Bravo, Opanin! What the masters of the universe now in charge of our homeland Ghana are practising, is the 19th century "robber baron" version of capitalism - which has long since been discarded by even its originators!
Today, a powerful few with greedy ambitions, are busy gang-raping mother Ghana with total impunity - whiles the "My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong" myrmidons, foolishly applaud them from the sidelines: too blind to see that our country is being shortchanged on a massive scale.
Take a close look at the bulk of the infrastructure our leaders boast so much about, for example. You will be shocked - for, they are mostly badly-designed and badly-built publicly-owned structures, that are fast-deteriorating, even as we speak.
Why, you might ask? Well, because they had to be shoddily-constructed, as the 10 per cent kickbacks had to be factored in - by those who won contracts to build them.
It is such a pity that those whom we trusted to set new standards in morality in our public life and amongst our nation's leadership, when they had the historic opportunity to do so in January 2001, have let decent and independent-minded Ghanaians down, so badly.
Sadly, there are so many individuals in our country now, who are very much like the mythical Ghanaian three monkeys: they see no evil going on today; hear no evil going on today; and smell no evil going on today. So we are all pretending that Ghana is in its golden age.
Meanwhile, as disparities in wealth widens evermore to become the widest they have ever been at any time in our nation's history, typical Ghanaian sycophancy has ensured that practically no one outside the partisan sections of society, is pointing out the fact that today's crowd in power in our country, are really no different from yesterday's crowd - who once ruled our country, with a rod of iron.
Thus, there is no one making the point today, to ordinary people that as a nation, we ought to demand that those running for the presidency, clearly tell Ghanaians about their vision of the kind of society they want to see built in our country, when they win the December 2008 election.
Clearly, precious few Ghanaians want to see a continuation of the unparallelled selfishness and greed for money, that has eroded the gains of the past, and led to a fall in the quality of life of ordinary people.
We have all wringed our hands helplessly in despair - as our nation is slowly engulfed by the filth piling up across our country in countless Ghanaian towns and cities: because our leaders are too busy feathering their own nests, to care.
Nothing has changed for ordinary people - it is only the lives of our leaders, who can now raise billions to campaign for the right to represent their party as its presidential candidate, which have undergone the most amazing of transformations.
Men, whom we all knew only a few years ago, were up to their necks in debt, whiles in the political wilderness, are now apparently even US dollar multi-millionaires - if the usually pretty reliable "bush telegraph" is to be believed! Hmmm, Ghana - asem ebaba debi ankasa!
Sadly, a majority of the hacks in our media houses, many of whom have sold their consciences to the highest bidders and are in the pockets of our political class, are also currently busy playing the "comparison" game on their paymasters' behalf - in the columns of our newspapers and on the airwaves: hopping from FM radio station to FM radio station.
Yet, they are supposed to be the fourth branch of government - society's watchdogs: who unfortunately have now become regime guard-dogs and apologists for the spineless opposition political parties.
Hmmm, Ghana - ayeasem oo. Well, thanks be to God, that there are many patriotic Ghanaians, who in the final analysis, are willing to sacrifice their lives if need be, to bring the 4th Republic (a creature designed specifically to protect and allow those who overthrew the 3rd Republic to get away with treason - and to ensure that they successfully morphed from soldiers into civilian leaders in 1992!), to a crashing end: by campaigning for that to happen, in 2013 and inaugurate a new 5th Republic, should they win that particular election.
It will be an era in which only honest people will be allowed to run for office. We shall also make the separation of powers meaningful: by ensuring that no member of the legislature is a member of the executive; funding of the legislature; the judiciary and all the anti-corruption bodies and organisations are funded from the consolidated fund. Our leaders and their spouses will be obliged to publicly publish all their assets, before and after entering office.
Naturally, any of those who overthrew the 3rd Republic still alive then, will be tried and sentenced to jail for life. It is so important that we make the point to all future adventurers of that ilk, that overthrowing democratically elected regimes will have painful consequences for all those who do so: no matter how long they get away with their crime against humanity.
Only the two political traditions in Ghana, Nkrumaists and the Busia-Danquah group, will be permitted in Ghana - and they will both be funded by the state - to prevent their leaders from resorting to collecting kickbacks from the seat of power in our country (wherever that might be, at that time!).
We shall also ensure that our oil and natural gas revenues are used for the sole purpose of transforming Ghanaian society into Africa's equivalent, of the Scandinavian social model. Ghana's oil and gas industries will be nationalised. We will also ensure that fair compensation is paid to all the foreign oil companies - by issuing them Ghanain sovereign bonds, not cash: as we are not fools!
Some of us are even prepared to die to ensure that not even a pesewa of that gift form providence to ordinary Ghanaians, ends up in the offshore bank accounts of the more dishonest and greedy members, of our ruling elite! Hmmm, Ghana - asem ebaba debi ankasa!
May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
Sunday 31 August 2008
To Nana Ama Obenwaa
Ohemaa, some of us find it difficult to understand your continued humouring of this semi-literate chap. Hmmm, Ghana - ayeasem oo!
It is entirely fitting and proper that he continues to languish in the backwaters of US education - the dreadful community college system: that is theoretically supposed to provide access to tertiary education for the mostly disadvantaged students who attend them.
As regards his constant references to Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah of blessed memory, in the most derogatory of fashions possible, let me just make a small point, to counter some of this tiresome (taflatse!) buffoon's drivel.
The idea that history can be rewritten to sanitise the image of the quislings in our history, who collaborated with the British colonialists for purely selfish reasons, is laughable - and no serious student of history ought to take this pitiful individual seriously in the slightest, in that regard.
The verdict of history (unlike many in the Ghanaian media landscape who have sold their consciences to the highest bidders), can neither be bought nor influenced with the gift of sinecures in cushy jobs in Ghana's overseas diplomatic missions - which is where presumably this person, this (taflatse!) semi-literate, thinks he is soon destined for: when his long-cherished dream becomes a reality in 2009.
Let him continue to delude himself. He will have a rude awakening from his dreams after the polls close on election day, this December.
Kwame Nkrumah is a giant of 20th century history - and has a secure place in the Pantheon of humankind.
He will be remembered till the very end of time by Africans: both at home and in the diaspora - long after the quislings that that apology of a university lecturer fawns on, have sunk into oblivion: and been forgotten. Kwame Nkrumah was a political genius who dwarfed all his contemporaries.
Any historian, who knows the dictatorial manner in which Dr.J.B.Danquah and Ofori-Atta 1 brutally oppressed non-Akims and ordinary Akims, with the active help of the then British colonial district commissioner Jones, will scoff at the attempt by his political progeny to paint Dr. Danquah as a believer in democracy.
At a point in time, during the colonial era ( March 14, 1956), Dr. Danquah and Ofori-Atta 11 told a visiting British parliamentary delegation that Akim Abuakwa would secede from the Gold Coast, if the British did not show understanding for their position - that a multi-party democracy based on universal adult franchise was unsuitable for the people of the Gold Coast.
(Incidentally, I strongly recommend that you read pages 48 to 76 of that very fascinating book: "Fight Back - A response to Anti-Nkrumah provocations" which is published by the socialist forum of Ghana [SFG], to see the true nature of that quisling and traitor to ordinary Ghanaians and their homeland Ghana, Dr. J. B. Danquah - a traitor whose political progeny seek to foist on Nkrumah's Ghana as a national hero: and champion of democracy and freedom. Imagine that.)
In Danquah and Ofori-Atta 11's view: "Party politics was an alien political form that had "created civil strife and violent dissension between father and son." It is also important to note that both Dr. Danwuah and Dr. K.A. Busia shared the English philosopher Edmund Burke's preference for rule by a preordained elite.
That is why some of their followers actively helped in the 1958 coup plot to overthrow Nkrumah's regime - after it had been in power for only one year, as the government of an independent African nation-state: which was also a fully-functioning multi-party democracy.
They had the effrontery, in plotting to overthrow the democratically elected regime of Nkrumah in 1958, to completely disregard the wishes of the majority of Ghanaian who had cast their votes and elected a government of their choice, in free and fair elections.
The CPP won the 1956 elections that preceded our independence in 1957, with a thumping parliamentary majority of 40 (including the support of one independent member of parliament) - increasing its seats too, to 71, in the process!
Incredibly, most of those quislings were happily working for financial compensation, for foreign intelligence agencies, from the West throughout their years in active politics - those greedy, selfish and shameless traitors to the black race!
Their progeny in power today, are of the same ilk: for, today's quislings are busy organising fire-sales of Ghana's assets to foreign carpetbaggers - for 10 per cent kickbacks through opaque offshore shell companies: if the bush telegraph is to be believed!
They are true lackeys of neo-colonialism, indeed: forever toadying to foreign carpetbaggers for 10 per cent kickbacks - at mother Ghana's expense!
Ohemaa, the point about the letter from that distinguished officer and gentleman, the retired chief of the defence staff (CDS) Brigadier General Nunoo-Mensah, is that it illustrates perfectly, the frustration that a majority of decent-minded ordinary Ghanaians feel, about the unfathomable greed of our ruling elite - who have sold off vast tracts of government-owned land: as part of their secret agenda of ripping mother Ghana off, by stealth.
Yet, it is land that ultimately belongs to the Ga Dangbe people: who ought to have title to such lands restored to them - if the Ghanaian nation-state no longer wants them for the purpose they were originally acquired. Your guess is as good as mine what would have happened to such parcels of land, if those same plots of land had been located elsewhere, in our homeland Ghana!
That is what riles the many honest and fair-minded Ghanaians, about this regime.They despair at the egregious harm being done to our country, by the greediest and most dishonest of the few tribal supremacists (our local version of the odious white supremacists of the Western world - who think all blacks and other people of colour are subhuman - those (taflatse!)bloody racists and imbeciles!) who dominate the ruling party so completely.
As we speak, land belonging to some of the most critical state research institutions are being sold off to politically well-connected private-sector real estate developers - yet, our research institutions are vital state entities: which we must resource properly if we are to fight the debilitating effects of global climate change, successfully.
Does the greed of the dishonest ones amongst our rulers have no bounds at all, I ask, Ohemaa? Hmmm, Ghana - asem ebabsa debi ankasa! May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
It is entirely fitting and proper that he continues to languish in the backwaters of US education - the dreadful community college system: that is theoretically supposed to provide access to tertiary education for the mostly disadvantaged students who attend them.
As regards his constant references to Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah of blessed memory, in the most derogatory of fashions possible, let me just make a small point, to counter some of this tiresome (taflatse!) buffoon's drivel.
The idea that history can be rewritten to sanitise the image of the quislings in our history, who collaborated with the British colonialists for purely selfish reasons, is laughable - and no serious student of history ought to take this pitiful individual seriously in the slightest, in that regard.
The verdict of history (unlike many in the Ghanaian media landscape who have sold their consciences to the highest bidders), can neither be bought nor influenced with the gift of sinecures in cushy jobs in Ghana's overseas diplomatic missions - which is where presumably this person, this (taflatse!) semi-literate, thinks he is soon destined for: when his long-cherished dream becomes a reality in 2009.
Let him continue to delude himself. He will have a rude awakening from his dreams after the polls close on election day, this December.
Kwame Nkrumah is a giant of 20th century history - and has a secure place in the Pantheon of humankind.
He will be remembered till the very end of time by Africans: both at home and in the diaspora - long after the quislings that that apology of a university lecturer fawns on, have sunk into oblivion: and been forgotten. Kwame Nkrumah was a political genius who dwarfed all his contemporaries.
Any historian, who knows the dictatorial manner in which Dr.J.B.Danquah and Ofori-Atta 1 brutally oppressed non-Akims and ordinary Akims, with the active help of the then British colonial district commissioner Jones, will scoff at the attempt by his political progeny to paint Dr. Danquah as a believer in democracy.
At a point in time, during the colonial era ( March 14, 1956), Dr. Danquah and Ofori-Atta 11 told a visiting British parliamentary delegation that Akim Abuakwa would secede from the Gold Coast, if the British did not show understanding for their position - that a multi-party democracy based on universal adult franchise was unsuitable for the people of the Gold Coast.
(Incidentally, I strongly recommend that you read pages 48 to 76 of that very fascinating book: "Fight Back - A response to Anti-Nkrumah provocations" which is published by the socialist forum of Ghana [SFG], to see the true nature of that quisling and traitor to ordinary Ghanaians and their homeland Ghana, Dr. J. B. Danquah - a traitor whose political progeny seek to foist on Nkrumah's Ghana as a national hero: and champion of democracy and freedom. Imagine that.)
In Danquah and Ofori-Atta 11's view: "Party politics was an alien political form that had "created civil strife and violent dissension between father and son." It is also important to note that both Dr. Danwuah and Dr. K.A. Busia shared the English philosopher Edmund Burke's preference for rule by a preordained elite.
That is why some of their followers actively helped in the 1958 coup plot to overthrow Nkrumah's regime - after it had been in power for only one year, as the government of an independent African nation-state: which was also a fully-functioning multi-party democracy.
They had the effrontery, in plotting to overthrow the democratically elected regime of Nkrumah in 1958, to completely disregard the wishes of the majority of Ghanaian who had cast their votes and elected a government of their choice, in free and fair elections.
The CPP won the 1956 elections that preceded our independence in 1957, with a thumping parliamentary majority of 40 (including the support of one independent member of parliament) - increasing its seats too, to 71, in the process!
Incredibly, most of those quislings were happily working for financial compensation, for foreign intelligence agencies, from the West throughout their years in active politics - those greedy, selfish and shameless traitors to the black race!
Their progeny in power today, are of the same ilk: for, today's quislings are busy organising fire-sales of Ghana's assets to foreign carpetbaggers - for 10 per cent kickbacks through opaque offshore shell companies: if the bush telegraph is to be believed!
They are true lackeys of neo-colonialism, indeed: forever toadying to foreign carpetbaggers for 10 per cent kickbacks - at mother Ghana's expense!
Ohemaa, the point about the letter from that distinguished officer and gentleman, the retired chief of the defence staff (CDS) Brigadier General Nunoo-Mensah, is that it illustrates perfectly, the frustration that a majority of decent-minded ordinary Ghanaians feel, about the unfathomable greed of our ruling elite - who have sold off vast tracts of government-owned land: as part of their secret agenda of ripping mother Ghana off, by stealth.
Yet, it is land that ultimately belongs to the Ga Dangbe people: who ought to have title to such lands restored to them - if the Ghanaian nation-state no longer wants them for the purpose they were originally acquired. Your guess is as good as mine what would have happened to such parcels of land, if those same plots of land had been located elsewhere, in our homeland Ghana!
That is what riles the many honest and fair-minded Ghanaians, about this regime.They despair at the egregious harm being done to our country, by the greediest and most dishonest of the few tribal supremacists (our local version of the odious white supremacists of the Western world - who think all blacks and other people of colour are subhuman - those (taflatse!)bloody racists and imbeciles!) who dominate the ruling party so completely.
As we speak, land belonging to some of the most critical state research institutions are being sold off to politically well-connected private-sector real estate developers - yet, our research institutions are vital state entities: which we must resource properly if we are to fight the debilitating effects of global climate change, successfully.
Does the greed of the dishonest ones amongst our rulers have no bounds at all, I ask, Ohemaa? Hmmm, Ghana - asem ebabsa debi ankasa! May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
TO ANDRIUS KULIKAUSKAS
Small clarification, Andrius - I am happy to help you in all that you do: but for free. That is how I have always worked, in such situations.
I am keener to take the wealth-creation route. So if I see any business opportunity that I feel we can all benefit from by leveraging Minciu Sodas, I shall bring it to the attention of Mendenyo, by posting it there.
May I also hasten to humbly point out that there is nothing self-righteous about my principle about not taking money for helping others.
It is a simple practical matter - to enable me maintain my independence in a nation in which the political class spends huge sums buying media-types to put spins on, and add a positive gloss, to their self-serving acts of omission and commission.
I prefer to be able to speak my mind freely and be able to help expose their secret agenda: to successfully loot our country by stealth - as they use their positions to speed up their personal wealth creation agendas, at our country's expense.
The clever new way this is being done by the crooks amongst Ghana's political elite, is to take their kickbacks through the formation of a series of opaque offshore shell companies - structured much like traditional Russian dolls: to hide the identities of their owners. Do stay blessed!
Kofi.
I am keener to take the wealth-creation route. So if I see any business opportunity that I feel we can all benefit from by leveraging Minciu Sodas, I shall bring it to the attention of Mendenyo, by posting it there.
May I also hasten to humbly point out that there is nothing self-righteous about my principle about not taking money for helping others.
It is a simple practical matter - to enable me maintain my independence in a nation in which the political class spends huge sums buying media-types to put spins on, and add a positive gloss, to their self-serving acts of omission and commission.
I prefer to be able to speak my mind freely and be able to help expose their secret agenda: to successfully loot our country by stealth - as they use their positions to speed up their personal wealth creation agendas, at our country's expense.
The clever new way this is being done by the crooks amongst Ghana's political elite, is to take their kickbacks through the formation of a series of opaque offshore shell companies - structured much like traditional Russian dolls: to hide the identities of their owners. Do stay blessed!
Kofi.
Wednesday 27 August 2008
TO PETER BURGESS!
Bless you, Peter - I regard you and all the other Westerners at Mendenyo, as true friends of Africa.
To me, you are all honorary Africans - and perhaps, as my New Age friends are wont to say, in your past lives, you might very well have been Africans, too!
I wish all of you well, at Mendenyo - where like the black and white keys of the piano, our thoughts weave a harmonious mental collage, with symphonic accompaniment dominated by themes from Burundian drum-music: 'resounding' gently in our subconscious!
Gosh - isn't life full of exciting possibilities: when you love your fellow humans and care about them enough to want to do all you can for them, to help them pull themselves out of the eternal hardship and struggle of endemic poverty - with dignity and by their own bootstraps?
That is the key block, in the building blocks to true happiness, my brother! That "secret", is the ethos that underlies all African societies - from north to south and from east to west!
It is that that created Madeeba Nelson Mandela: and makes it possible for the black Africans of that rainbow nation to leave the apartheid past behind.
