Religion and Bawumia's NPP leadership bid

It will difficult for Bawumia in an NPP leadership race. Muslim aside, all those who got the privilege to lead the New Patriotic Party follow a certain unique pattern. With the exception of Albert Adu Boahene (the first NPP leader), all of them have contested for the leadership at least once and failed; Kufour in 1992 and Nana Addo in 1996.

The NPP is a Ghanaian traditional political party which follows the Ghanaian kingship style of selecting leaders. Everyone falls in line and leadership of party usually falls on the person next in line which makes Alan Kyrementeng's candidacy far more likely than Bawumia's. Yes, Buwumia has some cards in his favour. Since Nana Akuffo Addo started running with him as vice, he has become the lucid mouthpiece of the party at least on the matters of the economy. He is view by many people at least in the NPP as a leading light and an intellectual heavyweight. Also, in Bawumia's favour is the sitting President. Nana Akufo Addo could openly support Dr. Bawumia and use is influence in the party to ensure his success.

But that too has it own perils. As the current government becomes unpopular as do most governments when they stay in office for long, Bawumia may fall victim to the general unpopularity of the government as the protégé of the president. Alan Kyremengteng, thought a minister in the current government is viewed more as an NPP partisan than Nana Addo's right hand man. This makes it easy to run away from the president if the need be. Alan is also seen as the preferred Candidate of President Kufour when the latter was leaving office in 2009. This view of Alan could be fatal for Bawumia's efforts to lead the NPP as President Kufour is popular and more likeable in the NPP.

But the good thing for Bawumia is that he is young and brilliant and if he decides to continue in politics, he will one day lead the NPP even if he does not succeed the first time. I don't think that his religion will hamper his progress in the NPP and the country. There are of cause some in the Christo-Asafo wing of the NPP who will be uncomfortable with Bawumia's leadership. But in the years that he's been the vice president, he has shown himself not be a religious zealots. In fact, Bawumia and his wife both have done stuff that made conservative moslems uncomfortable. They have attended christian funerals and participated in Christian prayers. If Ghanaian christians are not comfortable with Bawumia and sister Samira, they will not be comfortable with any moslem in Ghana. The couple are mainstream Ghanaians and when the time comes for them to lead the country they will overcome all the religious challenges on their path.

Therefore, if Bawumia does not win the NPP leadership, it is not because he is a moslem. It is because factors and structure in the New Patriotic Party do not favour him as discussed above.

NANA AKUFO ADDO’S ALL DIE BE DIE PROBLEM

If Nana Akufo-Addo loses the 2012 election, as it is now more likely than not, historians will look back at the day he made the “all die be die” statement as the turning point of his electoral fortune and political career. The “all die be die” statement reduced Nana Akufo-Addo from a viable alternative to the Mills led government to a desperate loser seeking to appeal to the worse instinct of Ghanaians. The statement further entrenched the belief among certain quarters of Ghanaian society that the NPP under Nana Akufo-Addo has no interest in the prevailing national harmony in Ghana since 1992. The party under him is willing to do all that it takes to make Nana president even if it means replicating in Ghana the new dark age we saw in post election Africa. In this sense our neighbouring Ivory Coast comes to mind.

The statement should not be taken likely by all well-meaning Ghanaians and even by foreigners who wish mother Ghana well. It constitutes a smallest window in the mind set of an Ethnic Entrepreneur and how he intends to conduct himself during and after the 2012 elections. The “all die be die” comments were a dog whispers to supporters of the NPP in the Ashanti Region that they could resort violence in the evident the NPP loses the 2012 elections. It was also meant to provide NPP a nice political cover to reject or dispute the result and declare violence and discontent in the country. This is not a new trick the NPP is seeking to employ. The same play book was used after the 1992 elections in order discredit the Rawlings led NDC government.

