A satire
Who asked Rita Tweneboah to sing?
To describe her first (and hopefully last) CD cum cassette as a musical disaster is to be guilty of inadequate vocabulary.
Nothing exists in the English language, or in any language that I know, to describe this incoherent, clangorous nonsensical piece Ms Rita foisted on us as a high musical achievement.
Any primary school singing group could have easily produced something better than the shit (pardon the scatological term) that made Ms Rita genuflected with enthusiasm.
Listen to her: “I thank the Almighty God for allowing me to complete successfully this taxing musical project,” she gushed to me breathlessly at the low-key, two-room affairs she shares with her manager cum producer at Alajo, a suburb of Accra.
The manager, a lanky lad wore dark glasses in the poorly lit room. A Che Guevera's beret lay on his head like a bird of paradise. The last part of a joint dangled from his enormous lip.
He accented her every word with a nod of the head.
He looked like one high on some performance-enhancement drug.
Why do we have to drag the gods into this bizarre musical affair?
Mere mortals, relying on their native abilities, have produced much better musical works. Ms Rita must be thinking that celestial intervention is a substitute for ABILITY.
If there is an award for the WORST CD EVER, Ms Rita will win it with ease.
The CD, the one I listened to, started as though a drunkard got hold of a guitar and started strumming un-rythmically. Then a fellow bibber apparently rescued a piano and punched the keys erratically. On top of this clangorous mishmash, Ms Rita attempted to sing - at least that is what she appeared to be doing.
A good musical voice might have save the day, but [alas] Ms Rita's voice will make you puke, yes vomit.
Track two follows the same mushy pattern. Let us not waste time on the next three tracks. In track six, Ms Rita decided to go for what must have appeared to her to be gospel. In a confusing pantomime of drums, noises, guitar, piano, horns, drums and keyboard, she wailed some imitation of spiritual songs.
Again, her voice spoiled the fun.
It is difficult to imagine what Ms Rita was trying to do in track seven.
As though telling herself: "I am tired. I am fed up with this whole nonsense. Let's get done with all these shit and be done with it."
The track opened with the guitars dominating and pushing Ms Rita's grating voice out of the way. The guitarists then went on an insane display of guitar pyrotechnics.
These fellows, apparently high on some chemical-enhancements, must have just left their fingers waddled on the wires without caring what keys are hit.
In track eight (blessedly, the last), Ms Rita performed a mournful rendition of another spiritual generously sprinkled with 'Gye Nyame,' 'Jehowah,' 'Awurade,' and 'Yesu.'
Again, her voice did the whole thing a great injustice.
Granted that Ms Rita shares her manager cum producer's bed, how did any self-respecting studio managed to get such a shoddy job out of its doors and stamped it with its label?
The managers of CD-X Studio, who recently were in the news boasting about their latest hi-tech equipments, should tell us what they were thinking before releasing this monstrosity to the Ghanaian public.
The listening public certainly deserves something better.
Are we to believe that good face (Ms Rita, with a full, dreamy African face, inviting sensuous thick lips and winning smiles is very beautiful), and gorgeous body (her succulent body, the stuffs dreams are made of, giggles to her every movement), is enough to get an album out?
So, OK, Ms Rita cannot sing, her guitarists do no not know one key from another, her keyboard player is both inept and insane and her horn-man is a crazy-banana, didn't her lyrics rise up to the occasion?
Not on your life.
It is not only that the woman cannot sing, she also cannot write music.
Although, in bold Garamond type on the CD jacket, she boasted that: "All lairics (sic) ritten (sic) by Rita Tweneboah," the fact of the matter is that Ms Rita simply cannot write - prose, verse, music or anything else for that matter.
How could she when she has problems with elementary grammar? Sample this:
“Along the cost we moves (sic) (she meant 'coast')
Move, move, move [2*].
Sea water in the Area Move, move, move [2*].
Plenty of sand and people we sees (sic) .
Move, move, move [2*].
We eats (sic) fish and shito .
Move, move, move [2*]”.
Alternatively, try to make sense of this - from track four:
“A child is an angel in the face of the mother (sic).
A mother is an angel in the face of the child (sic).
God is an angel of heaven .
Angels are messengers of our Father in heaven.
Who send us messages from our home, Jerusalem Oh, Jerusalem, Salem, Salem.”
What are we to think of the mind capable of producing such 'songs'?
Ms Rita's inability (perhaps, absolute incapability is a better word) to sing well is matched only by her sheer lack of dancing abilities.
Nothing evidences this more than her pathetic attempt to dance in the accompanying video which she showed to me with glee.
If her singing can be dismissed as a disaster, Ms Rita's dancing is pure shame.
Many a fine African lady can do justice to dancing by simply moving her body, not so Ms Rita.
In her gallant efforts to impress and overcome an obvious natural handicap, she turned herself into something like a robot programmed to pantomime a dance.
No matter the type of music being played, it was always the same steps for Ms Rita as though she is following a rigid dancing script.
Her style of dancing is like this: Plant your legs widely apart with your buttocks (yards and yards of it) sticking out; throw your left hand this way, your right the other, then shake your head like you've got an epileptic seizure, and you get a pretty good picture of what Ms Rita did in the video.
"We made the video in Belgium." She enthused to me as though a Belgium stamp of approval can mask a shoddy job and bestow legitimacy on a very poor performance.
In a bow to the trash that goes for modernity, Ms Rita's fashion designers managed to reveal more than they hide.
In some scenes, she wore ultra-miniskirts that are no larger than a Nigerian postage stamp.
Although naturally endowed with great natural beauty, Ms Rita's heavy make-up made her look like a cheap whore. The wigs are definitely Brazilian and the mighty boobs are suspiciously\conspicuously Silicone jobs).
In some scenes of the videos, we saw only heavy boobs and in some scenes, Ms Rita showed us that she’s hip as reveals some panty-less hairy-box.
Ms Rita has no business singing and less dancing. With her great looks, there must be something she could, conceivably, be good at - although, it is hard to imagine what that could be judging from her performance on the CD and the video.
This is a music sang by the untalented; produced by the inept and marketed by the amoral.
Don't buy this CD and don't accept the video even if it becomes a freebie - unless you need a paperweight or you want to aggravate your enemy.
If this CD ever sold a single copy, it would represent the triumph of marketing over good taste.
The Moral: in years gone by, musical giants like ET Mensah, ET Crentsil, Koo Nimo and others firmly planted Ghana’s music on the world’s cultural\musical map.
They played authentic highlife music that couldn’t be mistaken for anything else.
These hugely-talented musical giants were passionate about their role as their country’s cultural ambassadors.
Lamentably, like almost everything else in our dear land, our music scene is now populated by hustlers masquerading as musical artistes.
Disappointingly, we are today saddled by wannabee artistes who appeared not have heard the phrase that no one treat his imitator like an equal.
I wish that Ghanaian musicians will sit up and try and emulate their Jamaican and Senegalese counterparts by maintaining their cultural integrity.
Whichever part of our globe one goes, Jamaica is synonymous with reggae. And musicians like Baaba Maal, Orchestra Baobab, Youssou N’dour, Thione Seck et al have ensured that Senegal has become a force to be reckoned with in what European commentators like to call World Music.
Monday, January 7, 2013
Saturday, December 29, 2012
Ghana Elections: Good news is no news
“I am disappointed.”
“Why is that, my dear friend?”
“Don’t you dare call me your friend, my friend!”
“Ah, what’s bugging you?”
“I am sorely disappointed!”
“In me, what have I done to wrong you, my friend?”
“You and your bunch of friends from the Western Press.”
“Eh, what the heck are you talking about?”
“And you call yourself a friend!”
“What are you talking about? Why are you in such a nasty funk?”
“I am talking about you western media people!”
“And what on earth is wrong with us?”
“That exactly is the problem, ah! You still do not know why I am so angry with you lot?”
“No, I don’t know.”
“For crying out loud, we had one of the best elections ever conducted anywhere in the whole wide world and none of you guys deemed it newsy enough to write on it. I search in vain for anything positive about the fairness, the freeness, the drums, the dances, the electric atmosphere generated, nothing. Zilch. That’s what I got, Niets! Nothing from the BBC right up to the Constant Negative News channel you call CNN. None of you have anything to say.”
“Oh, that! Is that what’s bugging you.”
“Yes, yes, yes! And don’t tell me that it is not enough to bug anyone! I knew how you guys went to town to pillory Africa after the debacle in Nigeria, Kenya and Zimbabwe about flawed elections. Why don’t you give credit where it is deserved?”
“I am afraid, my friend, you really do not understand the way of the world.”
“What way of the world are you talking about here? We just had a world-class elections conducted with all the international busy-bodies that call themselves ‘Election Observers’ claiming that it was the best ever in the world, and not a single paper or media in the West deemed it newsworthy. You deluded us with tons and tons of info on the mayhem that happened in Kenya, yet not a whimper about the fair, free and violence-free elections in Ghana. I am so disappointed.”
“I feel both sad and sorry that you feel that way, my friend. But your anger is misdirected. If only you understand the way of the world, you won’t feel that way.”
