Is Akufo-Addo the change Ghanaians really want? [2]

By Francis Kwarteng

“In politics, stupidity is not a handicap” (Napoleon Bonaparte).

THE MORAL IMPORTANCE OF A NON-ESTABLISMENT PARTY IN THE POLITICAL EQUATION OF NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

This simple quote sums up the nature of Ghanaian politics particularly in the Fourth Republic.

In fact, this heightened threshold of stupidity in Ghanaian politics has usurped the majestic moral voice of God and political morality in the exercise of the collective franchise.

In other words, if the moral voice of God is also popular sovereignty then this voice—a corrupt voice in the shambolic inventory of Ghanaian political parlance—if you will, has grossly misspoken.

A voice that has never for once endorsed or clamored for positive, lasting change in the status quo in terms of political leadership, technocratic prudence and vision, and the strategic priorities of national development.

Any voice that keeps pushing for the replacement of one cabal of political criminals and shady political characters with another is indeed not wise, not worth listening to.

This unintelligent and unwise voice has been the bane of Ghana’s development. This is why we strongly believe the average Ghanaian elector is not that creatively discerning.

In fact, he cannot see beyond the crippling staple of political criminality that has bedeviled the Ghanaian body politic since its baptismal rebirth as the Fourth Republic.

This crippling staple of political criminality defines and characterizes the country’s duopolistic dictatorship and executive dominance.

And certainly the moral voice of God as popular sovereignty does not factor in this diabolical undercurrent of political equation.

Akufo-Addo is corrupt, so too is Bawumia, his shady running mate. The former’s election to the flagbearership of the NPP was marred by serious allegations of internal corruption, bribing of party delegates and executives, purging of those within the upper echelon of the party hierarchy who dared question his moral competence as well as his intolerance of ideological, political dissent within the party structure, with the active support of the party’s National Executive Council (NEC).

The NEC reportedly protected Akufo-Addo against these allegations, much like the leadership of the NDC protected President Mahama against the potential candidacy of George Boateng, with the NEC letting the scandalous allegations pass as though they never happened in the first place.

The well-documented truckloads of malfeasance associated with Akufo-Addo as Attorney General and Foreign Minister, including his active involvement in particular acts of heinous political crimes committed against the state and its citizens, such as the Drill Ship Saga, so-called, is better left unsaid, unexplored in these pages. They are already public knowledge.

Now, regarding the cedi redomination which Bawumia oversaw, there is so much about this shady economic exercise that is still kept under wraps.

That is to say, Bawumia has strategically and tactically skirted pertinent queries regarding this serious matter of political economy and monetary economics if and when he has found it politically expedient to do so.

Take these instances together with the massive public corruption scandals that rocked the very foundation of the Kufuor administration, for which Kufuor was subsequently denied the prestigious Mo Ibrahim Prize for African Leadership, and we no doubt have the same unsophisticated political criminals—costumed in wolf in sheep’s clothing and drenched in a palpable cacophony of sanctimonious rhetoric, of apocalyptic millennialism—making another strong comeback.

It is the height of moral stupidity to claim Bawumia and Akufo-Addo are incorruptible. Such an incorruptible political animal is rare in Ghana’s and Africa’s political history.

In Ghana only Nkrumah, Mills, and Limann fit this covetous label of incorruptibility.

WHO WILL INVESTIGATE THE POLITICAL CRIMES OF THE NPP AND THE NDC?

“So who’s gonna stay at home, when the freedom fighters are fighting? (Bob Marley, “Talking Blues”).

This is where we part ways with Franklin Cudjoe, of IMANI, that the incoming Akufo-Addo administration should seriously consider looking into some of the major projects undertaken under the Mahama administration for possible instances of price inflation.

This policy suggestion while highly commendable is also strategically and tactically myopic as public corruption has plagued every known government in the Fourth Republic.

What about instances of project price inflation under Rawlings and Kufuor, say?

Here, Kufuor’s highly commendable National Reconciliation Commission (NRC) comes in handy.

While the NRC primarily looked at human rights abuses and violations from 1957 right through the Rawlings era, it largely ignored the thorny issue of public corruption during this same period.

This is where we recommend a second empanelling of a National Reconciliation Commission to look into political corruption starting from the Rawlings era right down to that of President Mahama’s.

Why did Kufuor and Mills sign away our oil resources on the cheap to foreign interests? Why did we literally gift our mineral resources to foreign interests? Why did the NDC and the NPP sell state assets to and among themselves? How and when did illegal debt judgment payments begin?

And so on and so forth!

The NDC cannot do this. Neither can the NPP. Both the NPP and the NDC have been ransacking the national coffers to fund their political campaigns, to possibly bribe the officials of the Electoral Commission (EC), to buy the conscience of the electorate, among others. This is no news.

This is why a non-establishment political party needs to break the monopoly of the country’s duopolistic dictatorship.

Ghanaians should begin nurturing this non-establishment party and forget about the NDC and the NPP and, of course, this party should not necessarily have to be Nkrumahist in political and political outlook.

Akufo-Addo’s presidency is not going to add anything of value to progressive, visionary politics.

