governments that there is no money to meet certain legitimate obligations are false because they could feel it, even if they could not see it, that huge sums of state money are going the wrong way. So they do not have the patient to wait any longer. We must take a critical look at our politics and find out whether the democracy we were yearning for and which we are touting as a national success is bringing us the returns we want. We must switch off that part of our politics which gives those with state power, the freedom to do anything they like with our collective resources without any fear of paying the appropriate penalties. We must be able to protect what belongs to us all. We must exert our collective energy against those who rape and plunder our national resources. Until we do that, we shall be hitting the wrong targets — call it misdirected aggression — while the real nation wreckers, the vampires and their collaborators continue to have a field day, celebrating our ignorance while strategising to loot the more. fokofi@yahoo.co.uk kofiakordor.blogspot.com

The noise menace

I was at this eating place, one of those places we call ‘chop bars’. I noticed that my message to the food seller across the counter was not getting through to her, even though I had raised my voice beyond normal levels. The person at the other end was also straining her ears but she could not hear me well. I was becoming desperate to the point of abandoning my mission when I saw the source of our problem. Resting in one corner of the bar was a loudspeaker punctuating the airwaves with a radio programme. It was one of those local frequency modulation (FM) radio stations where news is read as if somebody is running commentary, with all the embellishment one could think of. The volume was very high and communicating even at close range became a problem. One would expect that there would be serenity at a chop bar, so that as one consumes his/her food, he/she could also go over the day’s newspapers or ponder over what lies ahead for the day. It should even be possible for the patron to listen to the news or cool music while eating. But it becomes so irritating that the value of the news is lost, just as the sweetness of the music is drowned in the cacophony of noise. At another time, I joined a bus that would take me home. As soon as the driver took his seat, he pressed a knob and the vehicle started vibrating with noise. I say ‘noise’ because what was supposed to be music coming out of the speakers was so loud and ear-piercing that whatever entertainment was intended for the passengers became punishment. If you think you can run away from the noise in town by heading towards home for solace, think twice, for more noise awaits you in your neighbourhood. That noise will come from either a church next door or a drinking spot across the street. Some of these can operate till the wee hours of the following day and the deeper the night, the louder the noise. Life on the streets is not peaceful either. Vehicles of all shapes and sizes choke the atmosphere with the blaring of their horns. Sometimes one cannot tell whether it is a signal of distress or a driver just playing pranks, using the horn as an instrument. In some countries one could hardly hear the tooting of vehicle horns, since all the players know the rules of the game and play it fair. Here, you are likely to run over a pedestrian or into another vehicle if you ignore the use of your horn. Even, then, why on earth would an articulated truck driver toot his horn in a residential area at dawn when everybody is asleep? The strangest of all things is that there are laws against noise-making but their enforcement has become a problem, from the local authority to the national levels. As a result, individuals, groups and whole communities have been left to their fate to suffer in silence. Out of frustration, people have taken the law into their own hands, with devastating consequences. Should things remain this way? fokofi@yahoo.co.uk kofiakordor.blogspot.com

