'BARTELSIASIS' Or The Kwamena Bartels Syndrome

Shortly after the former Ministry of Information was re-designated as the Ministry of Information and National Orientation (MINO), this writer soberly questioned the posting of the ever-blundering, albeit well-meaning, Mr. Kwamena Bartels to the headship of that most vital administrative institution. For other than, obviously, the presidency itself, the Ministry of Information and National Orientation is the most vital branch of the executive. Needless to say, the other equally vital ministerial branches of the government are Foreign Affairs, Finance and Economic Planning, Justice and Defense. This, of course, is not to imply, by any stretch of the creative imagination, that the other cabinet portfolios are any less administratively significant.

Still, based on his rather lackluster performance in the recent past, at the time of its recreation – or, perhaps, more aptly its re-designation – this writer suggested that it was imperative to move Mr. Bartels from the Information and National Orientation Ministry to a more “manageable” or less administratively challenging portfolio than his current one. Our reasoning was that the MINO direly needed the stewardship of a versatile communicator who would be able to swiftly and effectively collate, coordinate and disseminate information pertaining to governmental activities and general public interest for ready and easy consumption.

Back then, we prophetically recognized the fact that in the “Farmland Episode,” for example, Mr. Bartels had nearly created an epic crisis for the ruling New Patriotic Party of which, it is significant to observe, Mr. Bartels had staunchly served. For the preceding reason, we concluded that it was imperative for the NPP constabulary to equally serve Mr. Bartels, as well as the latter individual had served the Party, by moving him to a portfolio at which Mr. Bartels was far less likely to cause a moral embarrassment both to himself and the government. And here, we must sadly report that of the more than several media organizations to which we soberly registered our concerns regarding the preceding, only the Berlin-based Internet bulletin-board, AfricaNewsAnalysis.com deemed our concerns to be serious enough to merit and warrant publication on its website.

And so, once again, we have decided to take advantage of Mr. Bartels’ latest administrative contretemps to politely “encourage” the NPP government to expeditiously move Mr. Kwamena Bartels to a more “manageable” or less risky portfolio before the man makes a more grievous and, perhaps, indelible and politically suicidal blotch on the otherwise progressive and democratically cutting-edge – or pioneering – and nonesuch record of the ruling New Patriotic Party. For, it goes without saying that in the all-too-fallible scheme of human endeavor, there are, indeed, only so many blunders that a cabinet member in charge of a major portfolio may make without the entire Government and Party suffering deleterious consequences at the polls.

Already, we find the NPP’s Chairman Mac Manu making the sort of hubristically Shakespearean statements that have been known to precede the eternal demise of every Macbeth. Indeed, as Mr. Manu exuberantly maintains, the NPP’s organizational skills and acumen may well be unbested, as yet, on the entire African continent. But whether making stentorian vaunts about such purported feat is apt to immediately translate into a drastic reduction in the teeming population of homeless Ghanaians and grinding poverty among the same, is another question altogether. And here, perhaps, we must also hasten to emphasize the fact that we fully recognize the proverbial fine line between what constitutes pep-talk – or sheer morale booster – and outright braggadocio. And, by all means, let none of us feign ignorance of the fact that President Nkrumah’s unrelenting bluster about Ghana being the Lodestar of Africa did not get us any farther than the deathly throes of, perhaps, the most extortionate one-party government on the entire African continent, with the possible exceptions of Bedel Bokassa’s Central African Republic and Mobutu Sese Seko’s Congo-Zaire-Congo.

Indeed the alleged report, by the so-called “Insight” newspaper, of Mr. Kwamena Bartels’ attempt to cynically transform the Ministry of Information and National Orientation into a propaganda apparatus of both the NPP Government and the Party itself, must constitute the least of our worries. For, purely and objectively based on postcolonial Ghanaian political history alone, the NPP appears to be, curiously, the exception, coming to the time-tested game of agitprop as a late-bloomer, if raging reports are to be accorded any iota of validity. For what other purpose could a ministerial portfolio designated as one that is meant to be appropriated for “Information and National Orientation” be expected to pursue, but purposes of “National Orientation” or propaganda? And then, also, exactly what constitutes the basic administrative contents of “National Orientation” which a less linguistically acrobatic Ministry of Culture and Local Government, for example, could not more effectively pursue?

The preceding notwithstanding, the editorial call by the Ghanaian Chronicle for the purported “beneficiaries” of Mr. Kwamena Bartels’ ministerial largesse – in the form of such communication incentives as free telephone lines and service – to reimburse the government and, in effect, the public for “the costs of installation of these communication facilities and any bills that might have accrued from their usage” (Ghanaweb.com 11/20/06), is rather grossly misplaced and must not be allowed to pass unremarked. In sum, while in principle we wholeheartedly agree with the editorial board of the Chronicle vis-à-vis the ethical impropriety of Mr. Bartels’ administrative lapse, still we firmly believe that making such a summary or sweeping judgment call woefully overlooks a few significant facts.

First of all, if, indeed, any of the alleged “beneficiaries” of Mr. Kwamena Bartels’ administrative gaffe are found to have actually worked towards the salutary advancement of the legitimate cause of the elected New Patriotic Party (NPP), then, of course, rather than being sanctioned, or dourly reprimanded, these media mavens ought to be generously compensated for their yeomen’s efforts in the insidious and incontrovertibly volatile era of “Boom” rhetorical lunacy.

Of course, those media experts enlisted by Mr. Bartels who are found to have expended their expertise wholly to the benefit of the New Patriotic Party, as functionally distinguished from the Kufuor Cabinet, ought to have their bills and efforts duly compensated from the proverbial Party kitty.

However, thirdly and finally, before any such measures are effected, Messrs. Rawlings and his criminal cohorts must be forced to declare their assets and where deemed justifiable, some of their assets must be liquidated via Parliamentary edict and the proceeds used to defray some of the whopping costs incurred the nation by the “revolutionary” atrocities and raw thievery meted out on Ghanaians by the erstwhile, so-called Provisional National Democratic Congress (P/NDC), as well as the so-called Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC).

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., teaches English and Journalism at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City.

Views expressed by the author(s) do not necessarily reflect those of GhanaHomePage.