Henry Lartey Is Prime Candidate for Street Removal

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
August 4, 2014
E-mail: [email protected]

I am assuming that since Dr. Henry Herbert Lartey would have Ghana returned to a Rawlings-style military dictatorship, he must also be planning to permanently dissolve his so-called Great Consolidated Popular Party (GCPP), the political party founded by his late father, Mr. Dan Lartey, of which he is now the presidential heir of a candidate. With a decidedly undemocratic political family business like the GCPP, it is little wonder that Dr. Lartey would so facilely entertain the inexcusably outrageous idea of returning the country to a military dictatorship, even for a short while (See "Ghana Needs to Return to Military Rule - GCPP Leader Charges" Ghanaweb.com 8/4/14).

I am also assuming that in spite of his quite apparently mature age, that the 2012 Presidential Candidate of the GCPP was, perhaps, too young to have witnessed and fully appreciated the high level of corruption that attended each and every one of the military juntas that have dominated our beloved country's geopolitical culture. He may, for instance, need to learn about the reasons for which Gen. Ankrah lost his chairmanship at the helm of the National Liberation Council (NLC).

The latter observation, of course, is in absolutely no way to endorse the equally rankly corrupt and dictatorial one-party faux-socialist burlesque that was the Kwame Nkrumah-led Convention People's Party (CPP). And would Dr. Lartey dispute the more than amply documented fact that the I. K. Acheampong-led National Redemption Council (NRC) was as thoroughgoing corrupt as was the F. W. K. Akuffo-led Supreme Military Council (SMC - II), Acheampong's Supreme Military Council I, the Rawlings-led Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) and the latter's so-called Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC)?

Indeed, about the only difference between the afore-listed military juntas and their civilian counterparts is that under the former, the theft of public resources was largely restricted among the circle of those licensed and certified to shoot and kill with impunity. Oftentimes, as witnessed under Chairman Rawlings, wanton thievery and the brutal liquidation of political opponents, both real and perceived, were conducted in a close-knit tribal manner that strikingly resembled the activities of the Sicilian Mafia, as eerily exemplified by the June 30, 1982 brutal assassination of the three Akan Accra High Court judges and the retired Ghana Army major.

From the quality of his rather superficial rhetoric, one gets the quite credible impression that Dr. Lartey is not an expert economist. If he is, then he almost certainly ranks among the bottom-most trough of his kind. For it is unpardonably naive for any Ghanaian intellectual worthy of his credentials to suppose that the Rawlings-led AFRC epitomized the finest example of military discipline. Perhaps the GCPP leader may want to compare notes with expert economists to find out about the irreparable damage of the Ghanaian economy wreaked by obtuse AFRC economic policies during the three-month period that a 31-year-old ill-bred and poorly educated Chairman Rawlings hogged the national political limelight prior to his handing over of the reins of governance to the Limann-led People's National Party (PNP).

To be certain, it does not take much intellectual energy and vision to come up with such high school economic flapdoodle as "Grow what you eat; stockpile and export. Domestication can end dollarization of Ghana's economy," and "We have to earn more from our exports such as oranges, pine-apples, pawpaws, mangoes as well as other fruits and vegetables by value addition...." What is direly needed, even as embarrassingly evinced by the so-called Senchi Consensus - I prefer the more apt characterization of Senchi Charade - is a well-grounded and practically coherent and feasible development blueprint and not such pedestrian litany of low-level intellectual abstractions.

You see, reading through such poppycock, I couldn't help recalling Dr. Kwasi Osei's radical and revolutionary program of removing every single certified mental basket case from our city streets. "Operation Clean Our Streets," I suppose that is the name of the taskforce. And for those of our readers who may not be familiar with his name, Dr. Kwasi Osei is the Director of the Accra Mental Hospital. I think he also doubles as Ghana's chief psychiatrist. Well, I thought Dr. Lartey would make a very fine candidate for street removal.

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