It is that that also enables them to live in harmony with their former oppressors - most of whom lacked basic humanity then, and who today have been redeemed by the forgiveness shown them by their black fellow South Africans. Peace and friendship to you all, at Mendenyo!
Kofi.
To me, you are all honorary Africans - and perhaps, as my New Age friends are wont to say, in your past lives, you might very well have been Africans, too!
I wish all of you well, at Mendenyo - where like the black and white keys of the piano, our thoughts weave a harmonious mental collage, with symphonic accompaniment dominated by themes from Burundian drum-music: 'resounding' gently in our subconscious!
Gosh - isn't life full of exciting possibilities: when you love your fellow humans and care about them enough to want to do all you can for them, to help them pull themselves out of the eternal hardship and struggle of endemic poverty - with dignity and by their own bootstraps?
That is the key block, in the building blocks to true happiness, my brother! That "secret", is the ethos that underlies all African societies - from north to south and from east to west!
It is that that created Madeeba Nelson Mandela: and makes it possible for the black Africans of that rainbow nation to leave the apartheid past behind.
It is that that also enables them to live in harmony with their former oppressors - most of whom lacked basic humanity then, and who today have been redeemed by the forgiveness shown them by their black fellow South Africans. Peace and friendship to you all, at Mendenyo!
Kofi.
TO S. KONGERE, ESQ.
Dear Mr. Kongere,
May I humbly suggest that you make the habit of always "looking" at your own "surroundings" (to use African terminology! ) when you feel you must find a way to overcome a temporary hurdle?
On that basis, may I suggest that as you are in Italy, you look up that group of Ghanaians whose success story I posted a www.ghanaweb. com link to, at Mendenyo, not too long ago?
They are running a very successful (even by European standards!) enterprise - and like most Ghanaians, will only be too happy to share their knowledge and their good fortune with you.
It may come as a pleasant surprise to you that you will find that the answer to your statement: "I need some people to help me finance community consortium on agriculture. .." does lie with them.
As for your plea that you "need some people to help me finance community consortium [for] ....responsible tourism where the [sic] indigniuos people [sic] bhenefit not the multinational orgs." please contact Mr.Marc van Opastal: 12visitme@gmail. com, He will help you put your community-based eco-tourism (CBE) project online, for a start.
Perhaps if you approach both the Dutch development organisation SNV and the Peace Corps in Nairobi, upon your return home to Kenya, you can ask them to use your CBE project as a pilot for replicating the wonderful Ghanaian CBE projects their organisations have helped initiate in Ghana - and which are having such a positive impact on the lives of the members of the rural communities that they have worked with, to create CBE destinations in parts of rural Ghana.
I don't remember offhand if A Rocha is in Kenya, but you can approach Mr. Davis Hughes (David Hughes <david.hughes@ arocha.org>, ) and suggest A Rocha partners your community to start the social enterprises you want to set up soon - or if they aren't in Kenya, then to partner your community to become A Rocha Kenya, to do both projects! I wish you all at Mendenyo, the best of luck, Mr. Kongere.
Kofi.
PS As an Nkrumaist and a pan-Africanist, I implore you never to forget that there is a great deal of wisdom in Africa that is available for free: for you to always tap, for your community-based projects. I call them African solutions for African problems! My humble suggestions to you are in that vein. Not all wisdom and innovative ideas lies in the developed world, my dear brother. Stay blessed!
May I humbly suggest that you make the habit of always "looking" at your own "surroundings" (to use African terminology! ) when you feel you must find a way to overcome a temporary hurdle?
On that basis, may I suggest that as you are in Italy, you look up that group of Ghanaians whose success story I posted a www.ghanaweb. com link to, at Mendenyo, not too long ago?
They are running a very successful (even by European standards!) enterprise - and like most Ghanaians, will only be too happy to share their knowledge and their good fortune with you.
It may come as a pleasant surprise to you that you will find that the answer to your statement: "I need some people to help me finance community consortium on agriculture. .." does lie with them.
As for your plea that you "need some people to help me finance community consortium [for] ....responsible tourism where the [sic] indigniuos people [sic] bhenefit not the multinational orgs." please contact Mr.Marc van Opastal: 12visitme@gmail. com, He will help you put your community-based eco-tourism (CBE) project online, for a start.
Perhaps if you approach both the Dutch development organisation SNV and the Peace Corps in Nairobi, upon your return home to Kenya, you can ask them to use your CBE project as a pilot for replicating the wonderful Ghanaian CBE projects their organisations have helped initiate in Ghana - and which are having such a positive impact on the lives of the members of the rural communities that they have worked with, to create CBE destinations in parts of rural Ghana.
I don't remember offhand if A Rocha is in Kenya, but you can approach Mr. Davis Hughes (David Hughes <david.hughes@ arocha.org>, ) and suggest A Rocha partners your community to start the social enterprises you want to set up soon - or if they aren't in Kenya, then to partner your community to become A Rocha Kenya, to do both projects! I wish you all at Mendenyo, the best of luck, Mr. Kongere.
Kofi.
PS As an Nkrumaist and a pan-Africanist, I implore you never to forget that there is a great deal of wisdom in Africa that is available for free: for you to always tap, for your community-based projects. I call them African solutions for African problems! My humble suggestions to you are in that vein. Not all wisdom and innovative ideas lies in the developed world, my dear brother. Stay blessed!
TO ANDRIUS KULIKAUSKAS
Hello Andrius,
I have only just seen the Tom Wayburn email you quote. I agree with a lot of the points he makes - but feel it is crucial to intervene: and point something important out.
He says: "If you read Pinker's book
"The Blank Slat", you would realise that we are predisposed by adaptations that occurred very early in our evolution to prefer the company of people who resemble ourselves and our family members most closely. We are programmed to regard others with alarm as potential threats. As much as we try to resist it intellectually, underneath at the most basic level we are all racists."
I think it is important to point out that whiles there is some truth in what he says about the evolutionary past of humankind, Africans, however, may be an exception in that regard.
Based on empirical evidence from all over Africa throughout the centuries, in both urban and rural settings, Africans cannot possibly be described as racist in their attitude to non-Africans: be they Asian, Caucasian, Latin American and North American Indian, etc. etc.
Alas, it is this very welcoming nature of Africans, that successive waves of non-Africans making contact with us over the centuries, have abused and successfully exploited to lay their hands on the wealth of our continent - and to shortchange our continent and its people.
Then there is also the point, of course, that one would have to ask why, if we are all basically racist, there are so many inter-racial relationships of an intimate nature, all over the world - and in the most unlikely of places on our planet Earth, too?
If we are thinkers of positive thoughts, then one hopes that we can rise above the level of generalisation and stereotyping in our own individual lives: and in our discourse in a forum such as this - to enable the important experiment you and your friends are carrying out here in inter-racial harmony and peaceful co-existence, to go on: and ultimately succeed.
I am the first to condemn racists, but I always make it a point to make the point that it is the racist nature of the systems and the Establishments running and controlling them in the West and elsewhere, that we Africans ought to be wary of - and to always take into account in our dealings with the governments of Western and other nations we interact with.
The very interesting forum that you and your friends have created, mendenyo@yahoogroups.com, is an example of ordinary Caucasians and Africans, who are consciously trying to play their part in our common dream of bringing all the members of the human race together.
Having fathered mixed-race children myself and being a father who cares about their futures in Japan and the UK where their mothers hail from, fighting for a world in which there is less racial prejudice, matters a great deal to me - as does the need to help tell the rest of the world the many positive stories about a resurgent Africa: to counter unfair media bias in the West!
Yes, the average Caucasian may be a little afraid of people of colour because they may not have grown up with them - but you and I are dealing with each other, are we not? Although initially you did say it was thinking you cared about, and not Africa, today you propose to live in Kenya for six months in the year, if you can obtain a grant.
That is progress in my view - for you have overcome your initial reaction voiced to me, sufficiently, to think about living in Africa. Well, I hope you do Andrus - because it will change you forever: and for the better too, believe me!
Hundreds of thousands of Caucasians who have lived in Africa for any length of time over the years, have all returned home as changed individuals - having undergone a life-enhancing and life-changing experience, whiles here.
There is a lot Africa and Africans can teach the rest of the world about the basic humanity inherent in all human beings. Stay blessed - and greetings to all at Mendenyo!
Kofi.
I have only just seen the Tom Wayburn email you quote. I agree with a lot of the points he makes - but feel it is crucial to intervene: and point something important out.
He says: "If you read Pinker's book
"The Blank Slat", you would realise that we are predisposed by adaptations that occurred very early in our evolution to prefer the company of people who resemble ourselves and our family members most closely. We are programmed to regard others with alarm as potential threats. As much as we try to resist it intellectually, underneath at the most basic level we are all racists."
I think it is important to point out that whiles there is some truth in what he says about the evolutionary past of humankind, Africans, however, may be an exception in that regard.
Based on empirical evidence from all over Africa throughout the centuries, in both urban and rural settings, Africans cannot possibly be described as racist in their attitude to non-Africans: be they Asian, Caucasian, Latin American and North American Indian, etc. etc.
Alas, it is this very welcoming nature of Africans, that successive waves of non-Africans making contact with us over the centuries, have abused and successfully exploited to lay their hands on the wealth of our continent - and to shortchange our continent and its people.
Then there is also the point, of course, that one would have to ask why, if we are all basically racist, there are so many inter-racial relationships of an intimate nature, all over the world - and in the most unlikely of places on our planet Earth, too?
If we are thinkers of positive thoughts, then one hopes that we can rise above the level of generalisation and stereotyping in our own individual lives: and in our discourse in a forum such as this - to enable the important experiment you and your friends are carrying out here in inter-racial harmony and peaceful co-existence, to go on: and ultimately succeed.
I am the first to condemn racists, but I always make it a point to make the point that it is the racist nature of the systems and the Establishments running and controlling them in the West and elsewhere, that we Africans ought to be wary of - and to always take into account in our dealings with the governments of Western and other nations we interact with.
The very interesting forum that you and your friends have created, mendenyo@yahoogroups.com, is an example of ordinary Caucasians and Africans, who are consciously trying to play their part in our common dream of bringing all the members of the human race together.
Having fathered mixed-race children myself and being a father who cares about their futures in Japan and the UK where their mothers hail from, fighting for a world in which there is less racial prejudice, matters a great deal to me - as does the need to help tell the rest of the world the many positive stories about a resurgent Africa: to counter unfair media bias in the West!
Yes, the average Caucasian may be a little afraid of people of colour because they may not have grown up with them - but you and I are dealing with each other, are we not? Although initially you did say it was thinking you cared about, and not Africa, today you propose to live in Kenya for six months in the year, if you can obtain a grant.
That is progress in my view - for you have overcome your initial reaction voiced to me, sufficiently, to think about living in Africa. Well, I hope you do Andrus - because it will change you forever: and for the better too, believe me!
Hundreds of thousands of Caucasians who have lived in Africa for any length of time over the years, have all returned home as changed individuals - having undergone a life-enhancing and life-changing experience, whiles here.
There is a lot Africa and Africans can teach the rest of the world about the basic humanity inherent in all human beings. Stay blessed - and greetings to all at Mendenyo!
Kofi.
Friday 15 August 2008
GHANA TELECOM: WHY THE INDEMNITIES?
Opanin, you ask, quote: "What is he even talking about..." unquote. Well, you will do well to focus on the reference the gentleman in question, who now leads our nation, makes to the Scancem scandal - which occurred during the tenure of the previous regime.
Just in case you have forgotten, Scancem, according to evidence produced in a Norwegian law court in Oslo not too long ago, had a secret slush fund, from which African politicians were regularly bribed and bought off, out of.
That, Opanin, was the corrupt way that Scancem was able to acquire a string of grossly undervalued state-owned cement factories across the African continent, which were mostly near-monopolies in their individual national markets.
Perhaps mentioning the word "Ghacem" (Scancem) was a Freudian slip by the gentleman whom some of the ruling party's more cynical critics, call Ghana's "hypocrite-in-chief "? Hmmm, Ghana - ayeasem oo!
Anyway, don't forget that we also heard the same kind of arguments galore, when the bush telegraph had it that some of them had gotten foreigners to front for them - through a series of offshore shell companies controlling Ghana International Airlines (GIA): when Ghana Airways was left high and dry in order to kill it off and privatize it successfully!
Did they not hand over Ghana Airways' routes and its designation as a national carrier to GIA - at the very time they finally succeeded in killing off Ghana Airways?
Perhaps they specifically brought in those GT bosses who got their workers to help them in campaigning for the Vodafone deal, to deliberately run it down, too - so they could cheekily tell us to "listen to the workers of GT"?
Interestingly, amongst the top people who now help to run the hapless GIA, is a beautiful lady who once supervised the loss of a few hundred thousand dollars, in her last place of employment.
It was from there that she then left to set up her own business (giving it a virtually identical name to that of her former employers: by the simple ruse of adding the word "experience" and placing it as the first word before the name of her former employer's company - the very company that her negligence had allowed to be pillaged so ruthlessly!).
Apparently, it was part of her strategy to set herself up in pole position, by stealth, and to enable her compete successfully (so she thought - the poor dear!) with those self-same former employers whose business her negligence had nearly destroyed.
Her "neat" little plan was simply to enable her crucify her former employers - and grab dominant market-share in the process.
Sadly, she fell flat on her face - and has apparently now been rescued by her powerful and well-connected sponsors, who fobbed her off with the international airline industry's equivalent of a Dodo: the near-moribund successor to the defunct Ghana Airways, GIA!
It is instructive, Opanin, that no one on the GIA board, deigned it fit to ask her former employers for any references! Such, are the affairs of our nation handled, today.
No wonder our country has finally been brought to its knees - and those who lead us are busy organizing fire-sales of our nation's most-prized assets.
It is merely to enable them escape the ramifications of defaulting on some of the irresponsible massive new debt from the capital markets of the West, in an election year - and save face that way: with ordinary Ghanaians and the rest of the world
And this, after years of the most egregious and unparalleled profligacy - such as: the lunacy of not seeing the dangers of piling up yet more debt to build presidential palace complexes; the financial madness of a cash-strapped poor nation with aspirations, buying two presidential jets at the same time; and the unforgivable sin of blowing taxpayers' money in the Ghana@50 jubilee independence day celebration extravaganza of "dream-kickback-contracts" galore (dished out like confetti to family, friends and sundry regime-cronies!) - with nothing much to show for it, after the event.
Any surprise then, Opanin, that today we are experiencing what those self-serving men in grey suits from the IMF and the World Bank (who act only in the interests of Western "big-money" corporates!) euphemistically call "debt distress"?
Clearly, we are far away from successfully building a meritocracy under the current crowd in power in our nation - who worship daily at the cult of the mediocre: where they sit in the front pews reserved for tribal supremacists who also believe in nepotism!
It is such a pity that so many of our rulers believe in nepotism - a situation which has seen the stratospheric rise in the personal net worth of so many of the scions of the family clans of our rulers and their siblings - as well as scores of sundry delectable and bright young female beauties, all on the make.
Yet, barely a few years ago, hardly anyone in this small army of much-favoured souls, featured in our nation's brightest-and-best list: as being amongst the most brilliant young business brains, in Ghana's corporate world!
But I digress - is it not interesting that like GT's management, this management superwoman and Obaa Sima, who this regime of supermen have chosen to help run their baby GIA also lacks good management skills?
That very unfortunate corporate leadership deficiency that led to hundreds of thousands of dollars of her former employer's money disappearing down the financial equivalent of a black hole - thanks to her negligence in her oversight responsibilities as regards that company's accountant.
Does that not sound familiar? Is that not what has more or less happened to GT? That such a person now helps to run GIA speaks volumes about the lack of nous and the zilch business acumen of the masters of the universe now running our homeland Ghana.
Perhaps that is why they had to make sure that being personally prosecuted tomorrow, would be precluded for all the actors in this egregious and shabby business deal - including even the foreign carpetbaggers buying into the state-owned GT?
Have you ever heard of any regime in this country covering its tracks so brazenly with such unheard of legal indemnities, in the partial privatization of a state-owned entity, since the wave of privatizations began in earnest, after the overthrow of the Nkrumah regime in the 24th February, 1966 military coup?
Incidentally, that coup was bankrolled by the CIA - according to declassified US State Department and CIA documents (please refer to page 19 of that very interesting book published by the Socialist Forum of Ghana [SFG]: "Fight Back - A response to anti-Nkrumah propaganda" ditto part 1 of: "The Great Deception" also published by the SFG).
Opanin, never in the long history of dodgy privatizations in our homeland Ghana, has any group of politicians wielding power in Ghana, been so arrogant in assuming that Ghanaians are so daft that it would not strike them as odd, that Vodafone was apparently demanding such legal protection in purchasing a 70 per cent take in GT!
Opanin, where in the world, apart from Ghana, can foreign businesspeople buying a significant stake in a state-owned telecoms company, make such outrageous demands? Would we not be outraged if even a foreign government were to make such insulting demands - let alone their private citizens?
Why, just what has Vodafone got to hide - in the post-Enron era of global corporate good governance: in which multinational companies are supposed to be guided by, and run in accordance with, ethical principles: in all their markets worldwide?
There is one simple question you must ask our current leader, and the large army of the "My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong" myrmidons, who never see anything wrong with what their leaders do that injures our nation's long-term well being - and consequently enables some of our more dishonest politicians to blithely take such self-serving actions whiles in power.
With respect, the simple question we must ask our current leader, is: whether or not any of the people that Scancem paid bribes to in the previous regime, and who subsequently then allowed them to acquire the Ghacem cement factory at Tema for a song, also acted in a similar manner - and passed laws to indemnify their self-serving and unpatriotic actions ?
Did they pass any laws to ensure that their regime and their cronies then running Ghacem could get away with all acts of omission or commission that took place before the close of the Scancem takeover deal (ditto Scancem itself and its executives!), without their ever being prosecuted - to cover their backs: in the event they were ever turfed out of power?