“What way of the world are you talking about, eh?”
“I am truly sorry that you feel that way. But your anger is grossly misplaced. You truly lack the capacity to see the whole picture. You cannot grasp the entire perspective.”
“What are you talking about? I asked you why you Western Press people failed, miserably I should add, to mention a well conducted elections in Ghana, whereas you are prepared to devote reels and reels of newsprint to any conflict in the most obscure part of Africa!”
“Exactly, my point. I don’t think that I can start by introducing you to simple Economics as the subject appears beyond the comprehension of you Africans.”
“Now, now, what are you talking about? What has Economics got to do with your biased reporting about the continent of Africa?”
“Semantics, semantics, my friend. You called it biased-reporting but I called it obeying the immutable laws of economics. You do not believe that I sent myself here, do you?”
“What exactly are you talking about, my friend?”
“I represent a newspaper which, you may believe it or not, need hard cash in order to survive. And since we do not believe that money grows on trees like people in Africa do, it follows that we have to generate our cash somehow. Our income comes mainly from advertisers. Our advertisers make their monies selling products that hard-working people in the West are prepared to shell out their hard-earned income to buy. The people buy the newspapers hoping to get their money-worth in news and stuffs.”
“I still do not get the point!”
“Patience, my friend, is a great virtue. I am coming to the point in my own round-about way. You do not expect Joe the Plumber to come home, after a hard day’s job, and be confused by improbable headlines like free and fair elections in Ghana. The man is tired. He has worked hard and he has downed his fair share of liquor, and only need to read about some chaos and mayhem and things in his newspaper before he goes to bed. You do not expect us, in good conscience, to disallow him his daily dose of gory news, do you? You don’t believe people in the west are going to be happy if they sit at their breakfast tables, perusing their newspapers and be side-blinded by headlines like, “Ghana Conducted Successful Elections,” or “Ghana Election shines,” or such monstrosities like that.”
“What exactly is wrong with that? You will only be reporting the truth? Wasn’t it written that you will know the truth and the truth shall make you free?”
“Don’t be daft, my friend. What’s the truth? Do you think that my editor is going to hang a medal on my neck if I should send him a report about how successfully Ghanaians conducted their elections?”
“I thought journalists are supposed to report objectively!”
“You thought wrong, my friend. I am not your crusading, revolutionary reporter bent on shaping the world in my own image. I’ve got a family to support, a mortgage, children’s school bills, etc, etc, to consider. You don’t expect me to throw all that away in some messianic pursuit of what you called objective journalism.”
“I didn’t call it that! That’s what you Western Press people claim to be!”
“Don’t be naïve, my friend! You don’t expect me to come here and tell you that I am ‘Mr. Biased Personified,’ do you?”
“So there is nothing about objective about you Western Press?”
“Don’t put words in my mouth, but don’t blame us if you guys decided to go off the rail.”
“What do you mean, going off the rail?”
“Why did you decide to do the un-African thing? Who has ever heard of an election in Africa devoid of violence, rigging, mayhem and stuffs? Can you imagine that I searched the whole day in vain for close shots of mayhem, arson, police brutality, violent-protest and things? I even tried to bribe some youth at Alajo in Accra to stage a protest for my sake, but the patriotic idiots refused my generous offer. My cameraman was so bored that he fell asleep. Happily, I should add, in the arms of one of those well-endowed, succulent ladies with good rear engines parading the streets of your capital. What exactly is wrong with you Ghanaians?”
“What do you mean?”
“All that you are doing is destabilizing a perfect equilibrium. Who but a Bolshevik revolutionary is interested in free and fair elections in Africa? Everyone knows that good elections in Africa are occasions for fossilized, sit-tight father-of-the-nation to dispatch his uniformed goons, armed with our discarded museum pieces, to beat up citizens, award fantastic electoral votes to himself and his cronies, with everyone going home happy and dandy. But you Ghanaians decided to upset the smooth apple-cart.”
“But there have been free and fair elections in Botswana, Sierra Leone, Liberia and…”
“You are wasting your breath, my friend. Those are mere exceptions that do nothing to challenge the rule. We all know what to expect from African elections and is it not among your sayings that a Tiger does not change its spot?”
“It is Leopard; there are no Tigers in Africa.”
“Leopard, Tiger, Elephant or whatever, no one is going to believe the tale of a violence-free election in Africa. All they want are reports of Do-or-Die elections.”
“You are not telling me that your readers are interested only in mayhem, violence and arson?”
“I am saying no such thing. Just that some things are so predictable: The sun will shine in Africa tomorrow; an African dictator will steal an election. People are used to that. But when you start on the path of successful elections and things, those are uncharted, potentially-dangerous revolutionary trends and it might upset our folks.”
“You mean white folks?”
“Who else? You didn’t reckon that we generate our income from your voodoo economies, do you?”
“Are you telling me that your decent white folks are only interested in your reporting violence and mayhem?”
“Once again, you are putting things out of context. We are in business to inform our readers, pander to their tastes and their delicate sensibilities; we are not in the business of evangelizing or crusading. We are not on a mission to change the world or how the world’s people think.”
“Now I am getting the picture.”
“Why is that, my dear friend?”
“Don’t you dare call me your friend, my friend!”
“Ah, what’s bugging you?”
“I am sorely disappointed!”
“In me, what have I done to wrong you, my friend?”
“You and your bunch of friends from the Western Press.”
“Eh, what the heck are you talking about?”
“And you call yourself a friend!”
“What are you talking about? Why are you in such a nasty funk?”
“I am talking about you western media people!”
“And what on earth is wrong with us?”
“That exactly is the problem, ah! You still do not know why I am so angry with you lot?”
“No, I don’t know.”
“For crying out loud, we had one of the best elections ever conducted anywhere in the whole wide world and none of you guys deemed it newsy enough to write on it. I search in vain for anything positive about the fairness, the freeness, the drums, the dances, the electric atmosphere generated, nothing. Zilch. That’s what I got, Niets! Nothing from the BBC right up to the Constant Negative News channel you call CNN. None of you have anything to say.”
“Oh, that! Is that what’s bugging you.”
“Yes, yes, yes! And don’t tell me that it is not enough to bug anyone! I knew how you guys went to town to pillory Africa after the debacle in Nigeria, Kenya and Zimbabwe about flawed elections. Why don’t you give credit where it is deserved?”
“I am afraid, my friend, you really do not understand the way of the world.”
“What way of the world are you talking about here? We just had a world-class elections conducted with all the international busy-bodies that call themselves ‘Election Observers’ claiming that it was the best ever in the world, and not a single paper or media in the West deemed it newsworthy. You deluded us with tons and tons of info on the mayhem that happened in Kenya, yet not a whimper about the fair, free and violence-free elections in Ghana. I am so disappointed.”
“I feel both sad and sorry that you feel that way, my friend. But your anger is misdirected. If only you understand the way of the world, you won’t feel that way.”
“What way of the world are you talking about, eh?”
“I am truly sorry that you feel that way. But your anger is grossly misplaced. You truly lack the capacity to see the whole picture. You cannot grasp the entire perspective.”
“What are you talking about? I asked you why you Western Press people failed, miserably I should add, to mention a well conducted elections in Ghana, whereas you are prepared to devote reels and reels of newsprint to any conflict in the most obscure part of Africa!”
“Exactly, my point. I don’t think that I can start by introducing you to simple Economics as the subject appears beyond the comprehension of you Africans.”
“Now, now, what are you talking about? What has Economics got to do with your biased reporting about the continent of Africa?”
“Semantics, semantics, my friend. You called it biased-reporting but I called it obeying the immutable laws of economics. You do not believe that I sent myself here, do you?”
“What exactly are you talking about, my friend?”
“I represent a newspaper which, you may believe it or not, need hard cash in order to survive. And since we do not believe that money grows on trees like people in Africa do, it follows that we have to generate our cash somehow. Our income comes mainly from advertisers. Our advertisers make their monies selling products that hard-working people in the West are prepared to shell out their hard-earned income to buy. The people buy the newspapers hoping to get their money-worth in news and stuffs.”
“I still do not get the point!”
“Patience, my friend, is a great virtue. I am coming to the point in my own round-about way. You do not expect Joe the Plumber to come home, after a hard day’s job, and be confused by improbable headlines like free and fair elections in Ghana. The man is tired. He has worked hard and he has downed his fair share of liquor, and only need to read about some chaos and mayhem and things in his newspaper before he goes to bed. You do not expect us, in good conscience, to disallow him his daily dose of gory news, do you? You don’t believe people in the west are going to be happy if they sit at their breakfast tables, perusing their newspapers and be side-blinded by headlines like, “Ghana Conducted Successful Elections,” or “Ghana Election shines,” or such monstrosities like that.”
“What exactly is wrong with that? You will only be reporting the truth? Wasn’t it written that you will know the truth and the truth shall make you free?”
“Don’t be daft, my friend. What’s the truth? Do you think that my editor is going to hang a medal on my neck if I should send him a report about how successfully Ghanaians conducted their elections?”
“I thought journalists are supposed to report objectively!”