The all die be die statement is also a subtle admission that NPP is willing to employ every foul means to win the 2012 elections. It is constitutes a window in to the mind set of a democratic tyrant’s strategy for forcing his opponents in to fights by throwing the first punch. It is therefore not surprising the current politics of attacks and insults on the person of the President and his family. Nana Akufo Addo knows that he is no match to President Mills’ unimpeachable moral standing and economic records. Absent any hitch on the government’s moral and economic records, the Nana campaign have no option but to resorted to the campaign of insult, personal attacks and outright lies and misinformation hoping that one of those falsehood will stick. These kinds of campaign tactics is known in the United States as throwing the kitchen sink at your opponents. It was employed by the Republican 2008 and the 2010 US congressional elections. The NPP is burnt on replicating the same tactic in Ghana.

If you doubt that the “all die be die” statement is a dog whistle for violence ask NPP’s Ashanti Regional organizer, Mr. Kennedy Kamkam. He was on report to issued a stern warning to nation’s Electoral Commissioner, Dr. Afri Gyan, for what he term siding with the ruling government simply because he introduce a biometric registration process and thought there is no need for a verification process. It worth mentioning that Dr. Gyan has been election commissioner in Ghana since 1992 and have supervised elections won by both parties. He is recognized in Africa and world as one of the most trusted election commissioners on the continent. Yet the NPP wants to drag the reputation of his man in the drain. Mr. Kamkam was on record to have also said that should Nana Akufo Addo lose the 2012 election, they and their allies will form a parallel government in Kumasi, Ghana’s second largest city.

The NPP is willing to repeat the same strategy as they did 2008 election, blot the ballot in their stronghold whiles accusing the NDC of rigging. In 2008, many polling stations in the Ashanti Region the NPP obtained more votes than the number of registered voters in the polling stations. Also, whiles the voter turnout for Ashanti in the runoff election was 83.31%, the average for the rest of the country was about 72%. Ashanti Region’s turn out was over 10% the national average. Anyone who followed radio reporting during 2008 run off election know this is a fact.

Prof. Adu Boahene, the NPP candidate for president in the 1992 presidential election, employed similar strategy and the NPP lost. After that electoral defeat, they alleged all kinds of violence they rejected the results, and proceeded to write a book titled Stolen Verdict. The party then made a concerted effort to delegitimize the NDC government by boycotting parliamentary elections. When all the dust settled it became apparent to them that boycotting the parliamentary election was their own waterloo. As it provided the NDC government a one party domination and left NPP voiceless in our body politique for four years. It did not take much for the NPP to rejected the Adu Boahene mantra and charted a new course; a course that saw them through two successive elections victories under President Kufour.

It took over two decades before Prof. Afari Gyan laid the truth of the 1992 results to rest in an interview with Kojo Oppong Nkrumah of Joy FM. The pillar of Ghanaian democracy did not miss words. He said to the amazement of many, including his interviewer, that the NPP lost the 1992 election clear, pure and simply. Yet the NPP and its allies will not stop circulating the same snake oil about the 1992 election that they continually sold Ghanaians for more than two decades. Neither will they back off from the dead-old tactics of tribalism and appeal to violence.
As the experience of Mr. Kufour and Prof. Mills showed, elections are not won by appealing to people's worse instincts. Candidates win elections by providing hope for the future, light at the end tunnel, and bread at the end of a day’s hard work. People will be reluctant to support candidates who seek to divide the country along ethnic and tribal lines for their own political interest. We are all witnesses to the carnage that ensued in Yendi when politician inflamed ethnic passions to garner support. The interests of Ghanaians far outweigh the interest of any political group. Therefore ethnic entrepreneurship and the politics of appealing to tribalism any time one fine himself in a political corner is not a winning strategy. It is a loser and we thought the NPP learnt that lesson from their previous campaigns.

It is time for the Government of Ghana and international community to make clear to Nana Akufo Addo and or any candidate who want to be selfish that he or she will held personally responsible for any lost life in Ghana. And if Nana doubts this, he should check the lives of the like of Gbagbo and Charles Taylor. The international community has a legal framework for dealing with violent leaders, it is called the ICC.