So, Opanin, the code language you were wondering about, was simply to tell you and all Ghanaians who disagreed with their sale of 70 per cent of GT's shares to Vodafone, in a round about way, that in their Ghana of today, " man" indeed "dey pass man" - as we say in local parlance.
In other words even if tomorrow it were to emerge (should this regime eventually be finally voted out of power!), that in this particular case the foreign carpetbaggers taking us for a huge ride in a privatization deal, were not told to "go and come back again" (to use a phrase of infamy in recent Ghanaian political history!), and that Vodafone may indeed have also even used Scancem's dubious methods, in getting their hands on their 70 per cent shareholding in GT, no one in our country, can still touch them, ever!
That, my brother, is their particular take on the concept of the rule of law: railroad parliament into passing laws to protect yourself from ever suffering the same fate as the Tsatsu Tsikatas of this world, should you suddenly lose power - and there suddenly arose a deafening chorus up and down our country: demanding that you account for your eight-year stewardship of Ghana's affairs. Hmm, Ghana - ayeasem oo!
However, the geniuses now running Nkrumah's Ghana, will be hoisted with their own petard one fine day, in the not too distant future. For, when they eventually lose power, they will be pursued as relentlessly as they have pursued the jailed Mr. Tsatsu Tsikata - whom they have jailed for recklessly causing financial loss to the Ghanaian nation-state.
In the stupor of being totally drunk with power, they forgot one small point: the law they passed to cover their backs, is an illegality: for our constitution, enjoins all Ghanaian citizens to fight corruption - not to aid and abet those taking part in it! Hmmm, Ghana - asem ebaba debi ankasa!
May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
Just in case you have forgotten, Scancem, according to evidence produced in a Norwegian law court in Oslo not too long ago, had a secret slush fund, from which African politicians were regularly bribed and bought off, out of.
That, Opanin, was the corrupt way that Scancem was able to acquire a string of grossly undervalued state-owned cement factories across the African continent, which were mostly near-monopolies in their individual national markets.
Perhaps mentioning the word "Ghacem" (Scancem) was a Freudian slip by the gentleman whom some of the ruling party's more cynical critics, call Ghana's "hypocrite-in-chief "? Hmmm, Ghana - ayeasem oo!
Anyway, don't forget that we also heard the same kind of arguments galore, when the bush telegraph had it that some of them had gotten foreigners to front for them - through a series of offshore shell companies controlling Ghana International Airlines (GIA): when Ghana Airways was left high and dry in order to kill it off and privatize it successfully!
Did they not hand over Ghana Airways' routes and its designation as a national carrier to GIA - at the very time they finally succeeded in killing off Ghana Airways?
Perhaps they specifically brought in those GT bosses who got their workers to help them in campaigning for the Vodafone deal, to deliberately run it down, too - so they could cheekily tell us to "listen to the workers of GT"?
Interestingly, amongst the top people who now help to run the hapless GIA, is a beautiful lady who once supervised the loss of a few hundred thousand dollars, in her last place of employment.
It was from there that she then left to set up her own business (giving it a virtually identical name to that of her former employers: by the simple ruse of adding the word "experience" and placing it as the first word before the name of her former employer's company - the very company that her negligence had allowed to be pillaged so ruthlessly!).
Apparently, it was part of her strategy to set herself up in pole position, by stealth, and to enable her compete successfully (so she thought - the poor dear!) with those self-same former employers whose business her negligence had nearly destroyed.
Her "neat" little plan was simply to enable her crucify her former employers - and grab dominant market-share in the process.
Sadly, she fell flat on her face - and has apparently now been rescued by her powerful and well-connected sponsors, who fobbed her off with the international airline industry's equivalent of a Dodo: the near-moribund successor to the defunct Ghana Airways, GIA!
It is instructive, Opanin, that no one on the GIA board, deigned it fit to ask her former employers for any references! Such, are the affairs of our nation handled, today.
No wonder our country has finally been brought to its knees - and those who lead us are busy organizing fire-sales of our nation's most-prized assets.
It is merely to enable them escape the ramifications of defaulting on some of the irresponsible massive new debt from the capital markets of the West, in an election year - and save face that way: with ordinary Ghanaians and the rest of the world
And this, after years of the most egregious and unparalleled profligacy - such as: the lunacy of not seeing the dangers of piling up yet more debt to build presidential palace complexes; the financial madness of a cash-strapped poor nation with aspirations, buying two presidential jets at the same time; and the unforgivable sin of blowing taxpayers' money in the Ghana@50 jubilee independence day celebration extravaganza of "dream-kickback-contracts" galore (dished out like confetti to family, friends and sundry regime-cronies!) - with nothing much to show for it, after the event.
Any surprise then, Opanin, that today we are experiencing what those self-serving men in grey suits from the IMF and the World Bank (who act only in the interests of Western "big-money" corporates!) euphemistically call "debt distress"?
Clearly, we are far away from successfully building a meritocracy under the current crowd in power in our nation - who worship daily at the cult of the mediocre: where they sit in the front pews reserved for tribal supremacists who also believe in nepotism!
It is such a pity that so many of our rulers believe in nepotism - a situation which has seen the stratospheric rise in the personal net worth of so many of the scions of the family clans of our rulers and their siblings - as well as scores of sundry delectable and bright young female beauties, all on the make.
Yet, barely a few years ago, hardly anyone in this small army of much-favoured souls, featured in our nation's brightest-and-best list: as being amongst the most brilliant young business brains, in Ghana's corporate world!
But I digress - is it not interesting that like GT's management, this management superwoman and Obaa Sima, who this regime of supermen have chosen to help run their baby GIA also lacks good management skills?
That very unfortunate corporate leadership deficiency that led to hundreds of thousands of dollars of her former employer's money disappearing down the financial equivalent of a black hole - thanks to her negligence in her oversight responsibilities as regards that company's accountant.
Does that not sound familiar? Is that not what has more or less happened to GT? That such a person now helps to run GIA speaks volumes about the lack of nous and the zilch business acumen of the masters of the universe now running our homeland Ghana.
Perhaps that is why they had to make sure that being personally prosecuted tomorrow, would be precluded for all the actors in this egregious and shabby business deal - including even the foreign carpetbaggers buying into the state-owned GT?
Have you ever heard of any regime in this country covering its tracks so brazenly with such unheard of legal indemnities, in the partial privatization of a state-owned entity, since the wave of privatizations began in earnest, after the overthrow of the Nkrumah regime in the 24th February, 1966 military coup?
Incidentally, that coup was bankrolled by the CIA - according to declassified US State Department and CIA documents (please refer to page 19 of that very interesting book published by the Socialist Forum of Ghana [SFG]: "Fight Back - A response to anti-Nkrumah propaganda" ditto part 1 of: "The Great Deception" also published by the SFG).
Opanin, never in the long history of dodgy privatizations in our homeland Ghana, has any group of politicians wielding power in Ghana, been so arrogant in assuming that Ghanaians are so daft that it would not strike them as odd, that Vodafone was apparently demanding such legal protection in purchasing a 70 per cent take in GT!
Opanin, where in the world, apart from Ghana, can foreign businesspeople buying a significant stake in a state-owned telecoms company, make such outrageous demands? Would we not be outraged if even a foreign government were to make such insulting demands - let alone their private citizens?
Why, just what has Vodafone got to hide - in the post-Enron era of global corporate good governance: in which multinational companies are supposed to be guided by, and run in accordance with, ethical principles: in all their markets worldwide?
There is one simple question you must ask our current leader, and the large army of the "My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong" myrmidons, who never see anything wrong with what their leaders do that injures our nation's long-term well being - and consequently enables some of our more dishonest politicians to blithely take such self-serving actions whiles in power.
With respect, the simple question we must ask our current leader, is: whether or not any of the people that Scancem paid bribes to in the previous regime, and who subsequently then allowed them to acquire the Ghacem cement factory at Tema for a song, also acted in a similar manner - and passed laws to indemnify their self-serving and unpatriotic actions ?
Did they pass any laws to ensure that their regime and their cronies then running Ghacem could get away with all acts of omission or commission that took place before the close of the Scancem takeover deal (ditto Scancem itself and its executives!), without their ever being prosecuted - to cover their backs: in the event they were ever turfed out of power?
So, Opanin, the code language you were wondering about, was simply to tell you and all Ghanaians who disagreed with their sale of 70 per cent of GT's shares to Vodafone, in a round about way, that in their Ghana of today, " man" indeed "dey pass man" - as we say in local parlance.
In other words even if tomorrow it were to emerge (should this regime eventually be finally voted out of power!), that in this particular case the foreign carpetbaggers taking us for a huge ride in a privatization deal, were not told to "go and come back again" (to use a phrase of infamy in recent Ghanaian political history!), and that Vodafone may indeed have also even used Scancem's dubious methods, in getting their hands on their 70 per cent shareholding in GT, no one in our country, can still touch them, ever!
That, my brother, is their particular take on the concept of the rule of law: railroad parliament into passing laws to protect yourself from ever suffering the same fate as the Tsatsu Tsikatas of this world, should you suddenly lose power - and there suddenly arose a deafening chorus up and down our country: demanding that you account for your eight-year stewardship of Ghana's affairs. Hmm, Ghana - ayeasem oo!
However, the geniuses now running Nkrumah's Ghana, will be hoisted with their own petard one fine day, in the not too distant future. For, when they eventually lose power, they will be pursued as relentlessly as they have pursued the jailed Mr. Tsatsu Tsikata - whom they have jailed for recklessly causing financial loss to the Ghanaian nation-state.
In the stupor of being totally drunk with power, they forgot one small point: the law they passed to cover their backs, is an illegality: for our constitution, enjoins all Ghanaian citizens to fight corruption - not to aid and abet those taking part in it! Hmmm, Ghana - asem ebaba debi ankasa!
May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
Thursday 14 August 2008
"OH TO BE A BIRD IN THE SKY!" - A POEM BY KOFI THOMPSON.
O what fun
It would be
To be a bird
Flying happily
And majestically
Across the blue sky
O what interesting lives
Birds lead
Free to fly
Anywhere in the world
That takes their fancy
Free to undertake
Endless
And myriad
Flights of fancy
Wherever
And whenever
They jolly well
Feel like
Not for them
The petty
Intrusiveness
And oppressiveness
Of endless
And mindless
Security
At countless
International airports
And border frontier posts
The world over
Oh what bliss
It must be
To be a bird
Happy
To fly freely
Pretty much everywhere
Up high
And way above
Swirling silver clouds
Oh what joy
It would be
To be like a bird
Gliding serenely
Way high up above
Happy as a lark
As one rides
Uplifting hot air currents
Like an earth-bound
Surfer riding ocean waves
With ballet-like elegance
Weaving freedom's message
High up
O how nice
It would be
To be a bird
In full flight
At this very
Point in time!
By Kofi Thompson.
It would be
To be a bird
Flying happily
And majestically
Across the blue sky
O what interesting lives
Birds lead
Free to fly
Anywhere in the world
That takes their fancy
Free to undertake
Endless
And myriad
Flights of fancy
Wherever
And whenever
They jolly well
Feel like
Not for them
The petty
Intrusiveness
And oppressiveness
Of endless
And mindless
Security
At countless
International airports
And border frontier posts
The world over
Oh what bliss
It must be
To be a bird
Happy
To fly freely
Pretty much everywhere
Up high
And way above
Swirling silver clouds
Oh what joy
It would be
To be like a bird
Gliding serenely
Way high up above
Happy as a lark
As one rides
Uplifting hot air currents
Like an earth-bound
Surfer riding ocean waves
With ballet-like elegance
Weaving freedom's message
High up
O how nice
It would be
To be a bird
In full flight
At this very
Point in time!
By Kofi Thompson.
Wednesday 13 August 2008
PARLIAMENT: PLEASE STOP APPROVING SO MANY LOANS!
Amanfuo, these days our parliament is forever approving loans, it would appear. Incredible!
Just why are our current leaders so keen on mortgaging Ghana's envisaged oil and natural gas revenues, by piling up yet more debt? Hmm, Ghana - ayea asem oo!
A recent news report says that on 12th August, 2008 parliament approved a loan of, quote: "28.07 million euros plus credit insurance of 3.9 million euros between the Government of Ghana and VDL Jonckheere Bus and Coach NV Roeslare, Belgium for the supply of 150 City Buses for public transport and spare parts" unquote.
Well, fair enough, many would say, dear reader - but are we absolutely sure that that particular sum of "3.9 million euros" approved by parliament for the "credit insurance" actually reflects genuine EU/UK market values for that particular insurance product: and represents good value for money for our nation?
Was it not the regular interest payments on the pre-HIPIC debt that was squeezing the very lifeblood out of our nation, only yesterday?
Did our leaders know that six months down the road, we would end up borrowing money from foreign sources to purchase 150 buses - when we were busy throwing taxpayers' money down that financial equivalent of a black-hole, purchasing 200 luxury limousines, amongst many other such profligate expenditures: for the infamous Ghana@50 national golden jubilee birthday bash?
It is such a pity that as a nation we are busy again piling up yet more debt for future generations - and in many instances too, just for pure nonsense on bamboo stilts reasons: such as the idiocy that putting up public buildings that are so poorly-built they get their roofs blown away by even the most moderately-rated winds, represents?
More so, when such buildings invariably are a nightmare for those pubic officials who have to work in them, on a daily basis - because they are so badly-designed and poorly constructed?
Are all such shoddy public works not egregious examples of recklessly causing financial loss to the Ghanaian nation-state: especially when the Tsatsu Tsikatas are languishing in jail for financial undertakings from which Ghana suffered no actual financial loss, apparently (if some of our many "legal wizards" are to be believed, i.e.!)? Hmm, Ghana - ayeasem oo!
Just why do so many of the members of our our political class constantly forget that very wise Ghanaian saying: "No condition is permanent" as regards their own individual tenure of office?
Has the current ruling party forgotten so soon that once upon a time many of the leading members of the previous ruling party were also acting as if they were omniscient and omnipotent? So just why do so many of them still carry on in exactly the same tiresome and arrogant fashion - just as yesteryear's masters of the universe did, in their day?
For example, the breathtaking arrogance of the ruling party's current general secretary, Mr. Ohene Ntow, is simply beyond belief!
That deceptively well-spoken gentleman, is like the proverbial three mythical African monkeys: he hears no evil; sees no evil; and smells no evil - in the Ghana of today. Amazing.
Yet, not all Ghanaians are of the "My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong" myrmidon-type of the species!
As far as the GT "wahala" is concerned, perhaps the simple question, dear reader, we ought to be asking, is: just who is organising the hapless workers of GT to go on demonstrations in support of that disgraceful Vodafone deal, nationwide?
Is that being done simply because "too-clever-by-half" politicians want to use them as pawns in a "hearts-and-minds" battle of wits with the committee for joint action CJA: to enable them get that disgraceful agreement with Vodafone through our spineless rubber-stamp parliament? Hmm, Ghana - asem ebaba debi ankasa!
May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
Just why are our current leaders so keen on mortgaging Ghana's envisaged oil and natural gas revenues, by piling up yet more debt? Hmm, Ghana - ayea asem oo!
A recent news report says that on 12th August, 2008 parliament approved a loan of, quote: "28.07 million euros plus credit insurance of 3.9 million euros between the Government of Ghana and VDL Jonckheere Bus and Coach NV Roeslare, Belgium for the supply of 150 City Buses for public transport and spare parts" unquote.
Well, fair enough, many would say, dear reader - but are we absolutely sure that that particular sum of "3.9 million euros" approved by parliament for the "credit insurance" actually reflects genuine EU/UK market values for that particular insurance product: and represents good value for money for our nation?
Was it not the regular interest payments on the pre-HIPIC debt that was squeezing the very lifeblood out of our nation, only yesterday?
Did our leaders know that six months down the road, we would end up borrowing money from foreign sources to purchase 150 buses - when we were busy throwing taxpayers' money down that financial equivalent of a black-hole, purchasing 200 luxury limousines, amongst many other such profligate expenditures: for the infamous Ghana@50 national golden jubilee birthday bash?
It is such a pity that as a nation we are busy again piling up yet more debt for future generations - and in many instances too, just for pure nonsense on bamboo stilts reasons: such as the idiocy that putting up public buildings that are so poorly-built they get their roofs blown away by even the most moderately-rated winds, represents?
More so, when such buildings invariably are a nightmare for those pubic officials who have to work in them, on a daily basis - because they are so badly-designed and poorly constructed?
Are all such shoddy public works not egregious examples of recklessly causing financial loss to the Ghanaian nation-state: especially when the Tsatsu Tsikatas are languishing in jail for financial undertakings from which Ghana suffered no actual financial loss, apparently (if some of our many "legal wizards" are to be believed, i.e.!)? Hmm, Ghana - ayeasem oo!
Just why do so many of the members of our our political class constantly forget that very wise Ghanaian saying: "No condition is permanent" as regards their own individual tenure of office?
Has the current ruling party forgotten so soon that once upon a time many of the leading members of the previous ruling party were also acting as if they were omniscient and omnipotent? So just why do so many of them still carry on in exactly the same tiresome and arrogant fashion - just as yesteryear's masters of the universe did, in their day?
For example, the breathtaking arrogance of the ruling party's current general secretary, Mr. Ohene Ntow, is simply beyond belief!
That deceptively well-spoken gentleman, is like the proverbial three mythical African monkeys: he hears no evil; sees no evil; and smells no evil - in the Ghana of today. Amazing.
Yet, not all Ghanaians are of the "My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong" myrmidon-type of the species!
As far as the GT "wahala" is concerned, perhaps the simple question, dear reader, we ought to be asking, is: just who is organising the hapless workers of GT to go on demonstrations in support of that disgraceful Vodafone deal, nationwide?
Is that being done simply because "too-clever-by-half" politicians want to use them as pawns in a "hearts-and-minds" battle of wits with the committee for joint action CJA: to enable them get that disgraceful agreement with Vodafone through our spineless rubber-stamp parliament? Hmm, Ghana - asem ebaba debi ankasa!
May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
Tuesday 12 August 2008
A BRIEF NOTE TO MISS MALAIKA!
