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There will always be a tomorrow

 

E. Ablorh-Odjidja, Ghanadot

October 26, 2009 

 

Nothing can be truer than this statement, especially if you consider that there has always been a tomorrow since creation. And there will always be one until the end; that is if you know the exact date.

 

But the tomorrow talked about by Mr. Kwadwo Mpiani, Chief of Staff and Minister of Presidential Affairs of the past NPP administration, when he appeared before the Ghana@50 Commission last Friday, was one of a different hue.

 

It was the tomorrow of political inquiry and vindictiveness; a foray into your deeds while in office by a political opponent now in power.

 

Often, the inquiry has little to do with the merit or demerit of your acts. According to Mr. Mpiani, it is driven mostly by the sheer force of a national pastime described as the “pull him down (PHD) syndrome;” a curious mind that is used by malcontents to undermine the successes of the achievers in our society.

 

While a true inquiry into public acts of malfeasance may be necessary, the practice of late has become vindictive, cynical, and a perpetual tool for the persecution of political enemies.

 

Mr. Mpiani's grandmother had been aware of the PHD syndrome at work for years back. When she learned that her grandson Kwadwo was heading for a political career, she cautioned him about "a tomorrow" when your political opponents, for some reason, would want to look into your past to enable them to demand their pound of flesh.

 

If Mr. Mpiani didn’t realize the full force of his grandmother's admonition back then, he had the opportunity to do so this last Friday, October 23, 2009, when he appeared before the Commission investigating the business activities of the historic March 2007 50th independence celebrations.

 

That Friday was the "tomorrow" of his grandmother's dread, but Kwadwo was ready.

 

His responses to the panel's questions were precise and should help form the basis for an answer to a "grandmother's cautionary tale" that ought to be told to all generations.

 

Looking back over our 50 years of independence, the remarkable thing to observe is how soon Ghanaians forget the political nature of these public inquiries and how often they are meant to target and pillorize political opponents.

 

This type of inquiry originated in the days following the overthrow of Kwame Nkrumah. Back then, it provided the opportunity for sycophants, opportunists, and some of Nkrumah’s political opponents to grandstand. 

 

And even now that those lessons of the ill nature and biases of some of these inquiries have been delivered, and how overblown the charges against Nkrumah were, we are still here today tolerating and carrying on the practice.

 

The public inquiries of the 60s have become the template for successive administrations, especially those of the military kind.

 

Thus, what had to be done behind closed doors got done in public to score political points or justify the illegal seizure of power. The lesson we missed was how negative, futile, and dismal these inquiries became for the Ghanaian image.

 

For the public good, the Ghana@50 commission inquiries should have been held behind closed doors.

 

But it is being done now in the open; all for the sake of upholding a party’s manifesto. And the remarkable incivility shown on Friday to Mr. Mpiani by Mrs. Marietta Appiah-Oppong, a member of the Commission, underlined this fact.

 

Mrs. Appiah-Oppong had asked Mr. Mpiani about the authorship of the accounts for the Ghana@50 Secretariat to which the latter had answered that it was prepared by the Secretariat.

 

Not satisfied, Mrs. Appiah-Oppong retorted “I know the CEO of the Secretariat holds an MBA degree in Finance, apart from that the other staff members were made up of drivers and national service persons (italics mine) so I want to know whether it was these people who had prepared the account,” as reported by the Daily Graphic.

 

You note the heavy sarcasm in Mrs. Appaih-Oppong's address, which was directed at Mr. Mpiani, and wonder what caused this incivility towards a former superior public official and you couldn’t help but conclude that the purpose was to impress a partisan crowd.

 

But you also would notice the unspoken irony delivered by Mrs. Appiah-Oppong at her own expense.

 

She knew details of the qualifications of the CEO of the Secretariat but had not bothered to learn enough about the organization she was investigating - about who the Chief Financial Officer was or the name(s) of the Chief Accountant or the firm that handled accounting for the Secretariat if any.

 

You could conclude again, by her singular uncivil question, and her lack of preparation for work at the commission that day.  And you wonder what Mrs. Appiah-Oppong did that morning before coming to work for the commission!

 

Then there was the matter of Justice Douse, the Chairman of the Commission's expression of incredulity about the generosity of Dr. Wereko-Brobbey for using his fortune of GHC 200,000.00 to kick start the Ghana@50 celebration.

 

According to the Daily Graphic of Ghana, Mr. Justice Douse said “it baffled him as to how a person, on being appointed to implement a government program who himself had not been paid, had to use his own money or source for it to do the job.”

 

Granted the size of endowment should be a legit ground for wondering.  Either Mr. Justice Douse’s bafflement was a commendation of a sort for Dr. Wereko-Brobbey’s public spiritedness or an expression of doubt about this CEO’s ability to have given the GHC 200,000.

 

Still, regardless of the nature of Mr. Justice Douse’s bafflement, the Secretariat had asked for volunteers and donors to get the event going.   The inquiry should be technical and directed at the receipts.  Was such money deposited and where did it come from?

 

There should be nothing wrong with a CEO, charged with the success of the event, setting a good example by putting his own money into the kitty; that is if he had the money. The evidence should easily be verifiable.

 

While it is good for public officials to be held accountable for decisions they make when in office, such inquiries must always be first held behind closed doors.

 

CHRAJ would be investigating the M & J alleged bribery scandal out of the public glare. This legal outfit could also have handled the Ghana@50 Secretariat inquiries in the same manner and brought to the courts those found guilty; thus, eliminating the political drama of these hearings.

 

But the drama continued in the manner that the politics of our history has allowed.  So, Mr. Mpiani's grandmother’s story about there “being always a tomorrow” should serve as a cautionary tale for cohorts of the government of the day.

 

I wonder what the same grandmother saw at the time Nkrumah was overthrown.  Well, lessons left unlearned will come to haunt us.

 

 

E. Ablorh-Odjidja, Publisher www.ghanadot.com, Washington, DC, October 26, 2009 

Permission to publish:  Please feel free to publish or reproduce, with credits, unedited.  If posted on a website, email a copy of the web page to publisher@ghanadot.com. Or don't publish at all.

 

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