“You thought wrong, my friend. I am not your crusading, revolutionary reporter bent on shaping the world in my own image. I’ve got a family to support, a mortgage, children’s school bills, etc, etc, to consider. You don’t expect me to throw all that away in some messianic pursuit of what you called objective journalism.”
“I didn’t call it that! That’s what you Western Press people claim to be!”
“Don’t be naïve, my friend! You don’t expect me to come here and tell you that I am ‘Mr. Biased Personified,’ do you?”
“So there is nothing about objective about you Western Press?”
“Don’t put words in my mouth, but don’t blame us if you guys decided to go off the rail.”
“What do you mean, going off the rail?”
“Why did you decide to do the un-African thing? Who has ever heard of an election in Africa devoid of violence, rigging, mayhem and stuffs? Can you imagine that I searched the whole day in vain for close shots of mayhem, arson, police brutality, violent-protest and things? I even tried to bribe some youth at Alajo in Accra to stage a protest for my sake, but the patriotic idiots refused my generous offer. My cameraman was so bored that he fell asleep. Happily, I should add, in the arms of one of those well-endowed, succulent ladies with good rear engines parading the streets of your capital. What exactly is wrong with you Ghanaians?”
“What do you mean?”
“All that you are doing is destabilizing a perfect equilibrium. Who but a Bolshevik revolutionary is interested in free and fair elections in Africa? Everyone knows that good elections in Africa are occasions for fossilized, sit-tight father-of-the-nation to dispatch his uniformed goons, armed with our discarded museum pieces, to beat up citizens, award fantastic electoral votes to himself and his cronies, with everyone going home happy and dandy. But you Ghanaians decided to upset the smooth apple-cart.”
“But there have been free and fair elections in Botswana, Sierra Leone, Liberia and…”
“You are wasting your breath, my friend. Those are mere exceptions that do nothing to challenge the rule. We all know what to expect from African elections and is it not among your sayings that a Tiger does not change its spot?”
“It is Leopard; there are no Tigers in Africa.”
“Leopard, Tiger, Elephant or whatever, no one is going to believe the tale of a violence-free election in Africa. All they want are reports of Do-or-Die elections.”
“You are not telling me that your readers are interested only in mayhem, violence and arson?”
“I am saying no such thing. Just that some things are so predictable: The sun will shine in Africa tomorrow; an African dictator will steal an election. People are used to that. But when you start on the path of successful elections and things, those are uncharted, potentially-dangerous revolutionary trends and it might upset our folks.”
“You mean white folks?”
“Who else? You didn’t reckon that we generate our income from your voodoo economies, do you?”
“Are you telling me that your decent white folks are only interested in your reporting violence and mayhem?”
“Once again, you are putting things out of context. We are in business to inform our readers, pander to their tastes and their delicate sensibilities; we are not in the business of evangelizing or crusading. We are not on a mission to change the world or how the world’s people think.”
“Now I am getting the picture.”
Friday, December 21, 2012
Every Child is Beautiful, Mr. President
“When beggars die there are no comet seen… the heavens themselves blaze forth for the death of Prince.” – Shakespeare in Julius Caesar.
“The price of hating other human beings is loving oneself less.” – Eldridge Cleaver in Soul on Ice
“I can think of no other way to say this, so here goes: An awful lot of white folks need to pull our heads out of our collective ass. Two more children are dead and thirteen are injured, and another community is scratching its blonde scalp, utterly perplexed as to how a school shooting the likes of the one in Santee, California could happen. After all, as the Mayor of the town said on CNN: “We’re a solid town, a good town, with good kids; a good church-going town; an All-American town.” Well, maybe that’s the problem.
I said this after Columbine and no one listened, so I’ll say it again: Most whites live in a state of self-delusion. We think danger is black or brown, not to mention poor, and if we can just move far enough away from “those people,” we’ll be safe. If we can just find an “all-American” town, life will be better, because “things like this just don’t happen here.”
Well excuse me for pointing this out, but in case you hadn’t noticed, “here” is about the only place these kinds of things do happen. Oh sure, there’s plenty of violence in urban communities too. But mass murder, wholesale slaughter, kill-’em-all-let-God-sort-’em-out kinda’ craziness seems made for those “safe” white suburbs or rural communities. Yet the FBI insists there is no “profile” of a school shooter.” – www.alternet.org
“Given the utter lack of human empathy exhibited by the US in its dealings with the world, it should perhaps come as no surprise when the lack of empathy is replicated on a smaller scale at home by school assassins and the like. It goes without saying, however, that the president’s tears are reserved for the non-military slaughter of domestic civilians.
As for Obama’s pledge to do whatever he can to “prevent… more tragedies like this”, it would seem that true prevention efforts would require the comprehensive rewiring of American society.
I don’t believe my son belongs in jail… But it seems like the United States is using prison as the solution of choice for mentally ill people. According to Human Rights Watch, the number of mentally ill inmates in US prisons quadrupled from 2000 to 2006.
In the end, however, gun control is merely one of many issues requiring attention in a country that should itself be diagnosed as mentally ill.” – Belen Fernandez
“According to Mother Jones, since 1982, 61 mass murders involving firearms have occurred throughout the country. Of these, 43 of the killers were white males, and only one was a woman. Mother Jones focused on whether the killers obtained their guns legally (most did). But this highly visible sign of mental illness should lead us to consider how many people in the U.S. live in fear, like I do.
When I asked my son’s social worker about my options, he said that the only thing I could do was to get Michael charged with a crime. “If he’s back in the system, they’ll create a paper trail,” he said. “That’s the only way you’re ever going to get anything done. No one will pay attention to you unless you’ve got charges.”
I agree that something must be done. It’s time for a meaningful, nation-wide conversation about mental health. That’s the only way our nation can ever truly heal.
God help me. God help Michael. God help us all.” Liza long, ‘I Am Adam Lanza’s Mother.’
It has become a familiar spectacle: for whatever reason, another American has grabbed an assault rifle, that big gun designed for combat troops to achieve maximum kill-rate, and sprayed innocent people with hot lead and left scores dead.
The media rush to express shock like it has never happen before. Analysts brought out their crystal balls and talk themselves silly on the Constant Negative News (CNN). Politicians dodged and fudged and the Commander-in-Chief donned the garb of Mourner-in-Chief, made impassioned speech, not forgetting to wipe off a tear or two and vow to do something ‘meaningful.’
Candles are lit and a solemn funeral held where the names of the victims are called and remembered with fondness by loved ones.
There is a vow to do something to stop the senseless massacres. Everybody goes home. Few days later, things are back to normal. Massacre is forgotten. It is time to eat hamburger, drink soda and watch football unmolested by the dins of wars and of drones and their missiles.
After all this is America, land of the free and the brave which has a genius of insulating itself from the mayhem and the violence its unrestrained military unleashes on the world every minute of every hour of every day of every year since 1945.
So, a young man of 20 years somehow got hold of an assault rifle. There are reports that the weapon belongs to his mother.
There are several questions provoked here: At the risk of sounding sexist, what on earth is a woman doing with an assault rifle in her home?
Many societies consider a 20-year a teenager that still needs parental\societal guidance to navigate the maze that is life.
But of course in God’s own country, even babies have constitutional rights that are inviolable. And men (and women, too) consider the amassing of insane amount of armaments God’s given rights.
One of the most baffling things I noticed during my sojourn in Europe was the ability of the people to totally divorce themselves from all the reality around them.
Europeans claim to be educated but they know so little about the world they so thoroughly dominated (through their military and their media) and they care even less.
The genius of the European Power Elite was to successfully create societies where people are totally isolated from any and all atrocities committed in their names by their armed forces.
For example, the Netherlands was actively engaged in two wars – in Iraq and Afghanistan (let’s forget the Dutch participation in the NATO piracy off the Somali coast, for a while), with the citizens delightfully unaware.
Not once did I see a picture of the war on Dutch television. The people are simply not allowed to see the blood and the gores of wars.
The wars got mentioned in the press all right but sans its nastiness and its messiness.
The Dutch media has so totally dehumanized the enemy that even the most progressive of citizens have trouble thinking of him (it?) as a human being worthy of empathy.
The other, the enemy, is reduced to a Nonentity; a mere abstract statistical figure in a remote place with unpronounceable name.
After all, democratically-elected government has determined that it (the enemy) is a blasted, freedom-hating, horned ogre with no purpose in life than to threaten the lives of the civilized, Christian, democratic, freedom-loving, altruistic Westerners.
The westerner has had this falsehood fed and brow-beaten into his head he knows nothing better.
Lest the Westerner veer and start a dangerous self-doubt, the Western free press constantly do their best to re-inforce the imagery with relentless bombardment of untruths and outright lies.
Dutch businesses get a good cut of the pie that is war booty (an oil contract here, a pipeline deal there eventually adds up to serious money so beloved by the Dutch).
War booties keep the economy on good stead and living standard high and they guarantee good life for Dutch citizens.
So what if some, ungodly Afghan, Somali, Iraqi or Pakistani child, or children got killed?
Collateral damages happen in wars, don’t they?