NANA ADDO: ARROGANCE AND THE CULTURE OF ENTITLEMENT

If one sentence could describe Nana Akufo Addo, it will be arrogance and the perception of entitlement to be president. With the exception of President Kufour, who accepted the result of the 1996 elections, and turnout to be the most successful leader in the Dankwah/Busia tradition, the NPP has never accepted the legitimate will of Ghanaians. In 1992 when the party lost by over 20 points in the Presidential election, Nana Akufo Addo lead charge in writing The Stolen Verdict to delegitimize the Rawlings government even though the NPP knew from their heart of heart that there was no way they could win an election against a very popular incumbent head of state.

It took Dr. Afri Gyan, the Chairman of the Electoral Commission of Ghana, to correct that perception and set the records straight. In an interview with Joy FM after the 2008 election he reflected on the 1992 election and told Kojo Oppong Nkrumah that the NPP had lost 1992 election fairly and that it was unbecoming of the NPP to reject result of that election without going court to prove their case.
President Mills had lost two elections and in both times he accepted the result as a mandate for his opponent and moved on. In the 2004 election, the NDC had problems with the results and how the election was organized. The party could evoke the passions of it supporters by openly challenging the result in the court of public opinion and thus create unnecessary tension in the country. But like Kufour did in 1996, Mills did not travel along that dirty road. He accepted the result of the election and worked to quiet the negative sentiment within the party for the good of the country.

The decision did not go down well with some NDC apparatchiks, but it was the right thing to do; prove, he was rewarded with a victory in 2008 against a well finance and resourced Nana Akufo Addo campaign. There are some within the NPP who are still perplexed by their party’s lost of the last elections. They do not understand why despite all the advantages they still lost in 2008. Well, the reason is simple; your candidate is arrogant and thinks he is custom made for the Presidency.
When it became very obvious that Nana had lost in 2008, the conventional wisdom was that he would accept the result and congratulate Professor Mills. Given that he tinted himself as a firm believer in democracy and the rule of law. But Nana did not do that, rather during the second round of election he activated his plan B, connive with some in the Ashanti Region to inflate voting numbers as they come in, putting the nation on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
After the voting was over and again it became very apparent that he had lost the election and many Ghanaian were in church thanking God for averting a civil war. Nana instructed his lawyers to activate their plan C on a Sunday afternoon, file an ex parte motion in court restraining the Electoral Commission from declaring the result of a legitimately held election, how desperate!!! Why should Ghanaians vote for someone who had fought their mandate every step of the way?

Events of the last election have proven beyond doubt that Nana Akufo Addo is not qualified to be President. He lacks the temperament and class needed to be Chief Executive and the Head of State of the Republic of Ghana. Besides, his personal character is in doubt. He still did not call Kofi Wayo’s bluff by subjecting himself to a drug test and put the issue of his drug use to rest. Absent the drug test, voting for Nana Addo is a huge gamble and in the era of drug trafficking we can’t afford to have a president who is an addict of illicit drugs.

Ghanaians are modest and level headed people. We respect humility and reward people who have proven to be humble. Humility and respect are two features Kufour and Mills have in common. Kufour won in 2000 by showing Ghanaians he is gentle and humble. Kufour portrayed a fatherly figure that made him look responsible. He accepted the verdict of Ghanaians in 1996 and by so doing respected their will. His reward? Two terms in office. Mills did the same. He defined himself as a peaceful and humble person in 2004. Against his party, he accepted the result of the 2004 election. He portrayed the same characteristics in 2008. He won against all odds.
If NPP wants to regain power it is better to have someone who understands the thinking of Ghanaians. Someone humble like Kufour was. Nana Akufo Addo won’t do it. He had already defined himself negatively.