Dear Ms Malaika, I refer to your comment on the 12th August, 2008 feature article by Abena Pokuaa Atuahene Ackah (http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=148169&comment=3951816#com)
Ohemaa Awhofe Malaika, do please permit me to take you along a path of digression for just one brief moment. With respect, the people whom we should watch out for in this nation today, are those in our country who wish to dominate Ghana, by dividing us along tribal lines.
Ordinary Ghanaians are not in the least bit interested in promoting tribalism in our homeland Ghana. And that is why there is virtually no extended family in this nation of ours, in which there aren't a variety of ethnic groups bonded together as a family - all united in one extended family unit, either through blood ties or by marriage.
That is also why most ordinary Ghanaians don't particularly care if our rulers pack government departments and other public entities with Ghanaians of a particular ethnic extraction - as long as they are qualified: for they are all Ghanaians.
However, what ordinary people care about greatly and resent deeply, is when those of our rulers, who are tribal supremacists (our local version of the odious white supremacists of the Western world - and who by the way, can be found in the palaces of traditional rulers throughout our nation: from our eastern borders to those of the western edges of Ghana, to the northern-most edges of Ghana to the coastline of the southern reaches of the Ghanaian landmass! ), misuse the machinery of state: to deliberately promote particular traditional rulers.
We then end up with the unedifying spectacle in which mediocre and intellectually-challenged traditional rulers suddenly grow wings: and are allowed by those in power to go as far as illegally selling parcels of land owned by the Ghanaian nation-state, with impunity; and virtually conduct their own personal foreign policy more or less.
That is why certain traditional rulers in the Ghana of today, can get their lackeys in power to even use Ghana's state protocol department to direct foreign dignitaries to pay homage to particular traditional rulers in this country - as if there were no other traditional rulers of significance, anywhere else in Ghana.
But above all, irritatingly, the megalomania of certain traditional rulers is given free reign - to the extend that they can even meddle freely in affairs of state at the highest levels: without their ever being sanctioned.
It is that kind of situation that is intolerable: because it amounts to treason for any Ghanaian to help any part of Ghana to act as if it were a state within a state in the Ghanaian nation-state: which legally is a republic in which there exist no kingdoms - in a strictly legal and constitutional sense.
That, Ohemaa, is what tribalism actually entails, today. The plain truth is that in spite of all the efforts to stoke up the embers of tribalism in our country by certain politicians and traditional rulers, ordinary Ghanaians still get along with each other perfectly: and relate to each other on the basis of their individual character traits - to which they may, as individuals, either feel attracted to, or be repelled by.
It is for that reason that the majority of ordinary people in this country, when falling in love, are not interested in the slightest, which particular part of their homeland Ghana, the object of their amorous and romantic attention, hails from.
That is also the same reason why most ordinary Ghanaians regard the few Akan tribal supremacists who now dominate this ruling regime so completely, sadly, as being traitors to the enterprise Ghana - and who, in the category of Ghanaian public enemies, they regard as far worse than even Ghana's serial coup-makers.
For, at least our serial coup-makers do not seek to divide our country along tribal lines, by making common cause with tribal supremacist traditional rulers: some of whose tiresome megalomania is leading them inexorably to destroying the cohesion of our dear country.
With respect that is not a subject any Ghanaian ought to treat in the usual "My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong" parochial manner that those wretched myrmidons, who are manipulated by selfish and tribalistic politicians are won't to do, Ohemaa.
True patriots don't care which political flag Ghana's tribal supremacist politicians fly, Ohemaa. As far as we are concerned they are all enemies of the people: who ought to be prosecuted for treason - together with those megalomaniacs amongst Ghana's societal dinosaurs from our feudal and calcified past, our Chiefs: with some of whom they are in hock to destroy the enterprise Ghana, by stealth.
Inherited privilege, Ohemaa, is the greatest enemy of any meritocracy - and if we want to power ahead as a dynamic, prosperous and egalitarian society in which there is equality of opportunity (but, naturally, not of equality of "outcomes" of personal effort!), then we must quickly rid ourselves of these parasitic personages: who daily worship at the cult of the mediocre and are responsible for our still being a largely superstition-ridden society, in the 21st century ICT age!
May I humbly ask you, therefore, Ohemaa Awhofe Malaika, just whose side you are on: that of ordinary Ghanaians who love mother Ghana - or those who would rather Ghana was subsumed in the delusional dreams of would-be, latter-day "emperors" : forever seeking to revive a bygone pre-colonial glory (read era!) that ordinary people will never allow to be revived again, in Ghana?
That, Ohemaa, is the point about the whole anti-Nkrumah enterprise - in case you have not yet cottoned on to that bald fact! Hmm, Ghana, ayeasem oo: asem ebeba debi ankasa! May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
Ohemaa Awhofe Malaika, do please permit me to take you along a path of digression for just one brief moment. With respect, the people whom we should watch out for in this nation today, are those in our country who wish to dominate Ghana, by dividing us along tribal lines.
Ordinary Ghanaians are not in the least bit interested in promoting tribalism in our homeland Ghana. And that is why there is virtually no extended family in this nation of ours, in which there aren't a variety of ethnic groups bonded together as a family - all united in one extended family unit, either through blood ties or by marriage.
That is also why most ordinary Ghanaians don't particularly care if our rulers pack government departments and other public entities with Ghanaians of a particular ethnic extraction - as long as they are qualified: for they are all Ghanaians.
However, what ordinary people care about greatly and resent deeply, is when those of our rulers, who are tribal supremacists (our local version of the odious white supremacists of the Western world - and who by the way, can be found in the palaces of traditional rulers throughout our nation: from our eastern borders to those of the western edges of Ghana, to the northern-most edges of Ghana to the coastline of the southern reaches of the Ghanaian landmass! ), misuse the machinery of state: to deliberately promote particular traditional rulers.
We then end up with the unedifying spectacle in which mediocre and intellectually-challenged traditional rulers suddenly grow wings: and are allowed by those in power to go as far as illegally selling parcels of land owned by the Ghanaian nation-state, with impunity; and virtually conduct their own personal foreign policy more or less.
That is why certain traditional rulers in the Ghana of today, can get their lackeys in power to even use Ghana's state protocol department to direct foreign dignitaries to pay homage to particular traditional rulers in this country - as if there were no other traditional rulers of significance, anywhere else in Ghana.
But above all, irritatingly, the megalomania of certain traditional rulers is given free reign - to the extend that they can even meddle freely in affairs of state at the highest levels: without their ever being sanctioned.
It is that kind of situation that is intolerable: because it amounts to treason for any Ghanaian to help any part of Ghana to act as if it were a state within a state in the Ghanaian nation-state: which legally is a republic in which there exist no kingdoms - in a strictly legal and constitutional sense.
That, Ohemaa, is what tribalism actually entails, today. The plain truth is that in spite of all the efforts to stoke up the embers of tribalism in our country by certain politicians and traditional rulers, ordinary Ghanaians still get along with each other perfectly: and relate to each other on the basis of their individual character traits - to which they may, as individuals, either feel attracted to, or be repelled by.
It is for that reason that the majority of ordinary people in this country, when falling in love, are not interested in the slightest, which particular part of their homeland Ghana, the object of their amorous and romantic attention, hails from.
That is also the same reason why most ordinary Ghanaians regard the few Akan tribal supremacists who now dominate this ruling regime so completely, sadly, as being traitors to the enterprise Ghana - and who, in the category of Ghanaian public enemies, they regard as far worse than even Ghana's serial coup-makers.
For, at least our serial coup-makers do not seek to divide our country along tribal lines, by making common cause with tribal supremacist traditional rulers: some of whose tiresome megalomania is leading them inexorably to destroying the cohesion of our dear country.
With respect that is not a subject any Ghanaian ought to treat in the usual "My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong" parochial manner that those wretched myrmidons, who are manipulated by selfish and tribalistic politicians are won't to do, Ohemaa.
True patriots don't care which political flag Ghana's tribal supremacist politicians fly, Ohemaa. As far as we are concerned they are all enemies of the people: who ought to be prosecuted for treason - together with those megalomaniacs amongst Ghana's societal dinosaurs from our feudal and calcified past, our Chiefs: with some of whom they are in hock to destroy the enterprise Ghana, by stealth.
Inherited privilege, Ohemaa, is the greatest enemy of any meritocracy - and if we want to power ahead as a dynamic, prosperous and egalitarian society in which there is equality of opportunity (but, naturally, not of equality of "outcomes" of personal effort!), then we must quickly rid ourselves of these parasitic personages: who daily worship at the cult of the mediocre and are responsible for our still being a largely superstition-ridden society, in the 21st century ICT age!
May I humbly ask you, therefore, Ohemaa Awhofe Malaika, just whose side you are on: that of ordinary Ghanaians who love mother Ghana - or those who would rather Ghana was subsumed in the delusional dreams of would-be, latter-day "emperors" : forever seeking to revive a bygone pre-colonial glory (read era!) that ordinary people will never allow to be revived again, in Ghana?
That, Ohemaa, is the point about the whole anti-Nkrumah enterprise - in case you have not yet cottoned on to that bald fact! Hmm, Ghana, ayeasem oo: asem ebeba debi ankasa! May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
To Abena Pokuaa Atuahene Ackah!
Ohemaa, I enjoyed reading your feature article posted on Tuesday 12th August, 2008 at the the general news web page of http://www.ghanaweb.com//, entitled: "Political Infamy: What is Busia doing at Nkrumah Park?"
Ohemaa, God bless you! Please do not worry your head, unnecessarily. There is no point remonstrating with those philistines now in power - who, amazingly, think the judgment of posterity can be bought. Incredible!
And as for the younger generation of Ghanaians, you have no cause to worry on their behalf at all, either, Ohemaa. For, they are definitely not as clueless as the older generation of Ghanaians - who are so easily manipulated by the greedy and dishonest tribal supremacists (our local version of the odious white supremacists of the Western world!) amongst our political class.
And you must also remember that the younger generation of Ghanaians are not as simple as the uncouth "My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong" myrmidons - whom you see making those asinine and unhelpful comments on a daily basis at: http://www.ghanaweb.com//
So just let the myopic politicians amongst those who now rule Nkrumah's Ghana, continue thinking that they are extremely clever - because today, they have succeeded in buying unprincipled media types, to act as their regime gaurd-dogs: when their role as the fourth branch of government, demands that they act as society's watchdogs.
And today, dishonest and greedy hacks, who have sold their consciences for material wealth and have become this regime's spin doctors, are helping those who now rule us to spread the tedious and boring message that the "Emperor" is clothed in the most glorious of gold-laced Kente cloths: when in fact honest and decent-minded Ghanaians can all see that the "Emperor" is actually stark naked.
Discerning and independent-minded Ghanaians are not fools, Ohemaa! So, fear not! Nkrumah will be remembered till the very end of time - long after the quislings of Ghanaian politics have sunk into oblivion and been forgotten!
Only those who are intellectually-challenged will delude themselves into thinking that the judgement of history can be bought, or influenced in any way. Posterity does not judge the figures of history on the basis of who pays the most - or gets spin doctors to put the most positive gloss on the events of history.
That is why Nkrumah, who dwarfed all his contemporaries, is a giant of 20th century history - and his enemies are barely known outside Ghana's borders.
And that is also why his political opponents from his native Ghana, virtually all of whom collaborated with our neo-colonialist and imperialist enemies, and were paid agents of the Western intelligence agencies, are rightly not accorded any significance by the world's leading historians and, above all, do not have a place in the Pantheon of the greatest figures in the history of humankind! Hmmm, Ghana - ayea asem oo!
May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
Ohemaa, God bless you! Please do not worry your head, unnecessarily. There is no point remonstrating with those philistines now in power - who, amazingly, think the judgment of posterity can be bought. Incredible!
And as for the younger generation of Ghanaians, you have no cause to worry on their behalf at all, either, Ohemaa. For, they are definitely not as clueless as the older generation of Ghanaians - who are so easily manipulated by the greedy and dishonest tribal supremacists (our local version of the odious white supremacists of the Western world!) amongst our political class.
And you must also remember that the younger generation of Ghanaians are not as simple as the uncouth "My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong" myrmidons - whom you see making those asinine and unhelpful comments on a daily basis at: http://www.ghanaweb.com//
So just let the myopic politicians amongst those who now rule Nkrumah's Ghana, continue thinking that they are extremely clever - because today, they have succeeded in buying unprincipled media types, to act as their regime gaurd-dogs: when their role as the fourth branch of government, demands that they act as society's watchdogs.
And today, dishonest and greedy hacks, who have sold their consciences for material wealth and have become this regime's spin doctors, are helping those who now rule us to spread the tedious and boring message that the "Emperor" is clothed in the most glorious of gold-laced Kente cloths: when in fact honest and decent-minded Ghanaians can all see that the "Emperor" is actually stark naked.
Discerning and independent-minded Ghanaians are not fools, Ohemaa! So, fear not! Nkrumah will be remembered till the very end of time - long after the quislings of Ghanaian politics have sunk into oblivion and been forgotten!
Only those who are intellectually-challenged will delude themselves into thinking that the judgement of history can be bought, or influenced in any way. Posterity does not judge the figures of history on the basis of who pays the most - or gets spin doctors to put the most positive gloss on the events of history.
That is why Nkrumah, who dwarfed all his contemporaries, is a giant of 20th century history - and his enemies are barely known outside Ghana's borders.
And that is also why his political opponents from his native Ghana, virtually all of whom collaborated with our neo-colonialist and imperialist enemies, and were paid agents of the Western intelligence agencies, are rightly not accorded any significance by the world's leading historians and, above all, do not have a place in the Pantheon of the greatest figures in the history of humankind! Hmmm, Ghana - ayea asem oo!
May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
Sunday 10 August 2008
YES - LET US VOTE WISELY IN DECEMBER 2008!
Hmm, well, yes, Opanin - and hopefully, all those who vote in December 2008, will think about the future of our country; their own individual futures; as well as that of future generations of Ghanaians yet to be born, whiles casting their vote.
However, sadly, no matter what wealth we or tomorrow's generation of Ghanaians create in our time, we will end up (as a people), having to spend all the wealth we create, to repair the egregious harm being done to the natural environment, today.
And chief amongst those causing irreparable damage to our natural heritage, are: "galamsay" gold miners and the multinational surface gold mining companies in our country - who are all being allowed by our very poorly-resourced Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the greedy and dishonest ones amongst our political class (who are in their very deep pockets!) to poison vast swathes of the Ghanaian countryside, in the name of foreign direct investment: with complete impunity.
Yet, long after they have depleted all our gold deposits, and departed elsewhere to look to continue satisfying the unfathomable greed for money that drives their super-polluting business models, we will be dealing with the dangerous chemicals that they have allowed to leech into our soils; our underground water tables; and surface water bodies up and down our nation.
If a German geologist (according to DW-TV!) has apparently succeeded in developing an evironmentally-friendly and safe method of surface gold mining, why should we continue to tolerate the daily dissimulation of these ruthless and incredibly callous business entities (and their "trade union" and "sweet-mouthed" mouthpiece: the Ghana Chamber of Mines), and listen to their tall tales telling all of us that they cause no harm to the natural environment and create jobs, as well as sponsor micro-projects in the communities whose lands have been given to them as mining concessions?
The time has definitely come for ordinary people to stand up to the surface mining industry in Ghana - who are by far the best-resourced and most powerful lobby group in our country today: by voting for leaders who care about the natural environment and about the common weal.
They would never be allowed to get away with the harm they are causing to our natural heritage, in their own home countries, for even five minutes - let alone be given such generous tax-breaks too: on top of all that destruction they leave in their wake in their operations here.
And why have our rulers still not demanded the speedy extradition to Ghana, from their native Canada (or sue them in Canada, if no such agreement exists between Ghana and Canada!) of the Canadian directors of Bonte Mines - which suddenly closed down and left a terrible and degraded environment of an almost apocalyptic nature: that has resulted in an existence akin to life in a hell on earth, for the poor and honest farming community of Bonte?
Today, those poor rural people are forced to eke out a wretched living, panning for gold: on land that their ancestors once farmed on profitably and lived in harmony with. Hmmm, Ghana ayeasem oo!
May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
However, sadly, no matter what wealth we or tomorrow's generation of Ghanaians create in our time, we will end up (as a people), having to spend all the wealth we create, to repair the egregious harm being done to the natural environment, today.
And chief amongst those causing irreparable damage to our natural heritage, are: "galamsay" gold miners and the multinational surface gold mining companies in our country - who are all being allowed by our very poorly-resourced Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the greedy and dishonest ones amongst our political class (who are in their very deep pockets!) to poison vast swathes of the Ghanaian countryside, in the name of foreign direct investment: with complete impunity.
Yet, long after they have depleted all our gold deposits, and departed elsewhere to look to continue satisfying the unfathomable greed for money that drives their super-polluting business models, we will be dealing with the dangerous chemicals that they have allowed to leech into our soils; our underground water tables; and surface water bodies up and down our nation.
If a German geologist (according to DW-TV!) has apparently succeeded in developing an evironmentally-friendly and safe method of surface gold mining, why should we continue to tolerate the daily dissimulation of these ruthless and incredibly callous business entities (and their "trade union" and "sweet-mouthed" mouthpiece: the Ghana Chamber of Mines), and listen to their tall tales telling all of us that they cause no harm to the natural environment and create jobs, as well as sponsor micro-projects in the communities whose lands have been given to them as mining concessions?
The time has definitely come for ordinary people to stand up to the surface mining industry in Ghana - who are by far the best-resourced and most powerful lobby group in our country today: by voting for leaders who care about the natural environment and about the common weal.
They would never be allowed to get away with the harm they are causing to our natural heritage, in their own home countries, for even five minutes - let alone be given such generous tax-breaks too: on top of all that destruction they leave in their wake in their operations here.
And why have our rulers still not demanded the speedy extradition to Ghana, from their native Canada (or sue them in Canada, if no such agreement exists between Ghana and Canada!) of the Canadian directors of Bonte Mines - which suddenly closed down and left a terrible and degraded environment of an almost apocalyptic nature: that has resulted in an existence akin to life in a hell on earth, for the poor and honest farming community of Bonte?