So, the Dutch blissfully go about their businesses unconcerned, unmoved, untroubled and without the least worry in their lives, except for worries about inflation and the state of the Euro.
That is until the enemy kills a Dutch soldier.
And suddenly, the whole country wake up to the realization that there is war going on after, all.
Flags are lowered; Generals and Politicians put pancakes on their faces to look good on television where they blabber until kingdom come.
The Dutch Monarch, the Queen, is drag into the affairs. As head of state, she has to lead and be seen to do so.
There is great fanfare in the land with all the attendant pomp and pageantry.
The fawning media is there is to capture and propagate the disaster (the killing of a Dutch, nay, Westerner, anywhere is always a disaster) until tomorrow.
I often wonder why the Westerners always think that their lives are worthier than those of the rest of us.
Dutch troops kill Iraqis, Libyans, Iraqis routinely with no mention made in the Dutch media. But there is over-saturation of news coverage if a single Dutch soldier is killed.
It is the same way I wonder why the Dutch celebrate the four years Nazi occupation of their country, but develop collective amnesia when it comes to the question of their country’s bestial colonization of Indonesia and Suriname or the dastardly apartheid they imposed to blight the beautiful country of South Africa.
Another trait of the West that constantly baffles me was the way people think that they somehow will not reap what they sow.
I see Westerners expecting to reap love when they (or should I say their governments?) go around to litter the world with hatred.
The people of the European Stock (apologies to my editor at the New African magazine, Baffour Ankomah), tout their rationality, but few of their actions suggest rationality.
They also appear incapable of telling themselves the truth.
However much we grief for the hapless victims, especially the children of Connecticut, we should be honest enough to tell ourselves some home truths.
Any society that promotes and glorifies violence should expect tragedies to happen.
Any nation that thinks only of violence to resolve disputes should not express surprise when some citizens do the same.
A nation that built multi-billion dollars blood-drenched video games industry should not tell us that it does not expect its citizens to become violent.
A nation that allows citizens, for whatever reasons, to have more guns than some nation’s army is only courting serious trouble.
A nation where bullets are dirt cheap should also expect massacres to occur now and then.
A nation where film industries make billions in make-believe violent wars should realise that some citizens will sooner or later act upon the fantasies.
So, our Nobel Laureate Emperor Obama is capable of shedding tears on the death of little children?
Tchaah!
This is the same man that day after day orders the killing of little children from Yemen, through Somali through Afghanistan through Pakistan.
According to reports, Mr. Obama has taken personal charge of the CIA-engineered drone wars and has ordered more drone attacks that all his predecessors put together. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-in-war-on-al-qaeda.html?_r=0
Of course, like its Dutch counterpart, the American media shield the American from seeing the unpleasant sides of wars.
A drone assault on a wedding party in Pakistan is mentioned alright, but the reportage is so bland, so devoid of all humanity that it is impossible for the American to feel a darn thing for the victims.
A missile assault on a hut in remote Afghanistan might wipe out entire family including little children, but to the American, it is just another dry statistics.
The media could have been talking about goats or sheep.
Which American journalist has the time to ferret out the names, the ages, the hobbies and the ambitions of little Afghan children?
Which true-born American wants to read about those inanities anyway?
When Obama was making his speech, many called for the N—– to get off their television so that they can watch their football? See here: http://deadspin.com/5968935/take-that-nigger-off-the-tv-we-wanna-watch-football-idiots-respond-to-nbc-pre+empting-sunday-night-football
“You don’t have to teach people how to be human. You have to teach them how to stop being inhuman.” – Eldridge Cleaver
Readers, kindly read this:
“With seven seconds left to go, there was no one to be seen on the ground. Bryant could still have diverted the missile at that point. Then it was down to three seconds. Bryant felt as if he had to count each individual pixel on the monitor. Suddenly a child walked around the corner, he says.
Second zero was the moment in which Bryant’s digital world collided with the real one in a village between Baghlan and Mazar-e-Sharif.
Bryant saw a flash on the screen: the explosion. Parts of the building collapsed. The child had disappeared. Bryant had a sick feeling in his stomach.
“Did we just kill a kid?” he asked the man sitting next to him.
“Yeah, I guess that was a kid,” the pilot replied.
“Was that a kid?” they wrote into a chat window on the monitor.
Then, someone they didn’t know answered, someone sitting in a military command center somewhere in the world who had observed their attack. “No. That was a dog,” the person wrote.
They reviewed the scene on video. A dog on two legs?”
– ‘The Woes of an American Drone Operator,’ By Nicola Abé, published by Der Spiegel.
It was Mr. Obama who ordered the drone attack that killed the innocent children in a village between Baghlan and Mazar-e-Sharif(they even lack the decency to get the name of the village).
An innocent human child heartlessly and unfeelingly reduced to a mere dog.
It was the same Mr. Obama that tearfully tells us how beautiful the children that died in Newtown, Connecticut were.
Was the child in a village between Baghlan and Mazar-e-Sharif ugly?
We would never know as he went quietly to his grave, anonymous, unnamed, unloved, unsung, un-praised and with no dirge and no high-falutin rhetoric from Emperor Obama.
May his innocent soul rest in peace.
“The price of hating other human beings is loving oneself less.” – Eldridge Cleaver in Soul on Ice
“I can think of no other way to say this, so here goes: An awful lot of white folks need to pull our heads out of our collective ass. Two more children are dead and thirteen are injured, and another community is scratching its blonde scalp, utterly perplexed as to how a school shooting the likes of the one in Santee, California could happen. After all, as the Mayor of the town said on CNN: “We’re a solid town, a good town, with good kids; a good church-going town; an All-American town.” Well, maybe that’s the problem.
I said this after Columbine and no one listened, so I’ll say it again: Most whites live in a state of self-delusion. We think danger is black or brown, not to mention poor, and if we can just move far enough away from “those people,” we’ll be safe. If we can just find an “all-American” town, life will be better, because “things like this just don’t happen here.”
Well excuse me for pointing this out, but in case you hadn’t noticed, “here” is about the only place these kinds of things do happen. Oh sure, there’s plenty of violence in urban communities too. But mass murder, wholesale slaughter, kill-’em-all-let-God-sort-’em-out kinda’ craziness seems made for those “safe” white suburbs or rural communities. Yet the FBI insists there is no “profile” of a school shooter.” – www.alternet.org
“Given the utter lack of human empathy exhibited by the US in its dealings with the world, it should perhaps come as no surprise when the lack of empathy is replicated on a smaller scale at home by school assassins and the like. It goes without saying, however, that the president’s tears are reserved for the non-military slaughter of domestic civilians.
As for Obama’s pledge to do whatever he can to “prevent… more tragedies like this”, it would seem that true prevention efforts would require the comprehensive rewiring of American society.
I don’t believe my son belongs in jail… But it seems like the United States is using prison as the solution of choice for mentally ill people. According to Human Rights Watch, the number of mentally ill inmates in US prisons quadrupled from 2000 to 2006.
In the end, however, gun control is merely one of many issues requiring attention in a country that should itself be diagnosed as mentally ill.” – Belen Fernandez
“According to Mother Jones, since 1982, 61 mass murders involving firearms have occurred throughout the country. Of these, 43 of the killers were white males, and only one was a woman. Mother Jones focused on whether the killers obtained their guns legally (most did). But this highly visible sign of mental illness should lead us to consider how many people in the U.S. live in fear, like I do.
When I asked my son’s social worker about my options, he said that the only thing I could do was to get Michael charged with a crime. “If he’s back in the system, they’ll create a paper trail,” he said. “That’s the only way you’re ever going to get anything done. No one will pay attention to you unless you’ve got charges.”
I agree that something must be done. It’s time for a meaningful, nation-wide conversation about mental health. That’s the only way our nation can ever truly heal.
God help me. God help Michael. God help us all.” Liza long, ‘I Am Adam Lanza’s Mother.’
It has become a familiar spectacle: for whatever reason, another American has grabbed an assault rifle, that big gun designed for combat troops to achieve maximum kill-rate, and sprayed innocent people with hot lead and left scores dead.
The media rush to express shock like it has never happen before. Analysts brought out their crystal balls and talk themselves silly on the Constant Negative News (CNN). Politicians dodged and fudged and the Commander-in-Chief donned the garb of Mourner-in-Chief, made impassioned speech, not forgetting to wipe off a tear or two and vow to do something ‘meaningful.’
Candles are lit and a solemn funeral held where the names of the victims are called and remembered with fondness by loved ones.
There is a vow to do something to stop the senseless massacres. Everybody goes home. Few days later, things are back to normal. Massacre is forgotten. It is time to eat hamburger, drink soda and watch football unmolested by the dins of wars and of drones and their missiles.
After all this is America, land of the free and the brave which has a genius of insulating itself from the mayhem and the violence its unrestrained military unleashes on the world every minute of every hour of every day of every year since 1945.
So, a young man of 20 years somehow got hold of an assault rifle. There are reports that the weapon belongs to his mother.
There are several questions provoked here: At the risk of sounding sexist, what on earth is a woman doing with an assault rifle in her home?
Many societies consider a 20-year a teenager that still needs parental\societal guidance to navigate the maze that is life.