FREEDOM OF SPEECH HAS NO LIMITATIONS: The Ghanaian criminal libel law is wrong

Citizens of a free society should be able to freely express themselves without fear. Ghanaians should have the right to speak, including the right to make boorish statements without being paraded before court. The law that allows the police to arrest and charge individuals for their comments or statements has no room in free society. The arrest of the NPP supporter who said he had evidence that Rawlings caused the burning in his house has no place in a democratic society. Neither does the law under which the police again arrested an NPP supporter for comparing the President Mills to a chimp. We disagree with such uncivilized statements, but defend the right of those individuals who made those statements.
The laws question sections 183a and 207 of the criminal libel law, which prohibit Ghanaians from using insulting language about the president, and the section that makes it legal for Ghanaians to make statements that are intended or likely to cause the breach of public peace, are not just unconstitutional but also illogical. They are unconstitutional because they violate the freedom to speak as guaranteed by our constitution. Any law that limits a constitutional right should not be obeyed. Limits to constitutional rights are only allowed in extreme circumstance such as during a state of emergency or war times.
The dilemmas that such a law brings in our society are both reprehensible and could lead to serious problems in the future. Supposing a president orders the arrest and detention without trial of a person or group of persons, and a Ghanaian was courageous to say the president is a tyrant. Under these laws, the courageous Ghanaian could be arrested and charged.
Last week an article on Ghanaweb argued that Nana Akufo Addo is not qualified to be President. Supposing that argument was made on a radio station and a crowd got incited by the statement and besiege the radio station, the person advancing that argument could arrested and charged under these undemocratic laws for undermining public peace. If a cartoonist caricatures a leader of a political the way supporters of the party dislike and the supporters decide to besiege the office of the cartoonist. Instead protecting the cartoonist’s for expressing his God giving talent, our police would rather be charging the cartoonist for disturbing the public peace. These are just a few examples to illustrate how unjust and very backward the sections in question could be applied.
What is annoying about the Laws is the discriminatory manner with which the law is applied. It seems those sections of the criminal libel is only use to intimidate the little guys and let the big guys go free. When Mr. Rawlings compared Mr. Kufour to Atta Ayi, the armed robber and President Kufor called Rawlings the devil, no one arrested or called for the arrest of both arch rivals. It was within their right to spew their rivalry. Those of us in public listened in awe or excitement depending on the side of the political divide we stood.
A civilized people we should denounce boorish and uncivilized statements in our public life from both sides of our political divide. But we should protect the rights of people to make such statement even if they insult our senses. Democracy and freedom of expression requires that we protect the rights of people to speak even if we, as a society, disagree or do not like such boorishness in body politique. Using our laws to bar such rights reduces democracy to the tyranny of the majority.
The government of the people and by the people should not restrict the right of the people to say as they please. The ability of people to say what is their mind, boorish and uncivilized as they may sometimes sound, is the starting point of civility and ingenuity. Freedom of expression is the corner stone of democracy and development. Any form of government that places a limit to what people can say, whether public or private, is tyranny. In Ghana we had such tyrants in the past; it is time to say enough.
Next to right to life is the right of expression.

Abdul Sidibe
agolumusah@yahoo.com

Come One, Come All to the Energy Party!

Come One, Come All to the Energy Party!

“A New Ghanaian Century” or A new century of Corruption

Three years ago Ghanaian officials announced with euphoria the finding of off shore oil and gas in commercial quantities. Indeed, officialdom in Accra has the right to be happy; the oil funds, if well managed, would increase the country’s revenues, reduce Ghana’s dependence on foreign capital, reduce Ghana’s over reliance on agricultural exports, increase the size of the economy, and increase the country’s international leverage. To officials in Accra, 2010 and beyond is almost “the new Ghanaian century.” Many Ghanaians envisage a century of prosperity and hope for all.
How would “the new Ghanaian century” be different from Nigeria of the 1960s and 70s? Nigeria in the late 1970s and 1980s was like the Europe of today, at least to Ghanaian travelers to that country. Many Ghanaians returned from Nigeria with a lot of goodies. In fact the influx of Ghanaian migration to Nigeria during that the same period was largely determine by Nigeria’s economic strength at the time, and oil played a very critical role.

The commodity has corrupted the Nigerian government, and as a result pitched Nigerians against themselves. Because of oil, many Nigerians are living in poverty, their lands are confiscated from them, and they don’t receive any assistance from the state or the oil companies. These Nigerians don’t have the right to protest against their state of affairs. As result as they picked up arms and started fighting against the very people whose responsible it is to protect them against international oil companies. The very existence of the corporate entity called Nigeria is threatened to the extent that certain ethnic groups in Nigeria are systematically and symbolically banned from holding the country’s highest office. Was the oil find good for Nigeria? Your guess is as right as mine.