Today, those poor rural people are forced to eke out a wretched living, panning for gold: on land that their ancestors once farmed on profitably and lived in harmony with. Hmmm, Ghana ayeasem oo!
May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
Re: Money Saving Tip For Ghana Government!
Opanin Eric Mawudeku (of "IMANI" - www.AfricanLiberty.org ), I refer to your feature article, with the title above, which was posted on the general news web page at: http://www.ghanaweb.com/ on Sunday 10th August, 2008.
Opanin, being an old man who is not very bright up top, I am sadly not tech-savvy: and consequently cannot venture a considered opinion about your ideas - but if those bright ideas can work and are practical, then as a people, we ought to adopt them asap. Bravo!
You are true patriots indeed (you, who call yourselves "Libertarians"!) - and I do hope that the legions of My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong myrmidons, will emulate you: and use their considerable energies positively for once, by thinking up such brilliant (thinking-outside-the-box) ideas: to help our nation to grow and prosper, along sustainable and equitable lines, going forward.
Unfortunately, Opanin, their fanatical and blind support of our political parties does such harm to Mother Ghana: as they practically condone the wrong-doing of our political elite.
For, by turning a blind eye to the on-going gang-rape of Mother Ghana (by the dishonest and greedy ones amongst our political class!), which is occurring on a daily basis, they are simply empowering those powerful and ever-so-respectable hypocritical rogues, to ruin our nation!
Sadly, many of them do so as paid serial phone-callers (serving as useful value-for-money cogs in the propaganda machines of various political parties in our country), who act as the secret agents of some of the more unsavoury characters, in our Establishment of today - daily phoning in their barefaced lies as "opinions" : which they contribute to discussion programmes aired by our many FM radio stations, countrywide.
Opanin, is it not intolerable that they somehow get away with it all - and are forever spreading their poisonous dissimulation throughout Ghanaian society: offending the sensibilities of decent every-day people nationwide, daily (often butchering the English language in the process: jarring our poor ears)?
Their many white lies are a perpetual miasma that envelopes Ghanaian society: choking us all - and suffocating truth and decency in our homeland Ghana! Hmmm, Ghana - ayeasem oo!
May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
Opanin, being an old man who is not very bright up top, I am sadly not tech-savvy: and consequently cannot venture a considered opinion about your ideas - but if those bright ideas can work and are practical, then as a people, we ought to adopt them asap. Bravo!
You are true patriots indeed (you, who call yourselves "Libertarians"!) - and I do hope that the legions of My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong myrmidons, will emulate you: and use their considerable energies positively for once, by thinking up such brilliant (thinking-outside-the-box) ideas: to help our nation to grow and prosper, along sustainable and equitable lines, going forward.
Unfortunately, Opanin, their fanatical and blind support of our political parties does such harm to Mother Ghana: as they practically condone the wrong-doing of our political elite.
For, by turning a blind eye to the on-going gang-rape of Mother Ghana (by the dishonest and greedy ones amongst our political class!), which is occurring on a daily basis, they are simply empowering those powerful and ever-so-respectable hypocritical rogues, to ruin our nation!
Sadly, many of them do so as paid serial phone-callers (serving as useful value-for-money cogs in the propaganda machines of various political parties in our country), who act as the secret agents of some of the more unsavoury characters, in our Establishment of today - daily phoning in their barefaced lies as "opinions" : which they contribute to discussion programmes aired by our many FM radio stations, countrywide.
Opanin, is it not intolerable that they somehow get away with it all - and are forever spreading their poisonous dissimulation throughout Ghanaian society: offending the sensibilities of decent every-day people nationwide, daily (often butchering the English language in the process: jarring our poor ears)?
Their many white lies are a perpetual miasma that envelopes Ghanaian society: choking us all - and suffocating truth and decency in our homeland Ghana! Hmmm, Ghana - ayeasem oo!
May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
Friday 8 August 2008
To Opanin Kwame!
Opanin, I refer to your 7th August, 2008 comment ("Only a phone company") on my comment of the same date: ("Tell the Western media!"), which was also a comment on the http://www.ghanaweb.com// general news web page feature story with the rather longish title, "Legal Highlights of Vodafone Press Conference...
PRESS STATEMENT BY CONCERNED GHANAIAN CITIZENS ON THE SALE OF 70% SHARES IN GHANA TELECOM AND THE CREATION OF ENLARGED GT FOR PURPOSES OF SALE TO VODAFONE,
DATE: AUGUST 6T" 2008VENUE: INTERNATIONAL PRESS CENTRE"
Opanin Kwame, being a little senile, I am not sure which particular year I am actually "stuck in" - as you put it.
However, on a more serious note, I am afraid you miss the point, completely: Were BT and the other telecom companies privatised in the West, sold off under such an egregious example of a one-sided agreement?
Were they not all offloaded on the stock markets by their respective governments initially: when the time came to sell them to private sector investors - in London; Frankfurt; Paris; Madrid; Lisbon; etc. etc.?
Opanin, unlike me, I am sure that you are firmly stuck in the year of our Lord, 2008 - and are au faith with the financial services industries in the UK and the US: and the rest of the globe.
With respect, tell me just who has been pouring UK taxpayers' money into the erstwhile privately-owned Northern Rock Bank: because it was in the overall interest of UK plc as a whole?
Pardon my ignorance, Opanin; but with respect, surely, is the point, Sir, not that even a fool and and ignoramus like me (a mere semi-literate and a nobody in Ghanaian society!), understands perfectly that this is the most dishonest and one-sided sale and purchase agreement ever put together, to privatise a major state-owned entity, in Ghana's history, thus far?
Furthermore, it might not yet have struck you, but there is general consensus amongst many independent-minded Ghanaians, who, by the way, will decide who wins power in December 2008 (not the vociferous and fanatical party supporters of the various political parties in Ghana!), that it is by far the most self-serving wheeze ever dreamt up by any group of rogues, amongst our our political class, Opanin!
And that, Opanin Kesie, is why every objective and independent-minded Ghanaian who has taken the trouble to read that outrage and pure nonsense on bamboo stilts, which the sales and purchase agreement represents, will tell you that it is the worst of such crooked undertakings they have ever seen in our long and chequered history, of bad and self-serving privatisations!
Surely, a clever and well-educated man of importance in Ghanaian society like you cannot possibly fail to see that?
And finally, Sir, with respect, are you not being a little disingenuous when you try and give the impression that BT's privatisation can be compared to that of GT?
Opanin, have you not yet cottoned on to the fact that even a fool and an ignoramus like me in the Ghana of today knows that BT was sold on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) - not to a private company colluding with British government ministers to rob her Majesty's government and her subjects, as is the case here?
Although power appears to have gone to their heads, it will serve the crooks amongst those now in power in our homeland Ghana well to always remember that very wise oldbGhanaian saying: "No condition is permanent."
And I refer especially to that tiny but powerful cabal of Akan tribal supremacists, who now dominate the ruling party so completely (and are our local version of the odious white supremacists of the Western world!) and have succeeded in somehow becoming (together with their crony-oligarchs and their family clans!) Ghana's wealthiest dollar zillionaires.
Let them ask Mr. and Mrs. J.J. Rawlings, who are still in shock that their party was turfed out of power in December 2000 (shattering their dream of retiring to Australia House, renovated by the NDC regime, at great cost to hapless Ghanaian taxpayers: as a departing "gift" and retirement home, given them by a "grateful" nation and people!) and was again rejected by Ghanaians in December 2004.
Opanin, I boldly predict that as sure as day follows night, all those who have participated in the brutal gang-rape of Mother Ghana, which this monstrous deal amounts to, will be tried and convicted for recklessly causing financial loss to the Ghanaian nation-state, in the years to come - so mark my words!
Is it not so sad that our current leaders have apparently all forgotten, so soon, that Tsatsu Tsikata is languishing in the maximum security prison at Nsawam, for a financial transaction far less injurious to our country, than the crime they have conspired with greedy foreigners and propose to perpetrate against our country? Opanin, ordinary Ghanaians are not nearly as stupid as their rulers seem to think they are, you know.
Anyhow, at any rate, hopefully, you do love your country - and aren't one of those tiresome and clueless "My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong" myrmidons, Opanin? "Massa, hmmm, atiyie ema awerafire, oo!" Do do stay blessed!
Hmmm, Ghana - ayeasem oo! May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
PRESS STATEMENT BY CONCERNED GHANAIAN CITIZENS ON THE SALE OF 70% SHARES IN GHANA TELECOM AND THE CREATION OF ENLARGED GT FOR PURPOSES OF SALE TO VODAFONE,
DATE: AUGUST 6T" 2008VENUE: INTERNATIONAL PRESS CENTRE"
Opanin Kwame, being a little senile, I am not sure which particular year I am actually "stuck in" - as you put it.
However, on a more serious note, I am afraid you miss the point, completely: Were BT and the other telecom companies privatised in the West, sold off under such an egregious example of a one-sided agreement?
Were they not all offloaded on the stock markets by their respective governments initially: when the time came to sell them to private sector investors - in London; Frankfurt; Paris; Madrid; Lisbon; etc. etc.?
Opanin, unlike me, I am sure that you are firmly stuck in the year of our Lord, 2008 - and are au faith with the financial services industries in the UK and the US: and the rest of the globe.
With respect, tell me just who has been pouring UK taxpayers' money into the erstwhile privately-owned Northern Rock Bank: because it was in the overall interest of UK plc as a whole?
Pardon my ignorance, Opanin; but with respect, surely, is the point, Sir, not that even a fool and and ignoramus like me (a mere semi-literate and a nobody in Ghanaian society!), understands perfectly that this is the most dishonest and one-sided sale and purchase agreement ever put together, to privatise a major state-owned entity, in Ghana's history, thus far?
Furthermore, it might not yet have struck you, but there is general consensus amongst many independent-minded Ghanaians, who, by the way, will decide who wins power in December 2008 (not the vociferous and fanatical party supporters of the various political parties in Ghana!), that it is by far the most self-serving wheeze ever dreamt up by any group of rogues, amongst our our political class, Opanin!
And that, Opanin Kesie, is why every objective and independent-minded Ghanaian who has taken the trouble to read that outrage and pure nonsense on bamboo stilts, which the sales and purchase agreement represents, will tell you that it is the worst of such crooked undertakings they have ever seen in our long and chequered history, of bad and self-serving privatisations!
Surely, a clever and well-educated man of importance in Ghanaian society like you cannot possibly fail to see that?
And finally, Sir, with respect, are you not being a little disingenuous when you try and give the impression that BT's privatisation can be compared to that of GT?
Opanin, have you not yet cottoned on to the fact that even a fool and an ignoramus like me in the Ghana of today knows that BT was sold on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) - not to a private company colluding with British government ministers to rob her Majesty's government and her subjects, as is the case here?
Although power appears to have gone to their heads, it will serve the crooks amongst those now in power in our homeland Ghana well to always remember that very wise oldbGhanaian saying: "No condition is permanent."
And I refer especially to that tiny but powerful cabal of Akan tribal supremacists, who now dominate the ruling party so completely (and are our local version of the odious white supremacists of the Western world!) and have succeeded in somehow becoming (together with their crony-oligarchs and their family clans!) Ghana's wealthiest dollar zillionaires.
Let them ask Mr. and Mrs. J.J. Rawlings, who are still in shock that their party was turfed out of power in December 2000 (shattering their dream of retiring to Australia House, renovated by the NDC regime, at great cost to hapless Ghanaian taxpayers: as a departing "gift" and retirement home, given them by a "grateful" nation and people!) and was again rejected by Ghanaians in December 2004.
Opanin, I boldly predict that as sure as day follows night, all those who have participated in the brutal gang-rape of Mother Ghana, which this monstrous deal amounts to, will be tried and convicted for recklessly causing financial loss to the Ghanaian nation-state, in the years to come - so mark my words!
Is it not so sad that our current leaders have apparently all forgotten, so soon, that Tsatsu Tsikata is languishing in the maximum security prison at Nsawam, for a financial transaction far less injurious to our country, than the crime they have conspired with greedy foreigners and propose to perpetrate against our country? Opanin, ordinary Ghanaians are not nearly as stupid as their rulers seem to think they are, you know.
Anyhow, at any rate, hopefully, you do love your country - and aren't one of those tiresome and clueless "My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong" myrmidons, Opanin? "Massa, hmmm, atiyie ema awerafire, oo!" Do do stay blessed!
Hmmm, Ghana - ayeasem oo! May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
Wednesday 6 August 2008
RESPONSE TO KOJO AMASS' COMMENT!
Many thanks, Opanin. You are also a very erudite chap too. Hmm, well, forgive me if this makes you eat humble pie: but the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae), was created in 1938 to encourage banks to issue mortgages during the Depression, by President Roosevelt, as a federal institution. It was privatised in 1968.
Freddie Mac - (the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation) was created in 1970 to support home ownership and the building of rental housing for people with lower incomes. It is also a private company.
Surely, someone as clever as you Opanin, is aware of the real history of both of those two U.S. mortgage giants?
Yes, both Fannie and Freddie are subject to federal oversight and are traded on the New York Stock Exchange. So although they have private shareholders, yes, both are quasi-governmental institutions, in that sense: making us both right, in a manner of speaking, Opanin.
Anyway, do please ask any friends you might have in the US financial services industry. As it happens, I actually studied their business models, in seeking examples of Nkrumah's many far-sighted ideas about private public partnerships (PPP) that the West has belatedly adopted - so I do actually know what I am talking about, Opanin: surprising though it might be to you, sir.
Please read Nkrumah's speech at the official opening of the oil refinery at Tema on September 28, 1963, for an insight into his farsighted ideas about win-win public private partnerships for developing nations.
Well, as far as focusing on China, and ignoring many of your brilliant but sadly misguided points, it was only to make people aware that it has huge reserves: and is always open to creative suggestions from its friends in Africa.
And I am sure that you'd be the first to know that getting their money on generous terms by selling them our sovereign bonds in a purely commercial transaction between two friendly regimes, beats sourcing funding for Ghana's development in the piranha-infested waters of the capital markets of the West?
And please never think that an ignoramus and a fool like Kofi Thompson, thinks he knows everything under God's sun - because I don't.
All I really know, is that I know nothing, actually - and I am consequently always seeking to learn from highly-intelligent people like your good self, Opanin.
Do stay blessed, Opanin - and I do hope you aren't one of those "My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong" myrmidons.
Being an old man, I always overlook insults heaped on me by others - so, again, thanks for your riposte: and do take another look at your history books, as regards the U.S. mortgage industry.
May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
Freddie Mac - (the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation) was created in 1970 to support home ownership and the building of rental housing for people with lower incomes. It is also a private company.
Surely, someone as clever as you Opanin, is aware of the real history of both of those two U.S. mortgage giants?
Yes, both Fannie and Freddie are subject to federal oversight and are traded on the New York Stock Exchange. So although they have private shareholders, yes, both are quasi-governmental institutions, in that sense: making us both right, in a manner of speaking, Opanin.
Anyway, do please ask any friends you might have in the US financial services industry. As it happens, I actually studied their business models, in seeking examples of Nkrumah's many far-sighted ideas about private public partnerships (PPP) that the West has belatedly adopted - so I do actually know what I am talking about, Opanin: surprising though it might be to you, sir.
Please read Nkrumah's speech at the official opening of the oil refinery at Tema on September 28, 1963, for an insight into his farsighted ideas about win-win public private partnerships for developing nations.
Well, as far as focusing on China, and ignoring many of your brilliant but sadly misguided points, it was only to make people aware that it has huge reserves: and is always open to creative suggestions from its friends in Africa.
And I am sure that you'd be the first to know that getting their money on generous terms by selling them our sovereign bonds in a purely commercial transaction between two friendly regimes, beats sourcing funding for Ghana's development in the piranha-infested waters of the capital markets of the West?
And please never think that an ignoramus and a fool like Kofi Thompson, thinks he knows everything under God's sun - because I don't.
All I really know, is that I know nothing, actually - and I am consequently always seeking to learn from highly-intelligent people like your good self, Opanin.
Do stay blessed, Opanin - and I do hope you aren't one of those "My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong" myrmidons.
Being an old man, I always overlook insults heaped on me by others - so, again, thanks for your riposte: and do take another look at your history books, as regards the U.S. mortgage industry.
May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
Re: "THE OUTSIDER: An idiot's guide to running a country on a shoe-string budget"
Opanin, sell Ghana Telecom to Vodafone - when One Touch alone is worth more than that paltry US$900 millions, as far as ordinary people are concerned: never mind what clueless analysts tell us? And don't forget the value of the US dollar is also at an all time low, my brother.
But let me also give you my own ("thinking-outside-the-box") super-idiot's plan to get us out of the hole the masters of the universe now running Nkrumah's Ghana (those whom this regime's more uncharitable critics - amongst Ghana's cynics - describe as: "Those profligate and highly-educated imbeciles!") have got us all into.
When our hypocrite-in-chief goes to Peking, let him talk to the Chinese leaders and tell them we want them to do a deal with our government to rescue Ghana - which is currently in financial distress.
We must quickly nationalise our oil and natural gas industries; pay fair compensation to the foreign oil companies currently here (by issuing sovereign bonds as payment to those bloodsuckers drilling for oil off our coastline) - and give the best resourced of the state-owned Chinese oil and natural gas companies 30% stakes in joint-ventures with the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) getting 70%.
And in exchange we want them to take Ghanaian government sovereign bonds in return for 10 US$ billions cash immediately. We should also ask them to let the world's biggest mobile company, China Mobile, take a 30% stake in the "enlarged" GT for US$2 billions.
Since we face a national emergency, we must also nationalise all our other strategic industries held by foreigners (again pay those bloodsuckers fair compensation!), such as gold; diamonds; manganese and other minerals - and replace those who currently own them, with new business models of joint-ventures between the Ghanaian nation-state and the best-resourced of the various industry-specific state-owned Chinese companies.
