The politics of insults, hypocrisy and deception (2)

On the morning of 20th July, 2011, Kwesi Pratt dared the nation, particularly those of the NPP fraternity, to give “only one example of instance” where he has “ever insulted anyone”. I tried to call into that programme to give him a million instances but the power of technology failed to smile on me on that day.
Kwesi described Kufuor as a “president with an intelligent quotient of a three year old baby”. Recently, he said he prefers “a sick president to a cocaine president”, when concerns were raised from within the NDC, over Atta-Mills’ state of health.

The question is: has anybody seeking to be president of Ghana been convicted for dealing in illicit drug trade? What insult didn’t Kwesi pour on Rev. Palmer-Buckle for simply committing a ‘crime’ of being a signatory to a pastoral letter admonishing Ghanaians to jettison insults when Rawlings described Kufuor as an “Ataa Ayi”? What mud didn’t he throw at the Asante-Hene in the wake of that cocaine saga involving Tagor and co? Doesn’t he sit in the studios of Radio Gold and laugh his head off as Tony Aidoo and other NDC fools insult decent members of our society?

At a point in time in 2008, Kwesi Pratt was very sick and on admission at 37-military hospital but was able to convince care-takers at the facility to give him temporal leverage to enable him partake in ‘alhaji-alhaji’ programme on Radio Gold. The commitment of Kwesi Pratt to a course, irrespective of how devilish the purpose might be, is simply remarkable and I am not in the least green-eyed, the extent to which Atta-Mills is currently ‘taking’ extremely good-care of him.

This is the man who led the onslaught against the purchase of planes by Kufuor. He actually sat in the studios of radio gold and gave out a website where Ghanaians could go and check for themselves, the luxurious nature of the falcon 900.he said it has a massage parlor where Kufuor and his cronies were going to relax their tired muscles during their numerous frivolous foreign travels.
At the time, the announcement for the deal had just been made and the specifics of the contract and what was to go into other additions to the plane had not even been decided on.Yet, they were able to tell the people of Ghana how much the whole deal was going to impoverish Ghanaians and how wicked and insensitive Kufuor was to the plight of the so-called ordinary Ghanaian. Issues of military matters not prudent to be discussed on radio got lost on these pseudo-democrats. Consensus building in the area of re-tooling our arm-forces was hurriedly thrown to pigs.
But today, these very same people are talking about the price being quoted by the opposition in support of their argument that the planes can be procured at a relatively reduced price and that there is an element of ‘chop-chop’ in the deal, as has been bulldozed through parliament by the NDC, they (NDC) counter with an argument that the price being quoted by the opposition represents the “green” or “the shell” price.
Again, no other person than one of these military dinosaurs that have quickly thrown away their walking sticks and joined the Mills-Mahama gravy train, Gen. Smith, has been heard on various media outlets saying Ghanaians must be patriotic and do away with partisan politics when it comes to a very important issue of re-tooling our military because the decision to make these purchases was informed by the military hierarchy.
The question for this resurrected military dinosaur is simply this: where were you when, in 2008, Kufuor, under the advice of this very same military hierarchy, placed the order for the procurement of these very same equipments to resource our military? Or Kufuor was rather advised by some terrorists in Afghanistan to take that decision? And was this bi-partisan approach to resourcing our military not vital at the time?
Indeed, when some of these our nation’s octogenarians speak, it leaves you with no doubt as to why we are where we are after 54-years of nationhood. These are the people who enjoyed free of everything at the expense of the state but have woefully failed to make any useful contributions to the advancement of our nation. What they do best is simply sit in their houses clutching big walking sticks to demonstrate their inability to engage in serious political activism, and pray for their party to come to power only to swiftly throw away these walking aids and jump unto government gravy trains. How do we expect to ever progress with such people at the helm of affairs?
To justify the huge figures surrounding these plane purchases and also throw boulders into the faces of Ghanaians, vis-à-vis their insatiable ‘chop-chop’ craze, they are now desperately clouding the argument with a lie that the $17m ‘plane garage’ includes the construction of a world trade center,Burj-Khalifa-lke office blocks, shopping malls, hotels and so on.
These are the same lies they peddled when legitimate concerns were raised about the STX deal which has now suffered a ‘still-birth’. They said the contract sum was very much reasonable for the simple reason that the deal was coming with construction of a mega-cement factory, massive steel plants, water desalination plants and so on. And what do we see now after the razzmatazz that characterized the show-boating sod-cutting fiasco at Tesano?
These are the very people who overthrew our constitution in 1981; put the nation through a harrowing ordeal of 3-years of uninterrupted curfew which resulted in total collapse of all our service and hospitality industries that were dependent on night-life, resulting in incalculable damage to our nation’s economy.
And to deceive Ghanaians into thinking that they really cared about the plight of ordinary people, these constitutional-rapists walked about in ‘Afro Moses’ sandals, tattered ‘Batakari’(smocks)and always spotting un-kept facial hairs. While they went about deceiving people with their Cuban and North Korean propaganda nonsense, they were frantically scrambling for mansions and other multi-billion dollar properties in prime areas of the capital, other parts of the country and elsewhere across the globe.
They turned our educational institutions into communists’ style enclaves by prescribing the ‘kokonte’ looking uniforms for all school kids. They did this with diabolic intension of totally crippling our educational system and mortgaging the future of our nation’s children. And in the midst of all that, these double-faced nation wreckers were sending their children to highly expensive institutions in western nations as Britain and America.
These pseudo-socialists took power in 1981 when the size of the economy was $1billion and they ‘grew’ it to the figure of $3.94 over a period of nearly 20years while the NPP grew it to a nominal figure of $16.7 within a period of just 7years!!!Ghana’s domestic debt to GDP ratio under the NPP in June 2008 was 26.4% while that under the NDC as at December, 2000 stood at 28.8%. That of external debt to GDP ratio under NPP in June, 2008 was 22% and that of the NDC by December, 2000 was 189%.Ghana’s debt under the NDC therefore become unsustainable, hence, the declaration of HIPC by the Kufuor administration in 2001.
Income per capita under the 8year rule of the NPP as at June, 2008 was at $615 while that under 20years of P (NDC) was $307 by December, 2000.As a matter of fact, Ghana under the 8year rule of NPP was much better off than the 20years of the P (NDC) in all aspects.
And with such facts and figures coupled with their demonic political antecedents, the NDC definitely would not have come back to power in 2008, if the NPP communication outfit had not displayed crass incompetence and palpable impotence in the face of massive negative, but highly efficient, NDC media onslaught.
Today, these “greedy bastards”, who without the freebies of political office, can never do anything for themselves, through excellent art of political acrobatics, are back in government and skillfully manipulating Atta-Mills like a puppet on strings while blaming the 8-years of Kufuor for their non-performance.
Kufuor’s travels came under extreme scrutiny by the NDC.But today, cat-killers, general-mosquitoes, quality-grain ex-convicts and other hangers-on are part of every presidential trip and the NPP is mute? I wonder if the NPP can even tell the exact number of travels Atta-Mills and John Mahama have undertaken since taking office.

Indeed, after 19-years of gang-raping our nation’s economy and bequeathing to the citizenry, a shameful legacy of HIPC, and taking into consideration what we are seeing of Atta-Mills’ performance, if there is anything worse than HIPC, then I would entreat the good people of this nation to brace themselves for it in 2013.

Justice Abeeku Newton-Offei
E-mail: [email protected]