But of course in God’s own country, even babies have constitutional rights that are inviolable. And men (and women, too) consider the amassing of insane amount of armaments God’s given rights.
One of the most baffling things I noticed during my sojourn in Europe was the ability of the people to totally divorce themselves from all the reality around them.
Europeans claim to be educated but they know so little about the world they so thoroughly dominated (through their military and their media) and they care even less.
The genius of the European Power Elite was to successfully create societies where people are totally isolated from any and all atrocities committed in their names by their armed forces.
For example, the Netherlands was actively engaged in two wars – in Iraq and Afghanistan (let’s forget the Dutch participation in the NATO piracy off the Somali coast, for a while), with the citizens delightfully unaware.
Not once did I see a picture of the war on Dutch television. The people are simply not allowed to see the blood and the gores of wars.
The wars got mentioned in the press all right but sans its nastiness and its messiness.
The Dutch media has so totally dehumanized the enemy that even the most progressive of citizens have trouble thinking of him (it?) as a human being worthy of empathy.
The other, the enemy, is reduced to a Nonentity; a mere abstract statistical figure in a remote place with unpronounceable name.
After all, democratically-elected government has determined that it (the enemy) is a blasted, freedom-hating, horned ogre with no purpose in life than to threaten the lives of the civilized, Christian, democratic, freedom-loving, altruistic Westerners.
The westerner has had this falsehood fed and brow-beaten into his head he knows nothing better.
Lest the Westerner veer and start a dangerous self-doubt, the Western free press constantly do their best to re-inforce the imagery with relentless bombardment of untruths and outright lies.
Dutch businesses get a good cut of the pie that is war booty (an oil contract here, a pipeline deal there eventually adds up to serious money so beloved by the Dutch).
War booties keep the economy on good stead and living standard high and they guarantee good life for Dutch citizens.
So what if some, ungodly Afghan, Somali, Iraqi or Pakistani child, or children got killed?
Collateral damages happen in wars, don’t they?
So, the Dutch blissfully go about their businesses unconcerned, unmoved, untroubled and without the least worry in their lives, except for worries about inflation and the state of the Euro.
That is until the enemy kills a Dutch soldier.
And suddenly, the whole country wake up to the realization that there is war going on after, all.
Flags are lowered; Generals and Politicians put pancakes on their faces to look good on television where they blabber until kingdom come.
The Dutch Monarch, the Queen, is drag into the affairs. As head of state, she has to lead and be seen to do so.
There is great fanfare in the land with all the attendant pomp and pageantry.
The fawning media is there is to capture and propagate the disaster (the killing of a Dutch, nay, Westerner, anywhere is always a disaster) until tomorrow.
I often wonder why the Westerners always think that their lives are worthier than those of the rest of us.
Dutch troops kill Iraqis, Libyans, Iraqis routinely with no mention made in the Dutch media. But there is over-saturation of news coverage if a single Dutch soldier is killed.
It is the same way I wonder why the Dutch celebrate the four years Nazi occupation of their country, but develop collective amnesia when it comes to the question of their country’s bestial colonization of Indonesia and Suriname or the dastardly apartheid they imposed to blight the beautiful country of South Africa.
Another trait of the West that constantly baffles me was the way people think that they somehow will not reap what they sow.
I see Westerners expecting to reap love when they (or should I say their governments?) go around to litter the world with hatred.
The people of the European Stock (apologies to my editor at the New African magazine, Baffour Ankomah), tout their rationality, but few of their actions suggest rationality.
They also appear incapable of telling themselves the truth.
However much we grief for the hapless victims, especially the children of Connecticut, we should be honest enough to tell ourselves some home truths.
Any society that promotes and glorifies violence should expect tragedies to happen.
Any nation that thinks only of violence to resolve disputes should not express surprise when some citizens do the same.
A nation that built multi-billion dollars blood-drenched video games industry should not tell us that it does not expect its citizens to become violent.
A nation that allows citizens, for whatever reasons, to have more guns than some nation’s army is only courting serious trouble.
A nation where bullets are dirt cheap should also expect massacres to occur now and then.
A nation where film industries make billions in make-believe violent wars should realise that some citizens will sooner or later act upon the fantasies.
So, our Nobel Laureate Emperor Obama is capable of shedding tears on the death of little children?
Tchaah!
This is the same man that day after day orders the killing of little children from Yemen, through Somali through Afghanistan through Pakistan.
According to reports, Mr. Obama has taken personal charge of the CIA-engineered drone wars and has ordered more drone attacks that all his predecessors put together. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-in-war-on-al-qaeda.html?_r=0
Of course, like its Dutch counterpart, the American media shield the American from seeing the unpleasant sides of wars.
A drone assault on a wedding party in Pakistan is mentioned alright, but the reportage is so bland, so devoid of all humanity that it is impossible for the American to feel a darn thing for the victims.
A missile assault on a hut in remote Afghanistan might wipe out entire family including little children, but to the American, it is just another dry statistics.
The media could have been talking about goats or sheep.
Which American journalist has the time to ferret out the names, the ages, the hobbies and the ambitions of little Afghan children?
Which true-born American wants to read about those inanities anyway?
When Obama was making his speech, many called for the N—– to get off their television so that they can watch their football? See here: http://deadspin.com/5968935/take-that-nigger-off-the-tv-we-wanna-watch-football-idiots-respond-to-nbc-pre+empting-sunday-night-football
“You don’t have to teach people how to be human. You have to teach them how to stop being inhuman.” – Eldridge Cleaver
Readers, kindly read this:
“With seven seconds left to go, there was no one to be seen on the ground. Bryant could still have diverted the missile at that point. Then it was down to three seconds. Bryant felt as if he had to count each individual pixel on the monitor. Suddenly a child walked around the corner, he says.
Second zero was the moment in which Bryant’s digital world collided with the real one in a village between Baghlan and Mazar-e-Sharif.
Bryant saw a flash on the screen: the explosion. Parts of the building collapsed. The child had disappeared. Bryant had a sick feeling in his stomach.
“Did we just kill a kid?” he asked the man sitting next to him.
“Yeah, I guess that was a kid,” the pilot replied.
“Was that a kid?” they wrote into a chat window on the monitor.
Then, someone they didn’t know answered, someone sitting in a military command center somewhere in the world who had observed their attack. “No. That was a dog,” the person wrote.
They reviewed the scene on video. A dog on two legs?”
– ‘The Woes of an American Drone Operator,’ By Nicola Abé, published by Der Spiegel.
It was Mr. Obama who ordered the drone attack that killed the innocent children in a village between Baghlan and Mazar-e-Sharif(they even lack the decency to get the name of the village).
An innocent human child heartlessly and unfeelingly reduced to a mere dog.
It was the same Mr. Obama that tearfully tells us how beautiful the children that died in Newtown, Connecticut were.
Was the child in a village between Baghlan and Mazar-e-Sharif ugly?
We would never know as he went quietly to his grave, anonymous, unnamed, unloved, unsung, un-praised and with no dirge and no high-falutin rhetoric from Emperor Obama.
May his innocent soul rest in peace.
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Presidential Inaugural address
Fellow compatriots, brothers and sister, our tradition and simple courtesy demands that I use this occasion to thank you for the confidence that you have reposed in me, by electing me to serve as your Executive President for the next four years.
It is a great honour and privilege to be elected to occupy the seat once occupied by the illustrious founding father of our nation, the great Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah.
I feel very humbled.
It is with great humility that I accept your vote of confidence and I promise to do my best not to disappoint you, the good people of Ghana.
I am very grateful for the chance you have given me and my party to be the custodian of our nation’s affairs in the next four years.
Fellow compatriots, I thank you greatly.
The tasks ahead of us are great and they call for the utmost dedication from each and every one of us.
It is, of course, the duty of governments to provide leadership and direction, but citizens also have their own roles to play.
Our dear country faces great challenges in all the spheres that we care to look.
Our economy is confronted with very deep problems.
We suffer greatly from the adverse effects of global warming due to no cause on our part.
Our electricity and water supplies remain inadequate for our citizens.
We face great challenges in the large number of our people that are out of work.
Many of them have received little or no education at all, so that they cannot even participate in the building the great nation we so cherished.
Tribalism, that terrible ogre that has consumed so many lives on our dear continent from Cape to Cairo, is rearing its ugly heads in our dear country.
But, fellow compatriots, I urge that we maintain a positive outlook of life.
Life is nothing but a struggle.
Many people have faced greater peril than what today confronts us, and they triumphed.
They succeeded simply because they did not allow themselves to be unnecessarily daunted by the challenges that life poses.
They took their challenges in stride and they conquered them.
It is this positive way of looking at challenges that I dearly recommend to each and every one of us.
We shouldn’t allow ourselves to be defeated by a pessimistic philosophy that is alien to our culture.
Our African cosmogony thrives on unbridled optimism.
Our forebears bequeathed to us rich legacies we can build upon.
Our African Personality has stood us in good stead over the years, and it is not something that we should jettison in a hurry.
The challenges that confront us today might look immense, but they pale in comparison to what our forebears have to bear.