In all those undertakings, Ghana will take 70% stakes with 30% going to the best Chinese state-owned companies in those sectors of our economy - and which are also leading global players in those industries.
We really need not worry about loss of Western investor confidence in us, at all - as in wartime, all those Western nations would do exactly the same. And we, as you know, by now, my brother, currently face a national emergency: akin to a war-time emergency, do we not?
Now, the "My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong" myrmidons who blindly support political parties will probably not like this one, one bit, but when he returns, the president (Ghana's hypocrite-in-chief: Mr. Rawlings being the number two!) ought to immediately sack all his ministers.
He must then form a small national unity government consisting of Mr. Kofi Annan and the leaders of all Ghana's political parties, to steer the ship of state in the interest of all the people of Ghana - not just the powerful few Akan tribal supremacists, and the family clans of our leaders: who are now "chopping Ghana small", waa waa.
Hmm, Ghana - ayeasem oo! May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
But let me also give you my own ("thinking-outside-the-box") super-idiot's plan to get us out of the hole the masters of the universe now running Nkrumah's Ghana (those whom this regime's more uncharitable critics - amongst Ghana's cynics - describe as: "Those profligate and highly-educated imbeciles!") have got us all into.
When our hypocrite-in-chief goes to Peking, let him talk to the Chinese leaders and tell them we want them to do a deal with our government to rescue Ghana - which is currently in financial distress.
We must quickly nationalise our oil and natural gas industries; pay fair compensation to the foreign oil companies currently here (by issuing sovereign bonds as payment to those bloodsuckers drilling for oil off our coastline) - and give the best resourced of the state-owned Chinese oil and natural gas companies 30% stakes in joint-ventures with the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) getting 70%.
And in exchange we want them to take Ghanaian government sovereign bonds in return for 10 US$ billions cash immediately. We should also ask them to let the world's biggest mobile company, China Mobile, take a 30% stake in the "enlarged" GT for US$2 billions.
Since we face a national emergency, we must also nationalise all our other strategic industries held by foreigners (again pay those bloodsuckers fair compensation!), such as gold; diamonds; manganese and other minerals - and replace those who currently own them, with new business models of joint-ventures between the Ghanaian nation-state and the best-resourced of the various industry-specific state-owned Chinese companies.
In all those undertakings, Ghana will take 70% stakes with 30% going to the best Chinese state-owned companies in those sectors of our economy - and which are also leading global players in those industries.
We really need not worry about loss of Western investor confidence in us, at all - as in wartime, all those Western nations would do exactly the same. And we, as you know, by now, my brother, currently face a national emergency: akin to a war-time emergency, do we not?
Now, the "My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong" myrmidons who blindly support political parties will probably not like this one, one bit, but when he returns, the president (Ghana's hypocrite-in-chief: Mr. Rawlings being the number two!) ought to immediately sack all his ministers.
He must then form a small national unity government consisting of Mr. Kofi Annan and the leaders of all Ghana's political parties, to steer the ship of state in the interest of all the people of Ghana - not just the powerful few Akan tribal supremacists, and the family clans of our leaders: who are now "chopping Ghana small", waa waa.
Hmm, Ghana - ayeasem oo! May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
Tuesday 5 August 2008
BRAVO, CPP - SUPERB GT PRIVATISATION STATEMENT!
Hmmm, Ghana - ayeasem oo! Privatization in today's Ghana appears to be driven solely, by the very fat fees the regime-crony oligarchs who dominate Ghana's financial services industry, are raking in.
And their "advice-cum-recommendation" to our present rulers, in return for their massive fees?
Well, dear reader, they are asking our incompetent rulers to sell everything of value in our nation - to enable it ride out the current economic storm (compounded by its own ineptness and lack of foresight!) and tide it over: until oil revenues start flowing in earnest, a few years down the road.
And naturally, to keep up the momentum, those clever and politically well-connected regime crony-oligarchs, have made the greediest of the "too-clever-by-half " rogues in this regime (said by the most uncharitable of the cynics amongst its critics, to be full of well-educated imbeciles!), drool at the mouth - at the hard currency kickbacks to be had: through yet more dodgy and insane privatizations.
Who led Iroko to GT, is a question some of us have asked for months without any answers forthcoming from GT.
The good people of Ghana must know whether Iroko has connections in our political class and within Ghana's financial services industry. And if yes, who are they - and what role did they play in the GT privatization process?
How on earth do the regulators in Ghana expect there to be investor-confidence in our financial markets, when such sharp practice appears to be standard practice here - and 'respectable' white-collar crooks can get away with such actions?
Iroko is domiciled in Mauritius to hide its ownership, according to the more cynical critics of this regime. In addition, it was spun off and sold by its erstwhile Botswanan parent because it was loss-making and hemorrhaging badly.
Is it not worrying and incredible that such a concern could come to Ghana - and secure the right to issue corporate bonds in London on GT's behalf?
Who led Iroko to Ghana - and straight to the doors of the corporate boardroom of GT? Where were the regulators? Were they fast asleep, perhaps?
There are many people in Ghana, who are very concerned about the incestuous relationships between players in the industry and regulators.
And if it emerges that any of the members of the GT board were also connected with any Ghanaian financial services sector players who led Iroko to Ghana, they ought to be prosecuted for insider dealing - and banned permanently from working in the industry. Period.
Apart from Ghana, there is nowhere else on the planet Earth, where so many ex-central bank governors and senior executives, either own banks or are significant players in the most prominent banks in the country, after their retirement!
The question we must demand a straight answer to, from our rulers, is: what repayment plan did GT have in place, to meet payments on the interest it had to pay those overseas investors who invested in the GT corporate bonds issued in London by Iroko?
And was the repayment plan one that would not compromise the earnings of GT and imperil its long term viability, if indeed the GT management did have one in place?
And if they did not, what does that tell us about Iroko and the GT management, in this shabby affair?
Most Ghanaians have no doubt that this most egregious of senseless privatization transactions, will, in the fullness of time, land all those who took part in it, before the Fast Track High Court in the not too distant future - and then after their conviction, they will all head straight from there to the Nsawam prison, as sure as day follows night!
And whiles we are on the touchy subject of financial skullduggery in Ghana's national life, precisely what repayment plan (for the amazingly good interest payments to the Western investors overseas who piled into Ghana's "super-awuf " US$ 750 million sovereign bonds!), did the minister of finance have in place before those confounded sovereign bonds were issued, amidst such fanfare?
And if it is the case that the regime simply wanted money to develop Ghana with (as opposed to collecting kickbacks from the fees earned by their professional advisers!), why did they not rather approach the government of the People's Republic of China (which has long-trumpeted its desire to have a special relationship with resource-rich Africa!), and convince them to buy Ghanaian sovereign bonds with an interest of say 3% and "loan" them say US$10 billions, in return?
If the minister of finance did not have a repayment plan to meet those interest payments to the investors who bought the sovereign bonds, is that not an indictment of the regime of which he is such a prominent member - as well as its expensive local and overseas financial advisers?
Well, dear reader, this is yet another case heading for the Fast Track High Courts, when this regime is finally turfed out of power - for, it is an egregious example of the propensity of our political class, to recklessly cause financial loss to the Ghanaian nation-state!
Were so many of the members of this regime not driven by the unfathomable greed that is making them milk Ghana dry so ruthlessly, but were rather a group of incredibly creative thinkers and true patriots who loved their country, would they not have talked the Chinese government into taking our sovereign bonds at say 3% interest - and giving us say US$10 billions in return, for infrastructural development, in Ghana?
And if that had been done soon enough, instead of the present dire situation: one in which our country has literally been brought to its knees, would we rather not now be in the happy and positive situation in which Chinese and Ghanaian joint-venture construction companies, would presently be executing such projects: paid for by the "loan" from the Chinese government, which the Ghana's sovereign bonds sold to them would more or less act as guarantees for?
Well, if we are saddled with a regime that actually believed, at a certain point in time, that the owners of a seedy Chinese hairdressing salon in the backstreets of London, could, and would, loan them zillions to develop Ghana with, should we really be surprised that Vodafone is taking us for such a huge ride?
And do those loudmouthed "My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong" myrmidons remember all the amazing Kweku-Ananse-toli stories we were told by the masters of the universe now temporarily in charge of Nkrumah's Ghana, during that disgraceful period in our recent history, one wonders, dear reader?
So to recap, CPP, well done - but please make it absolutely clear to all Ghanaians that should you come to power after the December 2008 elections, you will definitely re-nationalize GT, if upon closer forensic examination of its affairs and books, any sharp practice was detected at any stage of this amazingly one-sided and obscene deal.
Hmm, Ghana - asem ebaba debi! May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
Monday 4 August 2008
A BRIEF NOTE TO A FELLOW PROGRESSIVE!
Do stay blessed, my brother. And remember that it is the desire never to rock the boat by our middle classes: because they prefer their private peace and quiet, which has enabled and emboldened those who have been gang-raping mother Ghana, to carry on regardless, all these years.
Yes, I may say unpleasant things about them, but that, in my view, is not insulting them. I am very actively involved in rural Ghana - and I see the abject poverty that the selfishness of our leaders since Nkrumah was overthrown, has condemned those decent and humble people: who feed our nation by their daily labour and struggle to survive.
It the impunity of our leaders that is an insult to all of us. But still - let us agree to disagree on that one: as personally, I certainly don't feel that what I write constitutes insults to those very evil people. And make no mistake about that my brother, what they do, is really evil!
Yours in the service of Ghana,
Kofi.
Yes, I may say unpleasant things about them, but that, in my view, is not insulting them. I am very actively involved in rural Ghana - and I see the abject poverty that the selfishness of our leaders since Nkrumah was overthrown, has condemned those decent and humble people: who feed our nation by their daily labour and struggle to survive.
It the impunity of our leaders that is an insult to all of us. But still - let us agree to disagree on that one: as personally, I certainly don't feel that what I write constitutes insults to those very evil people. And make no mistake about that my brother, what they do, is really evil!
Yours in the service of Ghana,
Kofi.
EMAIL TO KOJO MPRAH JNR.
Point taken - but don't forget that what is going on is an attempt to rewrite the history of our struggle for independence, no less.
And above all, it is an attempt to provide justification and explain away the ghastly impact of the selfishness and greed resulting from a very sick misinterpretation of a political ideology - based on the base belief by selfish and privileged individuals that the end justifies the means.
It is this slavish adherence to a form of capitalism (the "robber baron" 19th century version that is even no longer practised in the West!) that has seen a few powerful and greedy people prosper mightily: whiles all around us, rubbish slowly engulfs our towns and cities; newly-built culverts and roads disintegrate before our very eyes; shoddy and dangerous goods are permitted to be imported and dumped on unaware consumers; society worships dubiously acquired wealth, by dubious characters; and there is universal disdain for poor but principled and honest individuals; etc. etc. - and all this, because some misguided Ghanaians believe that private greed at the expense of society is OK: if it will make them wealthy individuals.
As a result a large number of the main state officials supposed to be protecting consumers and regulating businesses to ensure that they pay their taxes; and are environmentally and socially responsible corporate citizens, are busy looking to their own wealth creation agenda - instead of serving society.
Opanin, its well nigh impossible to ignore those who seek to glorify such selfishness, in the name of "private-sector led growth." The blind pursuit of GDP growth, without actually examining what really constitutes that growth, is saddling future generations of Ghanaians with terrible environmental challenges.
And in the end, if we do not come out of the shadow of conventional economic thinking, all the wealth we create as a people, will be used to repair the harm we are causing to the natural environment and to the health of individual consumers. Just cast your mind back to the news report about a year or two ago: of the consignment of palm oil from Ghana that was withdrawn from shops in the UK - because it had been adulterated with cancer-causing red dye.
Who, in our homeland Ghana, my brother, is preventing such dangerous stuff, being put on the local "free market" by unregulated private businessmen/women - who only care about their businesses' profits? Yes, let the private sector create wealth; yes, let the markets be the ultimate deciders of the fate of products and services, by all means.
But should we not have a strong enough Ghanaian nation-state: to ensure that human welfare and the welfare of the natural environment are protected at all times - to ensure that we all have a good quality of life: not just a powerful few with greedy ambitions?
Do stay blessed, Opanin. Just as a matter of interest, did you go to Prempeh College, by any chance? And if you are keen on that sort of thing, you can earn some decent foreign money writing to post at: http://www.helium.com/.
Best wishes,
Kofi.
And above all, it is an attempt to provide justification and explain away the ghastly impact of the selfishness and greed resulting from a very sick misinterpretation of a political ideology - based on the base belief by selfish and privileged individuals that the end justifies the means.
It is this slavish adherence to a form of capitalism (the "robber baron" 19th century version that is even no longer practised in the West!) that has seen a few powerful and greedy people prosper mightily: whiles all around us, rubbish slowly engulfs our towns and cities; newly-built culverts and roads disintegrate before our very eyes; shoddy and dangerous goods are permitted to be imported and dumped on unaware consumers; society worships dubiously acquired wealth, by dubious characters; and there is universal disdain for poor but principled and honest individuals; etc. etc. - and all this, because some misguided Ghanaians believe that private greed at the expense of society is OK: if it will make them wealthy individuals.
As a result a large number of the main state officials supposed to be protecting consumers and regulating businesses to ensure that they pay their taxes; and are environmentally and socially responsible corporate citizens, are busy looking to their own wealth creation agenda - instead of serving society.
Opanin, its well nigh impossible to ignore those who seek to glorify such selfishness, in the name of "private-sector led growth." The blind pursuit of GDP growth, without actually examining what really constitutes that growth, is saddling future generations of Ghanaians with terrible environmental challenges.
And in the end, if we do not come out of the shadow of conventional economic thinking, all the wealth we create as a people, will be used to repair the harm we are causing to the natural environment and to the health of individual consumers. Just cast your mind back to the news report about a year or two ago: of the consignment of palm oil from Ghana that was withdrawn from shops in the UK - because it had been adulterated with cancer-causing red dye.
Who, in our homeland Ghana, my brother, is preventing such dangerous stuff, being put on the local "free market" by unregulated private businessmen/women - who only care about their businesses' profits? Yes, let the private sector create wealth; yes, let the markets be the ultimate deciders of the fate of products and services, by all means.
But should we not have a strong enough Ghanaian nation-state: to ensure that human welfare and the welfare of the natural environment are protected at all times - to ensure that we all have a good quality of life: not just a powerful few with greedy ambitions?
Do stay blessed, Opanin. Just as a matter of interest, did you go to Prempeh College, by any chance? And if you are keen on that sort of thing, you can earn some decent foreign money writing to post at: http://www.helium.com/.
Best wishes,
Kofi.
Sunday 3 August 2008
Re: ITS THE GOVERNANCE SYSTEM, STUPID!
Opanin, reference your article entitled: "Its the system of governance, stupid!" which was posted on the http://www.ghanaweb/ general news web page of Sunday, 4th August 2008.
When you say, quote: "Since, this system of governance was designed to be run and operated by European expatriates, these home-based Ghanaian "expatriate" elites have not been able to work the system efficiently. Home-based Ghanaian wannabe expatriates have not and will never be able to operate the system efficiently to develop the country because they did not and have not been able to achieve true European "expatriate" status." unquote, what precisely do you seek to convey?
Is your piece a paean for Ghanaians abroad: one meant to create some pride in them to stir them to, quote, "take back our country", unquote? If truth be told, is it the case that as a "Diasporan" you would rather that Ghana was ruled mostly by "returnees" from long sojourns abroad in the Western world?
And when you say, quote: " The good people of Ghana should do whatever it takes to design a system of governance that can be operated by the home-based Ghanaian elites (not wannabe "expatriates")." unquote: well, how about a simple governance idea that draws on our traditions and make them work for a modern African people living in a 21st century ICT age - who want to progress rapidly, and create Africa's equivalent of Scandinavia's egalitarian societies: from the revenues from its nationalised oil and natural gas industries?
I say nationalised, because there are many Ghanaians who feel strongly that if their country actually wants to make the most of its "once-in-a-lifetime" windfall-gift from providence, then Ghana must replace today's daylight-robbery arrangements with private foreign oil companies, with joint ventures in which our state-owned Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) has 80% shareholding with 20% going to the best resourced of the Chinese and Indian state-owned oil and natural gas companies - whom we must insist, ought to provide all the working capital, for that lucrative privilege!
So now to the "new" governance idea: Since we all know that inherited privilege is the biggest enemy of a meritocracy, let us decide that we will swiftly end the "serf-mentality" in the average Ghanaian, which is the continuing result of our insistence on maintaining the iron-grip that our pre-colonial feudal elites still have on Ghanaian society: by doing what the Indians did with their Maharajahs a long time ago - finally make those divisive bloodsuckers and narrow-minded tribal supremacists, history.
We must nationalise all the land held in trust by Ghana's traditional rulers, pay fair compensation to the people they hold the land in trust for - and abolish old-style inherited chieftaincy in Ghana, forever!
It will end the sycophancy that makes so many decent-minded people in Ghana close their eyes to the blatant looting that has taken place over the years since we gained our independence, by the regimes we have had - beginning from that of our great founding father Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah.
Tragically, Nkrumah was unable to find the time and space, to rid the Convention Peoples Party (CPP) of its share of crooks who only got themselves into politics to gain power simply to enrich themselves - and in ridding ourselves of the chieftaincy institution, it will enable us finally see the back of this dreadful miasma: that still envelopes our homeland Ghana from the pre-colonial days with its ghastly negativity.
Singapore has become a success today because it opted to use Nkrumah's visionary formula of public private partnerships (PPP).
It was an economic model that Nkrumah, who was an original thinker who thought outside the box, had fashioned to power Ghana's industrialisation drive (please refer to his 1963 speech at the opening ceremony of the oil refinery at Tema, and his letter of 26th January 1964, to President L.B. Johnson - which is in the Johnson Library and is a declassified U.S. State Department document: and also available in the book published by the Socialist Forum of Ghana, entitled: "The Great Deception"!).
Singapore's luck, was that the Singaporean elite was, and still is, an honest; highly intelligent; extraordinarily creative; and very disciplined one.