Why would the Ghana’s oil discovery be different from Nigeria’s? There are two schools of thought that attempted to answer this very important question. The first group is led by the Castle in Accra. It seems both the NPP and NDC administrations have imbibed and sometimes articulated the same argument. They contend that Ghana is a democracy, lead by a new group of African leaders who eschew corruption, and with the right legal and institutional framework, it could evolve creative methods of revenue sharing, and environment protection. These, they argue, will eliminated corruption in the sector and thus reduce the tendency for sectarian violence.

Yet, Ghana will start receiving revenues from the oil export this year, but it does not have, the much talked about frameworks in place. As times pass, and people do not raise any objections, the process get forgotten and the corruption starts. Besides, even if Ghana created such a framework, it does not guarantee the system against corruption, and insides deals. A case in point is the Ghana Telecom and Vodafone deal.

Osei Boateng wrote an excellent piece published in the New Africa Magazine of January this year titled “How the British got Ghana Telecom for Vodafone.” Osei argued that despite the Divestiture Implementation Committee (DIC) and it rules, the British government was able to twist the arms of the Kufour government, forcing the administration to bypass Ghanaian laws and institutions to sell Ghana Telecom to Vodafone. Even when Vodafone was out bided by Telekom South Africa.

“The DIC was elbowed aside by President Kufour and his office in a blatant disregard of the divestiture laws,” Osei wrote. The article described the numerous meetings held behind closed doors between President Kufour and British officials. It also explained how the chairman and the secretary of the DIC were dragged to sign Sale and Purchase Agreement, to totally disguise the involvement of the ruling government in the deal
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In opposition, the NDC promised to take a second look in to the Vodafone deal, but the party reneged on this promise after pressure from the head of the Trade and Investment at the Foreign and Commonwealth office in London. It seems the new NDC government did not want to meddle itself in a controversy it did not create. Hence, the NDC started signaling that it is not interested in abrogating the Vodafone deal even if the process with which the company secured the deal sinks. Vodafone has come to Ghana to stay, no matter what anyone says.

These kinds of external pressure on African government to do wrong will happen even more rampant when it comes to oil companies because the stakes are high, and the financial benefit is huge. Ghanaians are yet to see the framework that both governments promised to establish before the oil revenues. But the tendency for official in Accra and elsewhere in the country to be corrupt is always there, regardless of which party is in office.

The argument that because Ghana is a democracy, the tendency for corruption in the oil industry will be reduced stands up to neither logic nor historical precedent. In the 1980s several democratic government in oil producing Latin American countries were even more corrupt than undemocratic government in the same region.
Besides, the current political and media climate in Ghana is more prone to corruption and back room deals than most would anticipate. It is safe to argue that Ghana is a two party state.

Since 1992 no political party, other than the NDC and the NPP, is able to secure more than 10% of votes. Over 80% of Ghana’s voters are loyal supporters of the two leading parties in the country.

Leaving only about 20% in the middle, about 8 percent of which supports the smaller parties in the country. Ghana is a very partisan country, our party allegiances determine which news papers we read, and the kind of friends we like to hangout. Ghanaian will defend the party they support even if the party position is totally out of line.

It is therefore very easy for the global oil empire to control the political system in Ghana. Like the Game theory in the Prisoner’s Dilemma, all it has to do is create an artificial dilemma by spending enough money on the two leading parties as to discourage them from defecting and point accusing fingers at the other. It then becomes a disincentive for both parties to campaign on issues detrimental to the corporation’s interest because doing so would mean exposing themselves too.

The Country’s partisan nature is even more pronounced in the media than anywhere else. Apart from a very few individual media houses in the country, the rest are either pro-NPP or pro-NDC news papers, radio stations, or TV stations. The crack between the pro-NPP and pro-NDC media is so deep that all of them are willing to do whatever it takes to defend their respective parties.

