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Press Release
NDC – A Do-Nothing, Out-of-Control Government
By Jermaine Nkrumah
18 June 2009
When George W. Bush was president of United States of America, few
knew of his Treasury, Commerce, and Agricultural Secretaries. But
even a kid at six knew of his Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and
National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. That was not surprising
given that the entire focus of the Bush administration was on war –
nothing else. Over a trillion dollars later, and Osama bin Laden
still elusive, Bush looked back towards the end of his tenure to
find the economy in the gutter. That was when Treasury Secretary
Paulson became a household name, but it was too late. Are we seeing
a repeat performance on the part of the NDC administration headed by
President Mills?
For over five months now Ghana’s new administration has done little
beyond unleashing the BNI on former government officials. Public
snatching of Sports Utility Vehicles (SUVs) has become the order of
the day. Untold energies expended on what car Former President
Kufuor should drive, what facilities he should use for his office.
So petty has members of the NDC become that they even forcefully
seize public toilets as a way of exerting their manhood.
The latest round of the BNI tactics is to invite ex-officials for
what they call “a friendly chat.” And oh, the chat is so friendly
that their “chat mates” cannot decline the invitation, their
attorneys cannot be present, and in some cases, they cannot leave
the BNI premises for nine hours. The most ridiculous of all the
invitation to chat was the one targeted at former Information
Minister Steven Asamoah-Boateng. He was physically stopped by
UNIDENTIFIED operatives from boarding a flight out of the country
because he had a FUTURE invitation to a “friendly chat” with the BNI
of which he had absolutely no knowledge. Was that a mind twister?
Let’s try again. The BNI had plans to invite the former minister for
a “friendly chat,” but the invitation had not been sent to him yet.
Nevertheless, he cannot travel outside the country in a democratic
Ghana. Now if the former minister, after receiving such invitation,
decided to go on the trip, his interception could be defended. We
have in Ghana today, a democracy that we have all worked hard to
build, where the government can execute a retro-arrest without a
warrant. At the current pace, this government would soon charge
citizens with crime before it is ever committed.
Meanwhile, as this drama unfolds, the Cedi is in free fall against
all major currencies. What is your government doing about it?
Nothing. International investors are growing increasingly
uncomfortable doing business in Ghana and some are packing their
bags to leave Ghana, a development that can starve our country of
vitally needed fo?eign exchange and
employment. Any corrective action by the government? Not a finger
lifted. The national carrier, Ghana International Airlines is
hurting because traffic on its Accra-London route, its only one, has
dwindled to dangerous levels; criminals have taken the law into
their hands and running people out of the offices of government
agencies like the NHIS office in Tamale; NDC party big shots pick
and choose which ministry to run behind the scenes without the
knowledge and approval of the government (don’t take my word for
this, ask Rawlings, he has been complaining about it); these and
many more threats to our national economic security and political
stability have largely been ignored by an administration tranced by
a vindictive fixation on relative trivialities.
Since the day Barack Obama was inaugurated as president of the
United States, he has rarely looked back. The barrage of policies
and legislations he has spearheaded is reminiscent of the FDR days
when another serious president decided to take an economic bull by
the horns and fix it. All told, up to sixteen policies and
legislations have been instituted to deal with the current global
economic crisis. And what are we doing in Ghana? Sit down, do
nothing, and blame it all on the NPP government. Can anyone name one
serious policy or plan that the NDC administration has forwarded to
deal with the current economic crisis?
Economies do not fix themselves. And in life, one’s priorities are
easily identified by what one focuses on or spends the most time on.
If the Mills administration came in for the sole purpose of
prosecuting officials of the Kufuor administration, Ghanaians
deserved to have been told during the campaign. Rather, Mills
promised to heal the divide, but the divide has widened back to that
which existed during the Rawlings era. He promised to reduce fuel
prices only to usher in an increase far outpacing the increase in
Crude Oil prices in the world market. He promised peace, but
political harassments and killings have dramatically increased.
Regardless of political affiliations, all Ghanaians hope that we
would not look back, when all these car and toilet snatchings and
BNI abuses are over, to find a nation so economically ruined that
another party will have to begin from scratch to fix the problem. If
the Mills administration spent one-quarter of the time and energy it
has spent fixated on former government officials to tackle the
economic woes Ghana faces today, we may very well be on the road to
recovery. The shepherd who abandoned the entire herd to retrieve one
cow will return with that cow to an empty barn. If we are going to
cry over spilled milk, it makes sense to safeguard the milk still
left in the bowl.
Jermaine Nkrumah
Email: jjnkruma@gmail.com
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