Today we bemoan lack of adequate food, water, shelter, clinics, good roads and the rest of the things that have become part of modern, civilized life.
I do not mean to belittle these challenges that confront us, but I hasten to add that compared with what our fore-parents had to face, our challenges pale into insignificance.
We are indeed very lucky.
Today, we do not have to cope with slave raiding parties that denuded our lands of its most productive best and brightest.
We do not have to battle today with the indignities of been colonized by foreigners that do not wish us well.
Compared with what our fore-parents had to bear, I say that we are lucky, very lucky indeed.
Our fore-parents had to live in constant fear of been captured, beaten, branded, shackled and sold like common cattle, never to see their land and their people again.
In slavery, they became common chattel. That means that they were someone’s property.
Spell that with a capital letter.
From slavery our forebears had to endure about a hundred years of bestial colonialism.
A group of European powers decided to share our continent among themselves and they sent their officials to take possession of our land and of our lives.
Our parents were browbeaten into submission, had their lands forcibly taken away from them and forced to become indentured workers for white colonisers.
Under colonialism our parents were made to endure every form of humiliation and indignity.
Luckily for us, their children, today no colonial official is bossing us around.
We have total control of our land and all its rich resources.
We are today the masters of our own destiny.
Allow me to depart from the traditional form of address common to inaugural ceremonies, so that I can engage in a personal and candid conversation with you, fellow compatriots.
During my campaign I eschewed the traditional form of promising you the moon.
The only that I promised was that I am going to be a president the like of which you never had before.
I also promised not to be your typical politician who promised to do things for you that are simply not possible.
I promised you that I will be truthful, honest and be very candid with you in all my undertakings.
That was my solemn pledge and one that I will carry out faithfully.
I believed that it was on the basis of my promise to tell you nothing but the honest truth that you elected me to run the affairs of our dear nation for the next four years.
By virtue of your votes, I stand there today before you as the president our beloved republic.
Fellow compatriots, God in his infinite wisdom gave every human being the faculties to cater for himself.
He gave us the brain to think. He also gave us two hands and two legs to accomplish whatever our brain cells are able to craft for us.
If you care to look closely at me you will notice that I have only one head just like the rest of you.
God also did not equip me with extra legs, eyes, ears or arms.
It simply means that I’m no super-human; I am an ordinary mortal like the average man or woman.
During my campaign, I tried to be as honest with you as humanly possible.
In all my campaign speeches I told you that by giving us immeasurable resources, the gods have done the best they could do for us.
How we use (or abuse) these vast natural resources is left for us.
Fellow compatriots, the time for hypocritical, flattering talk is over; we have to be very frank with ourselves.
Looking back at all the close to sixty years that we have been managing our affairs, we have no cause to beat our chests triumphantly.
The truth is that we have not fared well at all.
Given the resources at our disposal, we have fared very badly, if the honest be told.
I am not going to bore you with statistics but since we all live in this our dear country, we can all see the abysmal poverty that remains the lot of many of our fellow citizens.
Depending on whom you believe, fifty to eighty per cent of our people are living below the poverty level.
That means that they make do with about one point five cedis a day.
That’s the abysmal existence many of our compatriots still eke out daily!
We can blame foreigners, we can blame governments all we like, but we have to come back to what we, ourselves, are doing to improve our material existence here on earth?
There are a lot of things that we can do as individuals to ameliorate the poor states of our station, and as your president, I shall be remiss if I do not share some ideas with you.
The job of building Ghana is not for the president or the government alone.
We are all citizens of this great country and we together must build our homeland.
Our only ambition in life should be to build a nation that our children and their children, children will be very proud of.
So that when we join the ancestors, we can do so with a smile on our faces, knowing full well that we left our footprints in the sand of history.
We can then carry the message to our forebears that our children are enjoying the sweat of our hard labour.
No honour can be greater than the knowledge that our children and their children will be proud, very proud of what we accomplish in our sojourn in this spinning ball that we all call home.
Fellow compatriots, my brothers and sisters, I will not promise you the moon.
I will never, I repeat never make a promise to you that I cannot and will not keep.
If I make a promise, I’ll keep it.
I can understand cynics who may scoff at this very idea.
For very long time, many leaders have made many promises that they did not keep.
You can write this down that I stand before you today and solemnly promise never to tell the good people of our great nation anything but the truth.
My promise to you shall be sacrosanct and shall be kept.
Let my friends and foes write this down.
Every week I shall be sharing with you ideas about the nature of our nation. I shall be sharing with you my own ideas about what I think we can individually and collectively do to move the wheel of our nation’s progress forward.
Until next week when I shall come to address you again, and share with you the first of the ideas I have, I say God bless you and may the good Lord continue to bless our beloved homeland.
It is a great honour and privilege to be elected to occupy the seat once occupied by the illustrious founding father of our nation, the great Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah.
I feel very humbled.
It is with great humility that I accept your vote of confidence and I promise to do my best not to disappoint you, the good people of Ghana.
I am very grateful for the chance you have given me and my party to be the custodian of our nation’s affairs in the next four years.
Fellow compatriots, I thank you greatly.
The tasks ahead of us are great and they call for the utmost dedication from each and every one of us.
It is, of course, the duty of governments to provide leadership and direction, but citizens also have their own roles to play.
Our dear country faces great challenges in all the spheres that we care to look.
Our economy is confronted with very deep problems.
We suffer greatly from the adverse effects of global warming due to no cause on our part.
Our electricity and water supplies remain inadequate for our citizens.
We face great challenges in the large number of our people that are out of work.
Many of them have received little or no education at all, so that they cannot even participate in the building the great nation we so cherished.
Tribalism, that terrible ogre that has consumed so many lives on our dear continent from Cape to Cairo, is rearing its ugly heads in our dear country.
But, fellow compatriots, I urge that we maintain a positive outlook of life.
Life is nothing but a struggle.
Many people have faced greater peril than what today confronts us, and they triumphed.
They succeeded simply because they did not allow themselves to be unnecessarily daunted by the challenges that life poses.
They took their challenges in stride and they conquered them.
It is this positive way of looking at challenges that I dearly recommend to each and every one of us.
We shouldn’t allow ourselves to be defeated by a pessimistic philosophy that is alien to our culture.
Our African cosmogony thrives on unbridled optimism.
Our forebears bequeathed to us rich legacies we can build upon.
Our African Personality has stood us in good stead over the years, and it is not something that we should jettison in a hurry.
The challenges that confront us today might look immense, but they pale in comparison to what our forebears have to bear.
Today we bemoan lack of adequate food, water, shelter, clinics, good roads and the rest of the things that have become part of modern, civilized life.
I do not mean to belittle these challenges that confront us, but I hasten to add that compared with what our fore-parents had to face, our challenges pale into insignificance.
We are indeed very lucky.
Today, we do not have to cope with slave raiding parties that denuded our lands of its most productive best and brightest.
We do not have to battle today with the indignities of been colonized by foreigners that do not wish us well.
Compared with what our fore-parents had to bear, I say that we are lucky, very lucky indeed.
Our fore-parents had to live in constant fear of been captured, beaten, branded, shackled and sold like common cattle, never to see their land and their people again.
In slavery, they became common chattel. That means that they were someone’s property.
Spell that with a capital letter.
From slavery our forebears had to endure about a hundred years of bestial colonialism.
A group of European powers decided to share our continent among themselves and they sent their officials to take possession of our land and of our lives.
Our parents were browbeaten into submission, had their lands forcibly taken away from them and forced to become indentured workers for white colonisers.
Under colonialism our parents were made to endure every form of humiliation and indignity.
Luckily for us, their children, today no colonial official is bossing us around.
We have total control of our land and all its rich resources.
We are today the masters of our own destiny.
Allow me to depart from the traditional form of address common to inaugural ceremonies, so that I can engage in a personal and candid conversation with you, fellow compatriots.
During my campaign I eschewed the traditional form of promising you the moon.
The only that I promised was that I am going to be a president the like of which you never had before.
I also promised not to be your typical politician who promised to do things for you that are simply not possible.
I promised you that I will be truthful, honest and be very candid with you in all my undertakings.
That was my solemn pledge and one that I will carry out faithfully.
I believed that it was on the basis of my promise to tell you nothing but the honest truth that you elected me to run the affairs of our dear nation for the next four years.
By virtue of your votes, I stand there today before you as the president our beloved republic.
Fellow compatriots, God in his infinite wisdom gave every human being the faculties to cater for himself.
He gave us the brain to think. He also gave us two hands and two legs to accomplish whatever our brain cells are able to craft for us.
If you care to look closely at me you will notice that I have only one head just like the rest of you.
God also did not equip me with extra legs, eyes, ears or arms.
It simply means that I’m no super-human; I am an ordinary mortal like the average man or woman.
During my campaign, I tried to be as honest with you as humanly possible.
In all my campaign speeches I told you that by giving us immeasurable resources, the gods have done the best they could do for us.
How we use (or abuse) these vast natural resources is left for us.
Fellow compatriots, the time for hypocritical, flattering talk is over; we have to be very frank with ourselves.