Sadly, apart from Nkrumah and a few others, the bigwigs of the CPP, were so unlike the Singaporean elite - most of them being corrupt and undisciplined individuals. Without all those sterling qualities in our ruling elites today, and tomorrow, we will still continue going nowhere fast, as a people.
After we successfully rid ourselves of the remnants of our feudal past, our so-called traditional rulers, why do we not (since we are operating on the assumption that every Ghanaian is a "royal" by virtue of being born in Nkrumah's Ghana), turn Ghana into the world's only democratically elected monarchy?
And instead of electing an executive president every four years, we simply elect one of our number to be our monarch, Ghana's Omanpanin or Omanhemaa, if its a woman, with powers (and limitations on that power!) similar to that of the French president, and who rules with a prime minister - the leader of the majority party in parliament?
Under this new democratic monarchy, the elected equivalent of today's district chief executives (DCE's) will then become elected paramount chiefs of the districts (with clearly defined powers and limitations on those powers too!), which will be the new paramountcy's!
What better means of obtaining a new and thoroughly modern system of governance, which also draws on our yearning to maintain aspects of our "culture" than to have an elected Ghana Omanpanin or Ghana Omanhemaa?
An especially useful development, as pointed out before, is that under the same system, today's unelected district chief executive, will become tomorrow's elected replacement of the arrogant and dissimulating little tin-gods of today: all the numerous divisive and negative tribal supremacist paramount chiefs in our districts - the very royal representatives of our backward feudal past!
Hmm, now I wonder what our many loudmouthed "My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong" myrmidons will say to such modernisation of what is clearly still a superstition-ridden and ritualistic society - the result of our maintaining that ghastly traditional feudal system, in an era we should be aiming to make our fast-developing nation a world-class meritocracy: not the kleptocracy we have sadly allowed it to become.
So the question we should ask ourselves, Amanfuo, is: why should we continue to tolerate a feudal system whose anachronistic nature is illustrated perfectly in its need to keep some people poor and ignorant - so that they will always be amenable to getting a few cedis in return for carrying their fellow human beings aloft in a palanquin? Pure nonsense on bamboo stilts. Period.
Hmm Ghana - ayeasem oo! May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
When you say, quote: "Since, this system of governance was designed to be run and operated by European expatriates, these home-based Ghanaian "expatriate" elites have not been able to work the system efficiently. Home-based Ghanaian wannabe expatriates have not and will never be able to operate the system efficiently to develop the country because they did not and have not been able to achieve true European "expatriate" status." unquote, what precisely do you seek to convey?
Is your piece a paean for Ghanaians abroad: one meant to create some pride in them to stir them to, quote, "take back our country", unquote? If truth be told, is it the case that as a "Diasporan" you would rather that Ghana was ruled mostly by "returnees" from long sojourns abroad in the Western world?
And when you say, quote: " The good people of Ghana should do whatever it takes to design a system of governance that can be operated by the home-based Ghanaian elites (not wannabe "expatriates")." unquote: well, how about a simple governance idea that draws on our traditions and make them work for a modern African people living in a 21st century ICT age - who want to progress rapidly, and create Africa's equivalent of Scandinavia's egalitarian societies: from the revenues from its nationalised oil and natural gas industries?
I say nationalised, because there are many Ghanaians who feel strongly that if their country actually wants to make the most of its "once-in-a-lifetime" windfall-gift from providence, then Ghana must replace today's daylight-robbery arrangements with private foreign oil companies, with joint ventures in which our state-owned Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) has 80% shareholding with 20% going to the best resourced of the Chinese and Indian state-owned oil and natural gas companies - whom we must insist, ought to provide all the working capital, for that lucrative privilege!
So now to the "new" governance idea: Since we all know that inherited privilege is the biggest enemy of a meritocracy, let us decide that we will swiftly end the "serf-mentality" in the average Ghanaian, which is the continuing result of our insistence on maintaining the iron-grip that our pre-colonial feudal elites still have on Ghanaian society: by doing what the Indians did with their Maharajahs a long time ago - finally make those divisive bloodsuckers and narrow-minded tribal supremacists, history.
We must nationalise all the land held in trust by Ghana's traditional rulers, pay fair compensation to the people they hold the land in trust for - and abolish old-style inherited chieftaincy in Ghana, forever!
It will end the sycophancy that makes so many decent-minded people in Ghana close their eyes to the blatant looting that has taken place over the years since we gained our independence, by the regimes we have had - beginning from that of our great founding father Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah.
Tragically, Nkrumah was unable to find the time and space, to rid the Convention Peoples Party (CPP) of its share of crooks who only got themselves into politics to gain power simply to enrich themselves - and in ridding ourselves of the chieftaincy institution, it will enable us finally see the back of this dreadful miasma: that still envelopes our homeland Ghana from the pre-colonial days with its ghastly negativity.
Singapore has become a success today because it opted to use Nkrumah's visionary formula of public private partnerships (PPP).
It was an economic model that Nkrumah, who was an original thinker who thought outside the box, had fashioned to power Ghana's industrialisation drive (please refer to his 1963 speech at the opening ceremony of the oil refinery at Tema, and his letter of 26th January 1964, to President L.B. Johnson - which is in the Johnson Library and is a declassified U.S. State Department document: and also available in the book published by the Socialist Forum of Ghana, entitled: "The Great Deception"!).
Singapore's luck, was that the Singaporean elite was, and still is, an honest; highly intelligent; extraordinarily creative; and very disciplined one.
Sadly, apart from Nkrumah and a few others, the bigwigs of the CPP, were so unlike the Singaporean elite - most of them being corrupt and undisciplined individuals. Without all those sterling qualities in our ruling elites today, and tomorrow, we will still continue going nowhere fast, as a people.
After we successfully rid ourselves of the remnants of our feudal past, our so-called traditional rulers, why do we not (since we are operating on the assumption that every Ghanaian is a "royal" by virtue of being born in Nkrumah's Ghana), turn Ghana into the world's only democratically elected monarchy?
And instead of electing an executive president every four years, we simply elect one of our number to be our monarch, Ghana's Omanpanin or Omanhemaa, if its a woman, with powers (and limitations on that power!) similar to that of the French president, and who rules with a prime minister - the leader of the majority party in parliament?
Under this new democratic monarchy, the elected equivalent of today's district chief executives (DCE's) will then become elected paramount chiefs of the districts (with clearly defined powers and limitations on those powers too!), which will be the new paramountcy's!
What better means of obtaining a new and thoroughly modern system of governance, which also draws on our yearning to maintain aspects of our "culture" than to have an elected Ghana Omanpanin or Ghana Omanhemaa?
An especially useful development, as pointed out before, is that under the same system, today's unelected district chief executive, will become tomorrow's elected replacement of the arrogant and dissimulating little tin-gods of today: all the numerous divisive and negative tribal supremacist paramount chiefs in our districts - the very royal representatives of our backward feudal past!
Hmm, now I wonder what our many loudmouthed "My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong" myrmidons will say to such modernisation of what is clearly still a superstition-ridden and ritualistic society - the result of our maintaining that ghastly traditional feudal system, in an era we should be aiming to make our fast-developing nation a world-class meritocracy: not the kleptocracy we have sadly allowed it to become.
So the question we should ask ourselves, Amanfuo, is: why should we continue to tolerate a feudal system whose anachronistic nature is illustrated perfectly in its need to keep some people poor and ignorant - so that they will always be amenable to getting a few cedis in return for carrying their fellow human beings aloft in a palanquin? Pure nonsense on bamboo stilts. Period.
Hmm Ghana - ayeasem oo! May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
Saturday 2 August 2008
CLUELESS & CO. IN TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO!
Typical! Hmm, Ghana - ayeasam oo! Look where we have now ended up: at a time when we ought to be following Venezuela's example, Mr. Clueless talks about learning lessons from Trinidad and Tobago!
And whiles Ghana's coffers get even emptier, it appears that our hypocrite-in-chief is still smitten by the wanderlust bug - and is continuing his globetrotting-mania: jetting to obscure places around the globe on useless missions, at the hapless Ghanaian taxpayers' expense (as usual!).
Is this not the same politician who said at the beginning of his tenure, that Ghanaians had to cut their coat according to the size of their cloth? Incredible!
Well, let the "My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong" myrmidons be objective for once: since we apparently now face a national emergency, is it not time that we stopped this sly gentleman from travelling overseas at the least excuse - at the hardpressed Ghanaian taxpayers' expense?
Or is it the case, dear reader, that the "bush telegraph" is accurate, after all, perhaps?
Well, apparently, dear reader, rumour in certain circles has it that some of the greediest of the rogues amongst our rulers today, have only gone to the Caribbean to "withdraw" the over-invoicing money from the infamous national awards jewellery contract deal.
Hmmm, isn't it just amazing how the rumour mill spins so many hard-to-believe fantasies, in these days of extreme-hardship: when our homeland Ghana has been brought to its knees by the masters of the universe now running it, dear reader?
Well, according to the rumor-mongers amongst the more uncharitable of our national cynics (and it does sound like a rather tallish tale, one must admit!), apparently the UK sister-jewellers, Parnell's Ltd. and Thomas Cleaver Ltd., were asked to "send" the finished bling-bling chi chi medals to the Channel Island of Jersey, to hide its origins (in a "paperwork" sense, i.e.!).
And I can confirm that I did actually check with Parnell's Ltd.(whose Rugby subsidiary is Thomas Cleaver Ltd.) - but was told by a very nice gentleman that they had not sent any of their products "outside the UK."
Being a rather slow sort of chap, I am still trying to work out if it was an innocent answer - or one pregnant with meaning!
For, it neatly sidesteps answering the question whether or not Ghana did purchase medals from them. Next stop HM Customs and New Scotland Yard, perhaps?
Quite frankly, I don't think I'll bother anymore: as I no longer care what this regime of many liars does anymore. They have become so drunk with power that it appears they pay no heed to the Ghanaian saying: "No condition is permanent."
Having become so impervious to reason, perhaps they need to learn a thing or two from the Tsatsu Tsikatas; Dan Abodapis; Kwame Prepahs and the Victor Selormeys - all of whom were tried, convicted and jailed under this regime - for allegedly wilfully causing financial loss to the Ghanaian nation-state!
But I digress, dear reader. Well, mulling over the answer of the Parnell's chap, it finally dawned on me that as a matter of fact the UK Channel Island of Jersey, is certainly not outside the UK - so his answer was pregnant with meaning, after all!
Only time will tell us the truth in this shabby affair - as in this day and age, trying to fool all the citizens of a poor developing nation of 25 million hard-up souls all the time, is an absurd and futile undertaking. Hmmm, Ghana - asem ebaba debi!
Anyway, it appears that some members of our small army of too-clever-by-half "Mr-Anonymous-VIP-Persons" wanted the origins of the bling-bling chi chi medals kept secret, dear reader!
And, apparently, the kickback "lolly" from the over-invoicing proceeds in that deal, is banked somewhere in the dodgier parts of the Caribbean: after winging its way merrily (turbulence-free!) through the ether from Jersey, in the UK Channel Islands - according to the more clued-on of Ghana's cynics (if the latest "bush telegraph" offering is to be believed, i.e.!).
Hmm, Ghana - asemebaba debi! May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
And whiles Ghana's coffers get even emptier, it appears that our hypocrite-in-chief is still smitten by the wanderlust bug - and is continuing his globetrotting-mania: jetting to obscure places around the globe on useless missions, at the hapless Ghanaian taxpayers' expense (as usual!).
Is this not the same politician who said at the beginning of his tenure, that Ghanaians had to cut their coat according to the size of their cloth? Incredible!
Well, let the "My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong" myrmidons be objective for once: since we apparently now face a national emergency, is it not time that we stopped this sly gentleman from travelling overseas at the least excuse - at the hardpressed Ghanaian taxpayers' expense?
Or is it the case, dear reader, that the "bush telegraph" is accurate, after all, perhaps?
Well, apparently, dear reader, rumour in certain circles has it that some of the greediest of the rogues amongst our rulers today, have only gone to the Caribbean to "withdraw" the over-invoicing money from the infamous national awards jewellery contract deal.
Hmmm, isn't it just amazing how the rumour mill spins so many hard-to-believe fantasies, in these days of extreme-hardship: when our homeland Ghana has been brought to its knees by the masters of the universe now running it, dear reader?
Well, according to the rumor-mongers amongst the more uncharitable of our national cynics (and it does sound like a rather tallish tale, one must admit!), apparently the UK sister-jewellers, Parnell's Ltd. and Thomas Cleaver Ltd., were asked to "send" the finished bling-bling chi chi medals to the Channel Island of Jersey, to hide its origins (in a "paperwork" sense, i.e.!).
And I can confirm that I did actually check with Parnell's Ltd.(whose Rugby subsidiary is Thomas Cleaver Ltd.) - but was told by a very nice gentleman that they had not sent any of their products "outside the UK."
Being a rather slow sort of chap, I am still trying to work out if it was an innocent answer - or one pregnant with meaning!
For, it neatly sidesteps answering the question whether or not Ghana did purchase medals from them. Next stop HM Customs and New Scotland Yard, perhaps?
Quite frankly, I don't think I'll bother anymore: as I no longer care what this regime of many liars does anymore. They have become so drunk with power that it appears they pay no heed to the Ghanaian saying: "No condition is permanent."
Having become so impervious to reason, perhaps they need to learn a thing or two from the Tsatsu Tsikatas; Dan Abodapis; Kwame Prepahs and the Victor Selormeys - all of whom were tried, convicted and jailed under this regime - for allegedly wilfully causing financial loss to the Ghanaian nation-state!
But I digress, dear reader. Well, mulling over the answer of the Parnell's chap, it finally dawned on me that as a matter of fact the UK Channel Island of Jersey, is certainly not outside the UK - so his answer was pregnant with meaning, after all!
Only time will tell us the truth in this shabby affair - as in this day and age, trying to fool all the citizens of a poor developing nation of 25 million hard-up souls all the time, is an absurd and futile undertaking. Hmmm, Ghana - asem ebaba debi!
Anyway, it appears that some members of our small army of too-clever-by-half "Mr-Anonymous-VIP-Persons" wanted the origins of the bling-bling chi chi medals kept secret, dear reader!
And, apparently, the kickback "lolly" from the over-invoicing proceeds in that deal, is banked somewhere in the dodgier parts of the Caribbean: after winging its way merrily (turbulence-free!) through the ether from Jersey, in the UK Channel Islands - according to the more clued-on of Ghana's cynics (if the latest "bush telegraph" offering is to be believed, i.e.!).
Hmm, Ghana - asemebaba debi! May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
A THANK YOU NOTE TO NII OMANE QUAYE!
Many thanks - and with respect sir, actually, this fool and ignoramus called Kofi Thompson, is an organic cocoa farmer, Opanin Super-Oyansani Nii Omane Quaye.
So, luckily, we aren't supporting that sly gentleman, our hypocrite-in-chief, whose regime's profligacy has finally brought Ghana to its knees.
Perhaps you don't live here like we do - but when we told them their forays into the piranha-infested waters of the capital markets of the West would end in tears, they thought we were "envious." Hmm, poor souls, the well-educated imbeciles!
Well, Mr Clever-whatever-your-real-name-is, this fool and ignoramus Kofi Thompson (and, that, Opanin Super-Oyansani Nii Omane Quaye, is my real name: and if you ask Kweku Baako and Kwesi Pratt, they'll confirm it!) can tell you with complete confidence that as sure as day follows night, Nsawam Prison, will be the end-game, for all those who have "chopped Ghana small", and participated in the gang-rape of mother Ghana, since this regime came to power.
So if you have taken part in the gang-rape of mother Ghana too, do prepare yourself mentally - and get ready to see the inside of that dreadful place, too!
Perhaps you are one of those boot-licking "My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong" myrmidons? Hmm, ayeasem oo! Yet another clueless innocent abroad! Hmmm, Oman Ghana!
The clueless politicians you so obviously toady to, and who thought they were going to get 10% from zillions Chinese hairdressers in the seedy backstreets of London were going to loan Ghana, have now graduated to getting kickbacks from their cronies in the financial services industry.
And it is their unfathomable greed for the juicy fees they are getting from privatisations of the GT's of our nation (valuable state-owned entities built up with the blood, sweat, and tears of ordinary Ghanaian workers!), that is driving the sales of everything of value in our homeland Ghana, today. Hmm, ayeasem oo!
And as for you, Opanin Super-Oyansafuo, may God forgive you - for clearly, you are a real innocent abroad! Hmmm Ghana - asem ebaba debi!
May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
So, luckily, we aren't supporting that sly gentleman, our hypocrite-in-chief, whose regime's profligacy has finally brought Ghana to its knees.
Perhaps you don't live here like we do - but when we told them their forays into the piranha-infested waters of the capital markets of the West would end in tears, they thought we were "envious." Hmm, poor souls, the well-educated imbeciles!
Well, Mr Clever-whatever-your-real-name-is, this fool and ignoramus Kofi Thompson (and, that, Opanin Super-Oyansani Nii Omane Quaye, is my real name: and if you ask Kweku Baako and Kwesi Pratt, they'll confirm it!) can tell you with complete confidence that as sure as day follows night, Nsawam Prison, will be the end-game, for all those who have "chopped Ghana small", and participated in the gang-rape of mother Ghana, since this regime came to power.
So if you have taken part in the gang-rape of mother Ghana too, do prepare yourself mentally - and get ready to see the inside of that dreadful place, too!
Perhaps you are one of those boot-licking "My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong" myrmidons? Hmm, ayeasem oo! Yet another clueless innocent abroad! Hmmm, Oman Ghana!
The clueless politicians you so obviously toady to, and who thought they were going to get 10% from zillions Chinese hairdressers in the seedy backstreets of London were going to loan Ghana, have now graduated to getting kickbacks from their cronies in the financial services industry.
And it is their unfathomable greed for the juicy fees they are getting from privatisations of the GT's of our nation (valuable state-owned entities built up with the blood, sweat, and tears of ordinary Ghanaian workers!), that is driving the sales of everything of value in our homeland Ghana, today. Hmm, ayeasem oo!