A quarter down the greedy throats

GOOD news hardly come from the continent called Africa, so I do not think it will be a surprise to those following events on the continent at the revelation that 25 per cent of Africa’s annual gross domestic product (GDP), roughly $148 billion is lost through corruption, according to a World Bank survey. Even before this report was made public, the continent is well-known for its corrupt public officials who have turned public office into gold mines where they reap what they have not sown. That partly explains why the race for political office on the continent can be bitter and acrimonious, sometimes resulting in the spilling of precious blood and loss of lives. The latest World Bank report from which Ms Pat Alsup, the Deputy Chief of Mission at the US Embassy in Accra quoted at a recent public event, may not have disclosed anything not known already except may be the figures. The revelation in that report that corrupt public officials in developing and transition countries received between $20bn and $40bn in bribes annually, which is equivalent to 20 and 40 per cent of official development assistance only goes to reinforce the perception that most public officers are not in office to serve but to enrich themselves. As rightly indicated by Ms Alsup at the opening of a West African Regional Anti-corruption workshop, the cost of corruption was not only measured just in terms of the billions of dollars squandered or in terms of stolen government resources. “Corruption’s cost is most poignantly measured in the absence of the hospitals, schools, clean water, roads and bridges that might have been built with that money and would have certainly changed the fortunes of families and communities,” Ms Alsup said at the workshop. In Ghana here, disclosures at the sittings of the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament are indications of how corruption has eaten deep into our public system and has cost the nation not only billions in lost revenue but a lot of abandoned projects that could have transformed the fortunes of this country. Another phenomenon of corruption which only became public concern quite recently is that of judgement debts. These are debts arising out of wrongful termination of contracts because some persons or groups lost out or debts orchestrated through fraudulent means and foisted on the nation. Corruption takes various forms, the well-known is the monies paid into the pockets of the wrong people which consequently puts a drain on the national coffers. Corruption also means the appointment of the wrong people to very sensitive positions who do damage to the national interest. It means lack of basic facilities and equipment in our schools, hospitals and other public institutions. It is manifested in the use of inferior materials in the construction industry, importation of fake and expired drugs for our hospitals. It influences serious national decisions whose ramifications could undermine national interest. At the recently held Ghana Economic Forum, Mr Prince Kofi Amoabeng, the Chief Executive Officer of the UT Group observed that if we could reduce corruption by 30 per cent, it would mark a turning point in the country’s development agenda. All the state institutions that could not survive the competition had collapsed not because of the lack of human resources to man those institutions ,but because of corruption in high places. All our governments have launched verbal attacks on corruption but so far all our top political office holders are angels because none has been caught in the anti-corruption net ,even though their official income do not come near their lifestyles. Under the circumstances, we cannot but say that we have a long way to go in the fight against corruption. Whatever the form, corruption is an evil canker that is destroying African countries and ours is not an exception. fokofi@yahoo.co.uk kofiakordor.blogspot.cocm

The missing link

What we have missed greatly and continue to miss as a nation is that binding glue of nationalism and patriotism which kept us together even in the most difficult of times. During the days of the so-called revolutions led by military dictators, Ghanaians – at least the majority – were unanimous in their abhorrence of dictatorship, abuse of human rights, nepotism, corruption and all the other evils associated with dictatorships. The return to multi-party democracy in 1993 was like sacrificing one thing for another. That oneness of purpose with which the country fought for the return to democracy gave way to extreme partisanship and split the country into a near two equal parts. Today, we cannot stand up as one people and confront poverty, disease and illiteracy, joblessness and the near hopelessness that is creeping into our midst. The cracks started to show right from the word go, when in 1992, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) cried foul after the presidential election and withdrew from the parliamentary election. That decision effectively left the legislature, a vital wing in the administrative process, in the hands of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) for four good years. Subsequent elections have never been without their hiccups even though we have succeeded in alternating governments formed by the NDC and the NPP, the two main political parties. A lot of accolades have been heaped on this country for the resoluteness and determination the citizens have so far demonstrated to tread the democratic path. Internally, however, it is increasingly becoming clear that fruits of democracy seem to be drifting away with the passing of the years. So polarised is the country on partisan lines that every important issue lacks national consensus and is rather seen through party lenses. Politicisation has become so extreme that there is no objective analysis of issues to see their true merits and demerits. In a winner-takes-all fashion, appointments to public offices are based more on party loyalty and influence than quality. In the process, the country is unable to make use of its abundant human talents – most of which are held in high esteem by foreign countries and international firms – to the detriment of the national good. So while those in government feels it is their time to create and share, those outside government sit passively on the fence watching things as innocent bystanders. Whatever the case, the nation is the loser. This fact was not lost on the President, Mr John Dramani Mahama, when in his speech at the 56th Independence Day national parade, he called on all Ghanaians to collectively confront the challenges of the country and contribute meaningfully for its betterment. “Each and every one of us has a responsibility to make meaningful and constructive contributions towards the growth and betterment of this nation. We owe that much to ourselves and our children who will inherit this land. We owe that much to all those who fought for us to have a place to claim as ours and call Ghana,” President Mahama said to emphasise his point. That is a splendid talk and which captures the dilemma of the nation. But President Mahama must take the lead. As the Chief Executive Officer of the land and Chief Appointing Authority, a lot resides in him to prove that this country belongs to all of us and that we all have a stake in its fortunes. The President’s own people may try to derail any goodwill overtures on his part to cast the net wider to rope in human talents farther afield. But it is for him to remain committed to his conscience and what he thinks to be in the best interest of the country. It is for him to ensure that not only appointments to high offices go to the best available materials but also job and business opportunities are distributed fairly with the best always coming first. That is the first step towards an all-inclusive government and the biggest assurance that this country belongs to all and we must all fight for its survival. As individuals and groups, we can never think alike. That would be abnormal. But we can have a common objective – that is to succeed as individuals and as a nation. The acrimony must give way to harmony and this country must be able to harness all its talents and resources for the ultimate twin goals of unity and development. This is our nation. Let’s suffer the pains together and share the fruits equally. fokofi@yahoo.co.uk kofiakordor.blogspot.com