Looking back at all the close to sixty years that we have been managing our affairs, we have no cause to beat our chests triumphantly.
The truth is that we have not fared well at all.
Given the resources at our disposal, we have fared very badly, if the honest be told.
I am not going to bore you with statistics but since we all live in this our dear country, we can all see the abysmal poverty that remains the lot of many of our fellow citizens.
Depending on whom you believe, fifty to eighty per cent of our people are living below the poverty level.
That means that they make do with about one point five cedis a day.
That’s the abysmal existence many of our compatriots still eke out daily!
We can blame foreigners, we can blame governments all we like, but we have to come back to what we, ourselves, are doing to improve our material existence here on earth?
There are a lot of things that we can do as individuals to ameliorate the poor states of our station, and as your president, I shall be remiss if I do not share some ideas with you.
The job of building Ghana is not for the president or the government alone.
We are all citizens of this great country and we together must build our homeland.
Our only ambition in life should be to build a nation that our children and their children, children will be very proud of.
So that when we join the ancestors, we can do so with a smile on our faces, knowing full well that we left our footprints in the sand of history.
We can then carry the message to our forebears that our children are enjoying the sweat of our hard labour.
No honour can be greater than the knowledge that our children and their children will be proud, very proud of what we accomplish in our sojourn in this spinning ball that we all call home.
Fellow compatriots, my brothers and sisters, I will not promise you the moon.
I will never, I repeat never make a promise to you that I cannot and will not keep.
If I make a promise, I’ll keep it.
I can understand cynics who may scoff at this very idea.
For very long time, many leaders have made many promises that they did not keep.
You can write this down that I stand before you today and solemnly promise never to tell the good people of our great nation anything but the truth.
My promise to you shall be sacrosanct and shall be kept.
Let my friends and foes write this down.
Every week I shall be sharing with you ideas about the nature of our nation. I shall be sharing with you my own ideas about what I think we can individually and collectively do to move the wheel of our nation’s progress forward.
Until next week when I shall come to address you again, and share with you the first of the ideas I have, I say God bless you and may the good Lord continue to bless our beloved homeland.
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Ghana Elections 2012: may the best candidates win
In exactly a week, Ghanaians will troop to the polling stations to cast their votes for the governors that will rule the country for the next three years.
The presidency is up for grabs as are the two hundred and seventy-five parliamentary seats.
With five relatively free and fair elections under her belt, Ghana proudly brandishes an enviable record of organizing elections that are widely hailed across the world.
It is an achievement that countries like the USA cannot even boast of, as elections in god’s own country continue to be besetted by every manner of shenanigan like gerrymandering, and the intimidation of illiterate minorities.
With our enviable record, it is sad that elections continue to polarize our nation. It is equally sad that the act of choosing our governors continues to be so fraught with insults, mudslinging, and character assassinations!
If we begin from the premise that we are all patriotic citizens of the land, why has it become impossible for us to agree to disagree without being uncivil to each other?
Why do we think of ourselves as the super-patriots and our political opponents as evil, treasonous felons?
Why do we think that we love our country more than those on the opposing political side?
We ought not to think that we love our country more than those on the other side of the political divide, and we should not think less of them to the extent that we disparage and assassinate their characters.
It is sad that many fine and quite capable citizens shy away from joining politics simply, because the professional politicians have so muddled the water, that many think of politics as a dirty profession.
The numerous entreaties and exhortations from religious and opinion leaders appear only to have lessened but not totally eliminated the ugly incidences of political violence in the country.
It is to be hoped that Ghanaians will remember that the eyes of the world is upon us and that we are seen as the cynosure of Africa – a continent that continues to receive unfair negative media attention.
Let us continue to exhibit the maturity that has earned the country global kudos.
Our people should realize that elections are nothing more than occasions for us to exercise our franchise as citizens of a free and sovereign nation.
Elections should not be occasions to think of how best we could display our primitive masochism or visit mayhem at the behest of the elite.
It is time we all realize how much it cost us whenever things go awry in any part of the country.
Maintaining law and order does not come cheap, and bringing back peace after mayhem is very expensive.
The common people of Ghana should start to use their common sense.
Our elders say that those that allow their heads to be used to break the coconut will not partake in eating it.
People should ask themselves how many children of the elite they see rioting, snatching ballot boxes or bashing the heads of their parents’ political opponents?
None, I daresay, since the children of the elite are esconded safely in elite schools abroad. Their fees are paid in hard currency, thank you very much. They live in comfortable environment totally devoid of the deprivations we suffer daily in Ghana.
The children of our elite parley and enjoy lives with children of other elite from other parts of the world.
There, they make the connections and the networks to ensure that they are made for life.
It is the nadir of stupidity for an ignorant, illiterate and unemployed youth to accept pittance from politicians and rent himself out as political machoman.
We should employ our brain and brawn to demand that our politicians use our resources for the common good.
Few people will enjoy the benefits of a university education without thinking twice about becoming party thugs.
There should be vigorous campaign to make our youth realize the folly of allowing themselves to be used as cannon-fodder by politicians.
It behooves all of us to campaign against all and every form of political hooliganism.
Simple logic suggests that if our politicians are not selfish, greedy and self-seeking they could have created the environment whereby no Ghanaian will be deprived of the basic education with which to fend for himself.
If we had been blessed with leaders with visions, Ghana should by now be up there as an industrialised nation, where citizens use their time and their brains to create the things that will make lives more comfortable.
If our leaders had been serious, we should by now be creating and manufacturing all the fanciful things our leaders borrow money to purchase.
All these make this year elections all the more interesting. For several reasons this year election is going to be a watershed.
For one, the ruling party is prosecuting it without its enigmatic and charismatic founder, Jerry Rawlings.
A man of deep conviction and one who is totally unafraid of voicing out his thoughts on the thorniest of issues, President Rawlings has so far refused to join the campaign train and his party has, wisely it seems, decided to ignore him.
This year will make or mar the President Rawlings political legacy as Ghanaians will, once and for all, demonstrate whether or not he still count for something in Ghanaian political calculus.
It has being nice to see the dignified figure of ex-president John Kufuor campaigning rigorously for his party. Kufuor committed several faux pas during his tenure, but when the occasion called for true statesmanship during the tensed 2008 elections, he rose gallantly and deserved praises for that singular act.
Without a doubt, this year elections have also seen more robust and better packaged political messages than the previous ones.
The TV and radio adverts have been very creative. It is good to see all the political parties embracing new technologies in their campaign.
Gone are the days of dull TV adverts.
This is good news especially for those in the advertising business.
According to the Finder newspaper, this year will go down as the most expensive: “An estimated amount of GH¢549 million has been spent by the country’s political parties on all forms of advertisements and inducements aimed at wooing the electorate to vote for them in the forthcoming presidential and parliamentary elections.
The money is being spent on advertisements, promotions, billboards, vehicles, motorbikes and bicycles, and as direct monetary gifts to voters.
According to investigations conducted by The Finder newspaper, about GH¢350 million has been spent so far on advertisement on television, radio and newspapers while billboards have consumed some GH¢21 million mainly in the Greater Accra Region.”
http://elections.peacefmonline.com/politics/201211/147870.php
So, if the Finder’s findings were to be true, we will end up having the most expensive president money can buy!
This year elections have also seen the introduction of more focused political messages. Instead of the drab, canned messages lifted from cut-and-paste manifestoes, the parties are beaming to us easy-to-digest ideas we can sink our teeth into.
The ruling NDC is all over the place with its Better Ghana Agenda with adverts chronicling for us its achievements in power.
In John Mahama, the NDC has an extremely confident, affable man who appears to be at peace with himself. Behind the affability, however, we perceive a man that brooks no nonsense.
The president has also managed, within a few months, to rein in the babies with sharp teeth in his party and government, who managed to ostracized many people who might have taken a liking to the NDC.
Gladly, the nation has been spared the venomous vituperations of uncouth presidential spokesmen like Anyidoho and Presidential Staffers like Vanderpuye.
As we said many times in this column, the presidency is too important to be served by those unable to control either their temper or their mouth.
We cannot afford to have ill-mannered, ill-bred masochists speaking for our nation’s Chief Executive.
Ironically, the main opposition party, New Patriotic Party (NPP), have become associated with free education policy. This is great for a party that is supposed to be for the seriously rich men in society.
With social policies targeted at the under-privileged, the NPP have stolen the thunder of the NDC, a self-avowed social-democratic party.
The well-crafted adverts from the NPP show serious professionalism that showily demonstrated the fact that the party’s chairman was an advertising guru before he branched into politics.
Everyone can relate to the NPP’s main manta: “Free SHS Now.”
By telling us that the president was a beneficiary of a free education policy, the NPP makes it extremely difficult for the NDC to continue to lampoon the free education policy.
This is simply brilliant.
Wow, funny that the Danquahists borrowed Nkrumah’s battle cry of “Independence, now!”
The NPP’s candidate, Nana Akuffo-Addo, have also transformed himself into a more human, humane, accessible person who is even capable of social banter.
The picture of his eating Kenkey at a side chopbar was also an endearing one.