And as for you, Opanin Super-Oyansafuo, may God forgive you - for clearly, you are a real innocent abroad! Hmmm Ghana - asem ebaba debi!
May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
Brief Note To Kwamena Mprah ( Email: kmprah@gmail.com)
Brilliant - as always! Opanin, may God bless, protect and guide you always.
You are just so cultured - unlike so many of the uncouth verbal-brutes who post on Ghanaweb. Dreadful crowd!
Shame on the unhelpful "My-party-my-tribe-right-or wrong" myrmidons, who worship daily at the cult of the mediocre: where they are led blindfolded - to hide the fact that they are actually blind!
They do our country no good at all - with their tiresome myopia on national issues.
And that semi-illiterate ('scholar') "Mr-Okoampa-Awhofe-Onimuse-Abuakwa-betu-Akim" : that "poor- English-verbal-hooligan", is chief amongst them.
Today, that mediocre teacher too, is doubtless dreaming of a job as a minister of state in 2009 - and is inflicting his ghastly pieces on us all, as a result.
It is hard to believe that a semi-illiterate like that has the effrontery to insult the greatest African of the 20th century (whose equal has even not yet been born!), Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, too. Hmm, Ghana - ayeasem oo!
May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
You are just so cultured - unlike so many of the uncouth verbal-brutes who post on Ghanaweb. Dreadful crowd!
Shame on the unhelpful "My-party-my-tribe-right-or wrong" myrmidons, who worship daily at the cult of the mediocre: where they are led blindfolded - to hide the fact that they are actually blind!
They do our country no good at all - with their tiresome myopia on national issues.
And that semi-illiterate ('scholar') "Mr-Okoampa-Awhofe-Onimuse-Abuakwa-betu-Akim" : that "poor- English-verbal-hooligan", is chief amongst them.
Today, that mediocre teacher too, is doubtless dreaming of a job as a minister of state in 2009 - and is inflicting his ghastly pieces on us all, as a result.
It is hard to believe that a semi-illiterate like that has the effrontery to insult the greatest African of the 20th century (whose equal has even not yet been born!), Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, too. Hmm, Ghana - ayeasem oo!
May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
DERRY: NOT FIT TO BE A SENIOR POLICE OFFICER IN GHANA?
Opanin Kesie, I do think that it is important to make the point that we don't particularly care where any Ghanaian public official comes from, or works in - for they are all Ghanaians!
May I humbly suggest that we leave the "My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong" myrmidons to burn their energies fanning tribal sentiment: because it obviously suits their political masters to try and divide our country and rule it, till kingdom come?
We must rid tribal supremacists (our local version of the odious white supremacists of the Western world!) from our midst. And I need not remind you that they are a minority in our homeland Ghana - and that such narrow-minded individuals can be found in every tribe in our country?
They are truly dreadful human beings - who think that those who are not from their own tribe, are inferior beings. How absurd, in this day and age, to hold such stupid and backward beliefs! But luckily for us, most ordinary Ghanaians don't think like that.
And that is is why there is virtually no extend family in this nation, which is not a multi-ethnic one: with family members from different tribes, who are related to each other, either by blood or by marrriage.
We must always give thanks to God that an enlightened human being and non-tribalistic politician like Nkrumah, became our founding father!
Where Mr. Derry comes from does not actually interest me, in the slightest - the fact simply is, he just doesn't deserve to be a senior officer in the Ghana Police Service, of today.
If it is true that a senior police officer like him did say what he is reported to have said, then it is most unfortunate. Would he rather Ghana was a dictatorship, again? Hmmm, Ghana - ayeasem oo!
Perhaps if he is victimised at some point, by those rogues amongst those in power today, whose bidding he does, he will understand why civilised people applauded this regime, when it repealed those vile laws.
Only a fool who does not understand that "No conditions is permanent" as local parlance has it, will say such inane things in public. Pure nonsense on bamboo stilts!
Taflatse, what a moron and a bloody fool: senior officers of that ilk, are definitely not fit to be in the Ghana Police Service of today. Perhaps he would thrive in a dictatorship like Sudan!
Stay blessed, Opanin Kesie. May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
May I humbly suggest that we leave the "My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong" myrmidons to burn their energies fanning tribal sentiment: because it obviously suits their political masters to try and divide our country and rule it, till kingdom come?
We must rid tribal supremacists (our local version of the odious white supremacists of the Western world!) from our midst. And I need not remind you that they are a minority in our homeland Ghana - and that such narrow-minded individuals can be found in every tribe in our country?
They are truly dreadful human beings - who think that those who are not from their own tribe, are inferior beings. How absurd, in this day and age, to hold such stupid and backward beliefs! But luckily for us, most ordinary Ghanaians don't think like that.
And that is is why there is virtually no extend family in this nation, which is not a multi-ethnic one: with family members from different tribes, who are related to each other, either by blood or by marrriage.
We must always give thanks to God that an enlightened human being and non-tribalistic politician like Nkrumah, became our founding father!
Where Mr. Derry comes from does not actually interest me, in the slightest - the fact simply is, he just doesn't deserve to be a senior officer in the Ghana Police Service, of today.
If it is true that a senior police officer like him did say what he is reported to have said, then it is most unfortunate. Would he rather Ghana was a dictatorship, again? Hmmm, Ghana - ayeasem oo!
Perhaps if he is victimised at some point, by those rogues amongst those in power today, whose bidding he does, he will understand why civilised people applauded this regime, when it repealed those vile laws.
Only a fool who does not understand that "No conditions is permanent" as local parlance has it, will say such inane things in public. Pure nonsense on bamboo stilts!
Taflatse, what a moron and a bloody fool: senior officers of that ilk, are definitely not fit to be in the Ghana Police Service of today. Perhaps he would thrive in a dictatorship like Sudan!
Stay blessed, Opanin Kesie. May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
RE: GHANA TO TAP INTO TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO'S RICH EXPERIENCE IN THE OIL INDUSTRY
Opanin, reference your comment on the http://www.ghanaweb.com// general news web page story of of Friday, 1st August 2008, with the above title.
Well, hopefully, you aren't one of those "My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong" myrmidons!
But, anyhow, Opanin you miss the point: we don't need lessons from Uncle Toms, who are lackeys of neo-colonialism.
We must ensure that this timely gift from Providence is used to turn our country into Africa's equivalent of the egalitarian societies of Scandinavia.
And to ensure that, we need to follow the example of the Irans; the Saudi Arabias; the Mexicos; and the Venezuelas - and nationalise our oil and gas industries.
For that simple strategic objective for the long-term good of a nation blessed with depleting resources such as oil and natural gas, we need not be enthralled by, or beholden to, any Caribbean Uncle Toms, please, Opanin.
Once we seize control of the industry (and naturally, we will pay fair compensation to the foreign companies now drilling for oil here: but since we are not fools, it will not be payment with cash, but with sovereign bonds!), we will then invite the best-resourced of the resource-hungry state-owned oil companies of India and China, to set up 80/20% (in our favour, naturally: since we aren't fools!) joint venture partnerships with the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC).
And and for that privilege (us being so generous as to give them a 20% stake i.e.!), we will ask them to provide all the required working capital, till kingdom come.
And if they insist on us coughing up our share, well, because we are Africans full of self-belief, and aren't clueless Uncle Toms, we will boldly tell them to loan us some of the billions they have in reserves - against our sovereign bonds!
Opanin, let us be absolutely clear about this: under no circumstances will ordinary people in Nkrumah's Ghana today, allow the grand larceny that has taken place elsewhere with the oil reserves of Africa's oil-rich nations, such as Gabon (which after all these years, still has less than 1000 kilometers of first class roads, despite its huge oil revenues over the years), to happen here, too. Period.
We will never allow our oil and natural gas revenues to either enrich the shareholders of private foreign oil companies in the name of "foreign direct investment", or any crooked Ghanaian politicians, ever.
And that, Opanin, is a none-negotiable bald fact on the ground - over which we will never compromise!
And if any too-clever-by-half politicians think they will be setting up offshore companies to syphon off our oil wealth, as General Sani Abacha, that big armed-robber-in-chief from Nigeria did, in his time; well, they had better revise their notes very quickly.
For, we will swiftly bring the 4thRepublic to an abrupt end and usher in a new and truly democratic 5th Republic, to replace it, were we to spot any "Ntikuma-style-economics" and "kokofu-football" tactics being attempted by them.
And that, dear sir, is not a threat - it is a solemn promise. And some of us are even prepared to die to make that happen! Hmm Ghana - asem ebaba debi!
May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
Well, hopefully, you aren't one of those "My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong" myrmidons!
But, anyhow, Opanin you miss the point: we don't need lessons from Uncle Toms, who are lackeys of neo-colonialism.
We must ensure that this timely gift from Providence is used to turn our country into Africa's equivalent of the egalitarian societies of Scandinavia.
And to ensure that, we need to follow the example of the Irans; the Saudi Arabias; the Mexicos; and the Venezuelas - and nationalise our oil and gas industries.
For that simple strategic objective for the long-term good of a nation blessed with depleting resources such as oil and natural gas, we need not be enthralled by, or beholden to, any Caribbean Uncle Toms, please, Opanin.
Once we seize control of the industry (and naturally, we will pay fair compensation to the foreign companies now drilling for oil here: but since we are not fools, it will not be payment with cash, but with sovereign bonds!), we will then invite the best-resourced of the resource-hungry state-owned oil companies of India and China, to set up 80/20% (in our favour, naturally: since we aren't fools!) joint venture partnerships with the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC).
And and for that privilege (us being so generous as to give them a 20% stake i.e.!), we will ask them to provide all the required working capital, till kingdom come.
And if they insist on us coughing up our share, well, because we are Africans full of self-belief, and aren't clueless Uncle Toms, we will boldly tell them to loan us some of the billions they have in reserves - against our sovereign bonds!
Opanin, let us be absolutely clear about this: under no circumstances will ordinary people in Nkrumah's Ghana today, allow the grand larceny that has taken place elsewhere with the oil reserves of Africa's oil-rich nations, such as Gabon (which after all these years, still has less than 1000 kilometers of first class roads, despite its huge oil revenues over the years), to happen here, too. Period.
We will never allow our oil and natural gas revenues to either enrich the shareholders of private foreign oil companies in the name of "foreign direct investment", or any crooked Ghanaian politicians, ever.
And that, Opanin, is a none-negotiable bald fact on the ground - over which we will never compromise!
And if any too-clever-by-half politicians think they will be setting up offshore companies to syphon off our oil wealth, as General Sani Abacha, that big armed-robber-in-chief from Nigeria did, in his time; well, they had better revise their notes very quickly.
For, we will swiftly bring the 4thRepublic to an abrupt end and usher in a new and truly democratic 5th Republic, to replace it, were we to spot any "Ntikuma-style-economics" and "kokofu-football" tactics being attempted by them.
And that, dear sir, is not a threat - it is a solemn promise. And some of us are even prepared to die to make that happen! Hmm Ghana - asem ebaba debi!
May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
Friday 1 August 2008
GHANAIAN PASTORS WANT TO HAVE FUN TOO!
Opanin, reference your posted www.ghanaweb.com comment on the Friday, 1st August 2008 general news web-page article, entitled: "Men of God" vie for the presidency"
Opanin, it is simple really. Having seen how the family clans of some of our rulers have become foreign currency multi-millionaires in eight short years, they too feel that politics is the perfect personal wealth-creation vehicle.
And they aspire to owning a very large chunk of the wealth God has so kindly bestowed on Ghana, Opanin - for they have expensive tastes in everything!
Can you imagine the amount of labouring in the Lord's vineyard that is involved in their extraction of wealth out of armies of poor and desperate women looking for husbands and children; delusional individuals who feel their mother's are witches, who are stopping them from prospering, and whom consequently they want eliminated from this world and sent to heaven to help them from afar; sundry losers and the hopeless, seeking God's intervention in acquiring visas to enable them travel to, and live illegally, in those nations whose streets they hear are paved with gold, in the Americas the UK and the EU?
And can you imagine the endless number of 24/7 weeks; months and years of exhausting all-night prayer sessions, needed to extract sufficient wealth from all those emotionally-ill individuals?
Individuals, who in reality, actually only need to see a psycho-therapist, not a con-man/woman masquerading as an anointed man/woman of God, to see an end to their troubles?
Opanin, there is now a sea-change in what is a new and thriving industry, and the leading players are carving out individual niches, to enable the cleverest individuals amongst them, who dominate Ghana's only growth industry: setting up a charismatic church in a defunct-factory building, to make sufficient money - to enable them live in the style to which they have become accustomed.
And according to the cynics, that is why we are seeing a new trend of charismatic churches setting up countless universities; hospitals; and now, political parties, Opanin.
The smartest ones amongst our men/women of God, understand that politics beats all those humdrum tax-dodge wheezes, by zillions of miles, Opanin.
Plus, as seen plainly by the examples shown us under the two regimes we have experienced thus far, under the 1992 constitution, being in politics, unlike the dreary business of organising physically-punishing all-night prayer sessions to rip off poor emotionally-challenged losers, is a lot of fun!
For, whiles solemnly swearing not to ever rip your country off and doing exactly the opposite (largely through the agency of a myriad of offshore shell companies registered in the Channel Islands and the dodgy parts of the Caribbean, expressly for the purpose of collecting and hiding hard currency kickbacks, and in which your ownership is hidden in the names of nominees), you work throughout your tenure, in a glorious air-conditioned cocoon: and get "free-everything" perks!
Doesn't being amongst Ghana's ruling elite, beat being a mere self-styled Archbishop, shouting yourself hoarse, week after boring week of main Sunday church services?
What beats freebies paid for by the hapless Ghanaian taxpayer, such as: super-expensive posh cars; telephone access with IDD; posh official accommodation, renovated constantly: as your tastes change with time; the eternal adulation and respect of the very fools you are ripping off - and best of all, other men's wives and beautiful young things galore (i.e.HIV/AIDS-ridden girls): on all of whom you shower expensive gifts of luxury compact 4x4's; posh houses; holidays abroad; as well as open fat foreign currency bank accounts, for (and bless with an 'illegitimate' child or two, when you are in top form!)?
That, Opanin, is the allure of politics for our canny pastors - and don't be surprised if in a few years hence, they also end up as the "kingmakers" of Ghanaian politics: supplanting the tiresome megalomaniacs amongst our traditional rulers whose overweening ambition has seen them meddling in politics (contrary to all our constitutional edicts!), at the highest levels - opening up fissures along tribal lines in the Ghanaian polity in the process: and dividing a hitherto united and modern African nation. Hmm Ghana - ayeasem oo!
May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
Opanin, it is simple really. Having seen how the family clans of some of our rulers have become foreign currency multi-millionaires in eight short years, they too feel that politics is the perfect personal wealth-creation vehicle.
And they aspire to owning a very large chunk of the wealth God has so kindly bestowed on Ghana, Opanin - for they have expensive tastes in everything!
Can you imagine the amount of labouring in the Lord's vineyard that is involved in their extraction of wealth out of armies of poor and desperate women looking for husbands and children; delusional individuals who feel their mother's are witches, who are stopping them from prospering, and whom consequently they want eliminated from this world and sent to heaven to help them from afar; sundry losers and the hopeless, seeking God's intervention in acquiring visas to enable them travel to, and live illegally, in those nations whose streets they hear are paved with gold, in the Americas the UK and the EU?
And can you imagine the endless number of 24/7 weeks; months and years of exhausting all-night prayer sessions, needed to extract sufficient wealth from all those emotionally-ill individuals?
Individuals, who in reality, actually only need to see a psycho-therapist, not a con-man/woman masquerading as an anointed man/woman of God, to see an end to their troubles?
Opanin, there is now a sea-change in what is a new and thriving industry, and the leading players are carving out individual niches, to enable the cleverest individuals amongst them, who dominate Ghana's only growth industry: setting up a charismatic church in a defunct-factory building, to make sufficient money - to enable them live in the style to which they have become accustomed.
And according to the cynics, that is why we are seeing a new trend of charismatic churches setting up countless universities; hospitals; and now, political parties, Opanin.
The smartest ones amongst our men/women of God, understand that politics beats all those humdrum tax-dodge wheezes, by zillions of miles, Opanin.
Plus, as seen plainly by the examples shown us under the two regimes we have experienced thus far, under the 1992 constitution, being in politics, unlike the dreary business of organising physically-punishing all-night prayer sessions to rip off poor emotionally-challenged losers, is a lot of fun!
For, whiles solemnly swearing not to ever rip your country off and doing exactly the opposite (largely through the agency of a myriad of offshore shell companies registered in the Channel Islands and the dodgy parts of the Caribbean, expressly for the purpose of collecting and hiding hard currency kickbacks, and in which your ownership is hidden in the names of nominees), you work throughout your tenure, in a glorious air-conditioned cocoon: and get "free-everything" perks!
Doesn't being amongst Ghana's ruling elite, beat being a mere self-styled Archbishop, shouting yourself hoarse, week after boring week of main Sunday church services?
What beats freebies paid for by the hapless Ghanaian taxpayer, such as: super-expensive posh cars; telephone access with IDD; posh official accommodation, renovated constantly: as your tastes change with time; the eternal adulation and respect of the very fools you are ripping off - and best of all, other men's wives and beautiful young things galore (i.e.HIV/AIDS-ridden girls): on all of whom you shower expensive gifts of luxury compact 4x4's; posh houses; holidays abroad; as well as open fat foreign currency bank accounts, for (and bless with an 'illegitimate' child or two, when you are in top form!)?
That, Opanin, is the allure of politics for our canny pastors - and don't be surprised if in a few years hence, they also end up as the "kingmakers" of Ghanaian politics: supplanting the tiresome megalomaniacs amongst our traditional rulers whose overweening ambition has seen them meddling in politics (contrary to all our constitutional edicts!), at the highest levels - opening up fissures along tribal lines in the Ghanaian polity in the process: and dividing a hitherto united and modern African nation. Hmm Ghana - ayeasem oo!
May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
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