The tragedy of our times

A NOISY self-proclaimed evangelist armed himself with all sorts of offensive weapons, stormed a radio station and in a savage mood, vandalised the place. His beef was that the station was holding a discussion in which his name was mentioned in a negative manner. The case went to court and everybody expected a speedy trial to make a strong case that this is not a lawless country where the laws of the jungle prevails. Unfortunately, we have been told that speed is not one of the characteristics of the wheel of justice; which according to the legal brains, grinds slowly. In this case, the wheel was not only grinding slowly, but virtually came to a halt until we started hearing murmurs that there were skirmishes of an out-of-court settlement. The final decision, we are yet to know. About two years or so ago, a prominent school proprietor was caught in the web of defilement when he got a 16-year-old pupil of one of his schools pregnant. The case attracted public attention for obvious reasons. First, a proprietor of a school should be the last person to subvert the future of any of his pupils and second, the man, had a few years before the incident, caught the attention of the president of the republic and had been decorated with a grand medal, apparently, for exceptional public service. We were all put to shame when the charge of forced marriage was dropped and the accused, the victim’s mother and grandmother were discharged. A clear message was sent. A crime is only a crime, when you cannot bargain your way out. The tone has been set and the path has been clearly demarcated, so it went on. A female musician who likes performing semi-nude had the audacity to violently confront a policeman who was doing his official duty and even held his shirt, tearing it in the process. Then, the usual chorus started flowing from the lips of the so-called influential persons of society. The offence or crime was overshadowed by the personality so the court started pandering to whims and caprices of the accused and the law became the victim. In one of such theatrical displays typical of our national tragedy, a court discharged a comedian who had turned himself into a consular officer of the United States of America Embassy in Ghana and took large sums of money from would-be travellers to secure visas for them. We know there is something called the alternative dispute resolution (ADR), which recognises settlement by consensus between feuding parties. But the blatant manner in which the court handled a purely criminal case in ADR fashion makes mockery of the law. As if the state had not suffered enough, the judge, in a jocular manner told the accused to go and make a movie about how he duped people but succeeded in walking out of a courtroom a free person. In a case which is a subject of a police investigation, a woman has been charged for illegal trafficking of Ghanaians, mostly women, to the Gulf States who end up doing menial jobs and forced prostitution. Even before the suspect could be sent to court, she is all over the place hopping from one radio station to the other and pouring invectives on journalists who only did their work by reporting the arrest from police sources. This is where we have come to, where people suspected of crimes could go outside the judicial system and with impunity and challenge the law enforcement agencies for daring to arrest and prosecute them. They go further to challenge the media for doing their work of informing the public of what is happening or taking place around them. This time, it is not our laws that have been made mockery of and turned into paper tigers, but the institutional indiscipline that has engulfed the country. The best place to see this in full evidence is on the roads. There are more unlicensed motor-bikes on the roads than the registered ones and these are not in any remote village outside the glare of the police but in Accra, the national capital. The carnage on the roads continue unabated and instead of taking drastic and decisive action, we prefer to pontificate and sermonise. We have become used to the lawlessness in the construction, especially the building sector and the filth that has engulfed our towns and cities is a product of lawlessness and indiscipline. Noise from churches and entertainment spots have polluted the atmosphere in residential areas, but who cares? After all, we are Ghanaians who care very little for the law. We always credit ourselves to be peaceful and law-abiding. Maybe, it is taking us too long to realise that we are getting very close to the outskirts of the jungle and unless our state institutions backup to and inject sanity into the system and unless we give the law the freedom to operate, we shall wake up one day to realise we are deep in the jungle. fokofi@yahoo.co.uk kofiakordorblogspot.com