A typical example is the Kufour hair salon loan. Even thought all the evidence pointed to the fact that the government made serious mistakes, and as a result the state lost some money. It did not prevent Kwaku Baaku, and the pro-NPP media from projecting the position of the Kufour administration as if it were only truth. Control the two leading parties in Ghana, and you control majority of the media.

It is very easy for international oil corporations or even foreign governments to control a country’s resources by simply controlling its political players. Thus creating a reverse Neocolonialism; government by the people but for the masters. Democracy, it seems, could turn out to be the very reason why the oil find that has the potential of creating “A new Ghanaian Century,” could as well be a rational for a century of corruption of unimaginable proportion.

Abdul Sidibe
agolumusah@yahoo.com

Electing Rogues to National Office: A case against Moctor Bamba and the Avokar Boys.

Last week Ato Kwame Dadzi wrote piece on Joy FM’s website in which he proudly agreed with Fredrick John D. Lugard that the African is,
“Concentrated on the events and feelings of the moment and he suffers little from the apprehension for the future, or grief for the past. His mind is far nearer to the animal world than that of the European or Asiatic, and exhibits something of the animals’ placidity and want of desire to rise beyond the State he has reached. Through the ages the African appears to have evolved no organized religious creed, and though some tribes appear to believe in a deity, the religious sense seldom rises above pantheistic animalism and seems more often to take the form of a vague dread of the supernatural"
Despite repeated rejoinders and the insensitivity of the article, Ato Kwamena never came out to apologized to his readers, if not explain what he meant by “Lord Lugard sounds very insulting, doesn't he? The fact, though, is that he is dead right on almost all counts. I know most Africans will disagree with him.” Joy FM never said anything regarding Ato’s article, neither has the FM station reprimanded the monkey calling himself a journalist for using their network to insult millions of people.
Perhaps, Ato and Joy FM have no idea who Lugard was. Fredrick Lugard is not just a Social Darwinist who believes the African race is lower on the evolutionary tree, but even worse Lugard is a eugenicist. He believes in the systematic elimination of lower races, in this case Africans, by restricting their reproduction. If Lugard and others had their way you, Ato, would not be born because your ancestors are lower humans. The eugenics movement has been very popular in Europe and North in the 1920s and 1930. American States had eugenic laws, and Hitler used eugenics argument in his gassing of the Jews and the disable. Since the end of the Second World War the eugenics movement had gone underground. Who knows? Ato might be a member of that underground movement.
Ato, your readers didn’t just think you are wrong, most of them especially those familiar with the works of Lugard, think you are an idiot. When Ato’s piece was shown to a Professor of Sociology at school last week, even the white woman couldn’t help but gasped for air and wonder if you obtained your journalism diploma from the “Hitler institute of Social Darwinism.”
If Ato’s article were to appear on any major network in the world, people everywhere would take to the street and express their disgust. Even Neo-Nazis are these days politically correct and more sensitive than certain journalist and FM stations in Ghana. These journalist and FM stations prey on the ignorance to insult people and politicians with impunity, and abuse the freedom speech afforded by the constitution.
The likes of Ato are not journalist. They are masquerading monkeys, who think they can write about almost everything. But when subjected to the specificity of journalistic work, they go sluggish like a pregnant fat pig. Journalist of Ato’s like never writes anything specific, nor do they thoroughly investigate stuff before writing them out. Their work is always that of the egoistic man, whatever comes to their head in their awkward dream is true, and hence should be written for public consumption.
Ato, if you want to be a Journalist and not a masquerading monkey, here are some few suggestions for you. Investigate and write about the school feeding and how well it is doing. Investigate and write about Ghana’s agricultural policies or investigate and write about the Ghanaian villagers in mining areas whose water resources are polluted by mining companies everyday. By investigating and writing, it doesn’t mean you sit in Joy FM studios in Kokomelemele and write whatever garbage that comes from your head. You are urged to go to the villages, speak to responsible government officials, local farmers, opinion leaders and the companies. It also means you cross check your facts like a journalist before putting them out there.
These are what responsible journalists do on a daily basis, and not shield themselves under the armpit of nonsense spewing talk radio.
Abdul Sidibe
Calgary, Canada