His unfortunate appointment of the old-fashioned ethnocentric hegemonist, Yaw Osafo-Marfo as head of his Transition Team gives us an inkling of where he will be taking the country, for he [Akufo-Addo] cannot claim to be a president for all Ghanaians while he still hangs around with an unapologetic, unrepentant ethnocentric hegemonist.

Divisive, ethnocentric Akufo-Addo at his political best. No wonder the factor of ethno-regionalism factored significantly in these general elections. No wonder the Volta Region is quiet and in mourning, the Ashante Region in a cacophonous joyous mood of renewed birth.

In fine, the political map of the outcome of these general elections confirms Yaw Osafo-Marfo’s deadly strain of Akan-driven ethnocentric hegemony—somewhat, and Akufo-Addo’s “Yen Akanfuo.” Well we can’t blame him—Akufo-Addo.

KOFI ANNAN ON AKUFO-ADDO

“To live is to choose. But to choose well, you must know who you are and what you stand for, where you want to go and why you want to get there” (Kofi Annan).

Kofi Annan is a priceless model of positive change. His association with the Mo Ibrahim Foundation and The Elders speaks to his lifelong commitment to a world free from antagonism, racism and ethnocentrism, genocide and wars, political dictatorship, economic and gender inequality, and the like.

What is more, his visionary stewardship of the United Nations added enormous value to international diplomacy on several fronts. Yet this visionary stewardship was not without its blameworthy official hiccups. Scandals upon scandals pursued Annan even while he manned this international organization.

We may recall his scandalous involvement with the suit of sexual allegations brought against Ruud Lubber, the United Nations Commissioner for Refugees (UNHRC); his reported complicity in the Rwandan Genocide (see Dore Gold’s book “Tower of Babble: How the United Nations Has Fueled Global Chaos) and the toppling of Saddam Hussein; and the halo of controversies that came to define his son’s [Kojo Annan’s] role in the Oil-for-Food Program.

His leadership and administration of the United Nations was not a perfect one—in other words.

Still, it is also possible he may not have anticipated these disgraceful acts of official encumbrances in his capacity as the face of the international organization. This is the more reason why he should have at least been particularly circumspect in claiming Akufo-Addo has the skills to turn around the national economy of Ghana, quite an uncertain claim that may have raised the threshold of false hope in the reckoning of the suffering masses.

It may have been an entirely different matter if he had spoken in figurative terms. That may not have been the case after all, however. There is no doubt in our minds that he spoke in a frank posturing of literal starkness. If we are not careful his could as well engender the False-Hope Syndrome, so-called, in a desperate population hoping for improved standard of living and quality of life in a leadership that may not, after all, be in possession of the necessary technocratic and moral instruments required for effecting social transformation in the Ghanaian body politic.

On the other hand, the case can equally be made that Annan has stayed away from Ghana for far too long to have gained a diminished sense of rational realism on the Ghanaian political landscape, let alone appreciate the emotional intricacies of Ghanaian politics. This is not to say he was not extremely fortunate under the circumstances. Rather, it is to say he had some of the best or brightest minds to prop up his administration.

Ghanaian politics, on the other hand, has always excluded men and women of monumental political vision and intelligence from active participation in administering the motive engine of the national enterprise. Again, in Ghana the poverty of ideas and mediocrity are supreme in its kleptomaniacal democracy.

Since Nkrumah’s overthrow men of relatively less political and moral intelligence have assumed his noble place, in fact none of whose achievements measures up to his.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

Of course, working behind the scenes the West particularly America, played an important role through the channels of international diplomacy, to get Annan the top job at the United Nations.

He soon became the darling of the American empire as he did its bidding and in no time, a Time Magazine profiled him in flattering, emotionally perfumed, or high-flown language. The author of the said article even ascribed the word or name “Annan” to Scottish origination, apparently leaving no room for other non-Western possibilities of etymological origination, or even philological derivation (see Joshua Cooper Ramo’s “The Five Virtues,” Vol. 156, No. 10, Sept. 4, 2000).

Like Akufo-Addo being reduced to a Black Englishman, Annan became a Black Scottish. We shall return with Part 3. He soon fell out with his some of his Western patrons after he had mustered courage to question some of their activities and behaviors on the world stage. The Time Magazine and other newspaper publications carried another piece but this time “Annan” was assigned its proper Ghanaian designation.

Kofi Annan was then also mysteriously transformed into the “first Sub-Saharan African to hold the post of the Secretary-Generalship of the United Nations.” This is exactly how the chameleonic Ghanaian is going to treat Akufo-Addo if he fails to fulfill all his campaign promises, if he fails to drastically transform Ghana in 18 months. Ghanaians expect no less from him!

Akufo-Addo should go and ask Nkrumah, his one-time ideological mental of global standing. Yes, he was an Nkrumahist first before he became a political mongrel of no mean standing in the ethnocentric, corrupt NPP, redneck Yaw Osafo-Marfo’s moth-eaten political log cabin.

We shall return with Part 3.

REFERENCES

Tom Ndahiro. “Kofi Annan’s Complicity in the Rwandan Genocide Against the Tutsis.” Retrieved from www.umuvugizi.com.

Joel Mowbray. “Annan?s Critical Role in the Genocide in Rwanda.” March 1, 2005. Retrieved from the website of Townhall.