Government business and courtesy calls

Government business, as could be expected, can be expansive. There are those strategic meetings that could travel deep into the night to plot serious development strategies; there are the regular cabinet meetings to discuss serious national issues and the usual workshops, seminars and conferences which are used as platforms by government officials to open the lid on government policies and programmes and use the same to receive feedbacks and to test the effectiveness of government business. It is to facilitate government business that various ministries have been created, both the traditional ones and those created at the fancy of every new government, alongside the departments and agencies of state to tackle defined sectors of national development. The presidency, which is the pinnacle and nerve-centre of government, must by necessity assume the characteristics of all the ministries, departments and agencies combined. Apart from attending to all the businesses mentioned earlier, the seat of government is also a target for various interest groups who believe that the best and most effective way of getting attention and receiving recognition is to present themselves at the The Castle, formerly, and now Flagstaff House. Among the groups are foreign delegations of business people all claiming to be investors who have the magic wand for our never-healthy economy, diplomats, social groups, religious bodies, chiefs and old schoolmates. Some of the objectives of the visiting delegations can be as mundane as going to wish the President well and to congratulate him on his elevation to the highest office of the land. Others go to announce the death of a chief or someone who in the estimation of the bereaved family was an important national figure whose demise must be announced to the President personally. I have never set eyes on the daily routine of a President but I can hazard one. The day will usually begin with a security briefing on the state of the nation and where there are possible security threats to the nation. The President will also receive a situation report (Sitrep) from the Chief of Staff and quickly go through the confidential mails from the Special Care or Confidential Registry before checking the diary for the day’s scheduled assignments which would inevitably include meetings, receiving visiting delegations and possibly attending out-of-office programmes such as delivering speeches at workshops, seminars and conferences, and using those opportunities to market the government on its policies, plans, programmes and achievements. On a normal day, by the time the President finishes his day’s schedule of assignments, the day would have come to an end and he would have had very little time to spend some critical moments to think of serious problems confronting the nation. If the daily schedule, as I guessed here, remains a regular feature of the presidency, it means the President will for most of the time be receiving delegations, delivering speeches, most of which would not necessarily represent his thoughts or ideas, but flowing from pens of speechwriters, among them government propagandists who have very little time to reflect soberly on national problems. Under the circumstances, the President of the Republic will be relying mostly on the briefings by his ministers and party apparatchik without necessarily making independent assessment of the situation on the ground. No doubt, with all the lofty plans and the sweet things we have been fed with most of the time, this country is still trapped in poverty, joblessness and misery. Not too strange is the fact that there is a vast gap between what our governments tell us they want to do and what they end up doing. If government machinery is functioning effectively, the presidency should be the last resort and this will reduce considerably the traffic to the Flagstaff House. The ministries, departments and agencies should be able to take a lot of the workload from the shoulders of the presidency and leave it to concentrate on serious government business. The regional and district coordinating councils should be able to function in such a way that people with grievances do not have to travel to Accra to the Flagstaff House before getting the assurance that their problems can be addressed. Some of the foreign delegations whether diplomats or business groups should not go beyond ministerial levels. There is no need for a minister of a foreign country visiting Ghana calling on the Vice-President and later calling on the President. Is it because we are so desperate for external support that we do not want to conform to international protocols that allow visiting dignitaries to be received by their equal counterparts? It is obvious that our country is not enjoying the best of health irrespective of what those who are at the centre of power may proclaim and our Executive President, on whose head lay all our problems, should find the time to devise solutions. The presidency must make the work of the ministries and other state institutions easier by restricting visitors to the presidency, limiting it to the most important. We agree that the presidency must be accessible to as many people as possible but that should also mean that there should be schedule officers that could represent the President and take care of most of the visits and leave the President to do more serious things. There is no need for delegations to travel to the presidency to hand an invitation to a traditional festival personally to the President. There is no justification for the President to spend the whole day receiving a funeral delegation when that could be done more conveniently by the regional and district coordinating councils on his behalf. Politically we may think that uncontrolled open-door policy will be yielding dividends but in reality, just like what our free-for-all trade liberalisation has done to our local industries, the practice will only reduce the presidency to a ceremonial one and push serious things into the background. fokofi@yahoo.co.uk kofiakordor.blogspot.com

