Pass E-levy and demand accountability?

Those making the above calls and urging minority MPs to help the government commit suicide by passing an unjust and unfit tax law are best described as jokers.

We were in this country when even a mere Electoral Commission Chair person refused on a number of occasions to appear before parliament to answer questions about her stewardship of the Commission. She has so far not appeared before anybody, parliament or judiciary to account for her unconstitutional actions in disenfranchising the people of the SALL constituency.

At the last SC hearing on election 2020, she succeeded in getting the SC in a legal manoeuvre to protect her from giving an account of the elections she conducted. Her budget was approved by parliament. Was it not?

We were in this country when both the Ministers of Defence and Finance declined to give a full account of the excesses of presidential travels and hiring of very expensive private jets that have showers in the skies under the guise of national security.

Monies have been approved for the presidency. Has it not? Is it not a fallacy that approving any budget or passing anything into law under the Akuffo-Addo government is not a guarantee for accountability? If the people and the people's representative in parliament cannot hold the government and its agents to account for already approved laws and budgets, where is the guarantee that anything will be different with the evil-levy?

The government has already demonstrated that it can’t be trusted to account for anything including the public purse. Why should the people and parliament trust it? Why? Should we pass the evil-levy before we can demand accountability from the government in other areas of national life?

Our government is not even willing to account for covid funds. Do you remember the two weeks of botched covid feeding which cost millions of cedis that has not been accounted for? Why is evil-levy going to be different? Has Data bank owned by Ken Ofori-Atta accounted for how much it makes from the taxpayer any time Ghana contracts an international loan as a specialist amortised agent?

Even with the e-levy, has Ken Ofori-Atta and his team so far opened up and accounted for how much it has wasted in touring the country to conduct less effective town hall meetings?

It is alleged that V8s were parked under trees with engines running and airconditioners switched on for up to four hours when ministers and government activists bussed to fill such town halls while genuine citizens wishing to ask probing questions were thrown out or prevented from attending.

This government and people working for it have not shown any genuine commitment to accounting for anything. It has schemed and dived with every opportunity to avoid being accountable. Why should we trust it?

Also, several persons and good organisations including think tanks have proffered several serious alternatives to the evil-levy which are far better and does not even include going to IMF. So why is the government bent on evil-levy?
When it comes to accountability, this government has lost total credibility.

Where does the Chief of Staff get all the monies to splash on private jets to bring MPs in to vote, give to private celebrities to organise funerals and pay into absenting MPs Fidelity bank accounts?

Is it from the presidential budget, the Consolidated Fund or from the Chief Of Staff’s personal account or from the sale of produce from her private cocoa farm?

Do you think Ghanaians are not interested in this sort of accountability too? Even till today, the president himself has not been able to account for the State of the Nation as mandated by the constitution. We don’t know whether Ghana is coming or is going.

Until the government shows readiness, willingness and preparedness to account for its stewardship of the country as a whole, we the people of Ghana and our representatives will not be fools and trust it to account for anything else.

My grandmother used to say “when the goats that went out earlier to feed have not returned, you don’t open the barn for the rest of your goats to go out to join the missing ones.”

The E-levy is an evil tax. It targets the poor alike indiscriminatingly and we should not back down in our opposition to it. Let the government start by showing some seriousness.

Let the president sack the Minister of Roads, who unconstitutionally and without lawful authority, cancelled the road tolls with lies of non-existent scuffles at Road toll booths to throw the dust into our already itching eyes of poverty and debt strangulation.

A word to the wise they say is always “in the north”