What others think of us

Diplomats by their training and the nature of their job are very cautious with the choice of words. They hardly say YES or NO to questions and they give praise where it is not due or express cautious optimism even when things look very gloomy. Foreign diplomats who come to this country never fail to tell us all the pleasant things they have heard of Ghana and its people. They tell us we are very friendly and hospitable and that our country is one of the best on the whole continent of Africa. Some go into history and recall the splendid works of our past leaders, especially Dr Kwame Nkrumah, who they admit was a great leader who devoted much of his life fighting for the liberation and unity of Africa. Sometimes in the profusion of their praises, some of them forgot the role their governments played in the past to frustrate the independence of African countries and how they plotted against progressive leaders like Nkrumah to hound them out of office. Diplomats departing the country tell us how beautiful Ghana and its people are. They tell us how we are making progress in the economic and political fields. These days, the additional cliché is, Ghana is the beacon of democracy on the continent. Such sweet words make our leaders very happy, sometimes very proud and take our minds off the gloom surrounding us. Diplomats by tradition are not expected to tell us the truth, at least not when they are on our soil but God knows the confidential information they feed their governments with in the comfort of their offices. Classified information made public by WikiLeaks on various governments including that of Ghana about two years ago was just a small indication of what people say about us in public and what they think of us in reality. When we cast the sweet words of diplomacy aside, African countries do not conjure any positive image in the minds of many in the international arena. Ours is a picture of misery, poverty, disease, ignorance and corrupt leadership. If truth must be told, we need to make a sober reflection to determine whether we deserve the praises being heaped on us or whether the gloom being painted about the continent is a true reflection of state of affairs on the continent. At independence, the first president of the republic, Dr Nkrumah, set a high for the Black race and vowed to prove that what others could do, Africans and for that matter Blacks could do better. He set a cracking pace on all fronts and it became obvious that if that momentum was sustained for appreciable length of time, that pledge to redeem Ghana from political and economic bondage was going to be a reality. Things did not work the way we expected and as we prepare to celebrate 56 years of independence, the question on the lips of every serious-minded person is, ‘Where is the independence dream?’ The flag and anthem continue to be the symbols of nationhood. Beyond that independence has made limited impact in our national life. We still feel insecure and only regain some level of confidence at the approach of a white-skinned person. In the past, we were looking up to the great economic powers In Europe and the US for salvation. Today, our situation has deteriorated to an extent that we take solace in China, Korea, India and Malaysia. It appears the end is not in sight, and the more we celebrate independence with parades and big speeches, the more we get entangled in the begging syndrome. We are yet to know what we can do for ourselves. We still export our natural resources in their raw form which gives us very little value and import almost everything we need including toothpicks. While others have turned deserts into green fields, we are still at a loss as to how to make use of the abundant water resources at our disposal for agricultural production and other economic ventures. The River Volta alone could have done what the Nile has done for Egypt, but alas, water to drink in our homes let alone for commercial and industrial use has become headaches for us. We are praying for some people from China, India, Brazil and the latest on the block, Turkey or somewhere, to come and fetch water from River Volta into our homes. We cannot as a people get a boat on the Volta Lake for transportation purposes. We cannot exploit the enormous tourism potential of the Volta Lake and change the economy of this country for the better. What diplomats for purposes of their profession would not tell us, the social media on the Internet have made freely available. Just type in an African country and the truth about us would be staring at you. Hopeless people who are always complaining of hunger when they have some of the best lands on the planet. Talk of lack of funds and the social media will tell us how useless we are, always begging others, when our politicians are the most corrupt, stashing away national revenue in foreign banks, investing in grandiose properties overseas, while their citizens languish in poverty. There is a new lobby emerging in the US and Europe which many may not be aware. There are many in those places who are making a strong case against handouts from their countries to Africa. They claim the continent’s problems have very little to do with inadequate resources. They have identified lack of imagination and bad, uninspired and corrupt leadership and, therefore, could not carry the burden of Africa any longer. The Asians have started cashing in and would continue to do so until they have had their fill and left us in our misery. The solution is nowhere but here. We need to change our mindset that without others we cannot make it. The tendency to find excuse for our failures in lack of funds must end. As the saying goes, we need to pull ourselves by our own bootstraps if we are to make ourselves relevance on the international stage. fokofi@yahoo.co.uk kofiakordor.blogspot.com