Kudos must go to Paa Kwesi Nduom, the Progressive People’s Party candidate. With its bold ideas and policy thrusts, the PPP has live up to its billing as a truly progressive party.
There is no deny the fact that for sheer organizational skills and personal dynamism, none of the presidential candidates comes close to Paa Kwesi Nduom.
It must take lots of ability and skills to single-handedly formed and launched a party and gave it national prominence within a very short time.
Those types of prodigious abilities ought to be saluted and celebrated irrespective of what we think of the man’s personal politics.
Not only that, the PPP’s programme remain the most visionary and the best articulated among the parties.
Were people to vote on pure merit alone, the PPP will win handsomely.
CPP’s Abu Sakara’s proved his mettle during the presidential Debates as he projected the image of a confident leader on top of issues.
His performance was simply sterling.
Alas, Nkrumah’s party continues to operate at the periphery of Ghanaian politics!
Top officials of the CPP told this writer that they know what they are doing at the grassroots; I can only hope that the party of Africa’s favourite son is able to spring a surprise in this year’s election.
On the other hand, my younger brother, Deji, always tell me that hope and prayer are not strategies!
And we cannot forget the comic relief provided us by the PNC leader, Hassan Ayariga – thank ye, gods, for small blessings.
The man gave us occasions to laugh and relieve our tensions.
He even managed to drag his mother to come out with an appeal in his behalf! But as we said before, Hassan Ayariga is no presidential material and he, undoubtedly, knows it. Even members of his own party appeared scandalized by his antics.
Let it never be said that our politics lack a dull moment or that it is devoid of joksters. Our political lexicon have been greatly enriched by words like ‘Ayarigate,’ and we all know what Ayaricough now mean.
Whatever happens, Ghana appears to have crossed a political Rubicon: Free Education has become the standard by which every political party will be judged.
In this column we have consistently advocated for the implementation of a free and compulsory education for every Ghanaian.
A free education for youth should go in tandem with a comprehensive adult literacy education programme to ensure that illiteracy is totally wiped out from our society.
No nation that haboured illiterate citizens has ever been able to break out of the under-development logjam.
We are either serious or we are not. We cannot eat our cake and expect to keep having it. Let no one tell us any lie; without full complement of educated people, we shall never break out of our Third-World status.
As we wrote in, “It is education, stupid”: In a globalized world, we need to produce global citizens who can successfully compete with their peers from anywhere in the world.
We need to seriously reconsider our education system under which we continue to graduate people who cannot think critically.
We cannot continue to operate a system whereby our graduates are good at only quotology – swallowing and regurgitating facts like parrots mimicking human voices.
Our next leader should be someone prepared to break away from the crowd and lead. He should be a confident person and one that is bold enough to tell us basic home truths. Principal among this that there is no way we can continue the way we are going and expect to get anywhere.
Our next leader should be one emboldened to change the whole paradigm of our education system.
Our next leader should be an education President. If he only could successfully prosecute an education agenda that give our children quality education, linked intrinsically with our core traditional values, he would succeed beyond measures.
The presidency is up for grabs as are the two hundred and seventy-five parliamentary seats.
With five relatively free and fair elections under her belt, Ghana proudly brandishes an enviable record of organizing elections that are widely hailed across the world.
It is an achievement that countries like the USA cannot even boast of, as elections in god’s own country continue to be besetted by every manner of shenanigan like gerrymandering, and the intimidation of illiterate minorities.
With our enviable record, it is sad that elections continue to polarize our nation. It is equally sad that the act of choosing our governors continues to be so fraught with insults, mudslinging, and character assassinations!
If we begin from the premise that we are all patriotic citizens of the land, why has it become impossible for us to agree to disagree without being uncivil to each other?
Why do we think of ourselves as the super-patriots and our political opponents as evil, treasonous felons?
Why do we think that we love our country more than those on the opposing political side?
We ought not to think that we love our country more than those on the other side of the political divide, and we should not think less of them to the extent that we disparage and assassinate their characters.
It is sad that many fine and quite capable citizens shy away from joining politics simply, because the professional politicians have so muddled the water, that many think of politics as a dirty profession.
The numerous entreaties and exhortations from religious and opinion leaders appear only to have lessened but not totally eliminated the ugly incidences of political violence in the country.
It is to be hoped that Ghanaians will remember that the eyes of the world is upon us and that we are seen as the cynosure of Africa – a continent that continues to receive unfair negative media attention.
Let us continue to exhibit the maturity that has earned the country global kudos.
Our people should realize that elections are nothing more than occasions for us to exercise our franchise as citizens of a free and sovereign nation.
Elections should not be occasions to think of how best we could display our primitive masochism or visit mayhem at the behest of the elite.
It is time we all realize how much it cost us whenever things go awry in any part of the country.
Maintaining law and order does not come cheap, and bringing back peace after mayhem is very expensive.
The common people of Ghana should start to use their common sense.
Our elders say that those that allow their heads to be used to break the coconut will not partake in eating it.
People should ask themselves how many children of the elite they see rioting, snatching ballot boxes or bashing the heads of their parents’ political opponents?
None, I daresay, since the children of the elite are esconded safely in elite schools abroad. Their fees are paid in hard currency, thank you very much. They live in comfortable environment totally devoid of the deprivations we suffer daily in Ghana.
The children of our elite parley and enjoy lives with children of other elite from other parts of the world.
There, they make the connections and the networks to ensure that they are made for life.
It is the nadir of stupidity for an ignorant, illiterate and unemployed youth to accept pittance from politicians and rent himself out as political machoman.
We should employ our brain and brawn to demand that our politicians use our resources for the common good.
Few people will enjoy the benefits of a university education without thinking twice about becoming party thugs.
There should be vigorous campaign to make our youth realize the folly of allowing themselves to be used as cannon-fodder by politicians.
It behooves all of us to campaign against all and every form of political hooliganism.
Simple logic suggests that if our politicians are not selfish, greedy and self-seeking they could have created the environment whereby no Ghanaian will be deprived of the basic education with which to fend for himself.
If we had been blessed with leaders with visions, Ghana should by now be up there as an industrialised nation, where citizens use their time and their brains to create the things that will make lives more comfortable.
If our leaders had been serious, we should by now be creating and manufacturing all the fanciful things our leaders borrow money to purchase.
All these make this year elections all the more interesting. For several reasons this year election is going to be a watershed.
For one, the ruling party is prosecuting it without its enigmatic and charismatic founder, Jerry Rawlings.
A man of deep conviction and one who is totally unafraid of voicing out his thoughts on the thorniest of issues, President Rawlings has so far refused to join the campaign train and his party has, wisely it seems, decided to ignore him.
This year will make or mar the President Rawlings political legacy as Ghanaians will, once and for all, demonstrate whether or not he still count for something in Ghanaian political calculus.
It has being nice to see the dignified figure of ex-president John Kufuor campaigning rigorously for his party. Kufuor committed several faux pas during his tenure, but when the occasion called for true statesmanship during the tensed 2008 elections, he rose gallantly and deserved praises for that singular act.
Without a doubt, this year elections have also seen more robust and better packaged political messages than the previous ones.
The TV and radio adverts have been very creative. It is good to see all the political parties embracing new technologies in their campaign.
Gone are the days of dull TV adverts.
This is good news especially for those in the advertising business.
According to the Finder newspaper, this year will go down as the most expensive: “An estimated amount of GH¢549 million has been spent by the country’s political parties on all forms of advertisements and inducements aimed at wooing the electorate to vote for them in the forthcoming presidential and parliamentary elections.
The money is being spent on advertisements, promotions, billboards, vehicles, motorbikes and bicycles, and as direct monetary gifts to voters.
According to investigations conducted by The Finder newspaper, about GH¢350 million has been spent so far on advertisement on television, radio and newspapers while billboards have consumed some GH¢21 million mainly in the Greater Accra Region.”
http://elections.peacefmonline.com/politics/201211/147870.php
So, if the Finder’s findings were to be true, we will end up having the most expensive president money can buy!
This year elections have also seen the introduction of more focused political messages. Instead of the drab, canned messages lifted from cut-and-paste manifestoes, the parties are beaming to us easy-to-digest ideas we can sink our teeth into.
The ruling NDC is all over the place with its Better Ghana Agenda with adverts chronicling for us its achievements in power.
In John Mahama, the NDC has an extremely confident, affable man who appears to be at peace with himself. Behind the affability, however, we perceive a man that brooks no nonsense.
The president has also managed, within a few months, to rein in the babies with sharp teeth in his party and government, who managed to ostracized many people who might have taken a liking to the NDC.
Gladly, the nation has been spared the venomous vituperations of uncouth presidential spokesmen like Anyidoho and Presidential Staffers like Vanderpuye.
As we said many times in this column, the presidency is too important to be served by those unable to control either their temper or their mouth.
We cannot afford to have ill-mannered, ill-bred masochists speaking for our nation’s Chief Executive.
Ironically, the main opposition party, New Patriotic Party (NPP), have become associated with free education policy. This is great for a party that is supposed to be for the seriously rich men in society.
With social policies targeted at the under-privileged, the NPP have stolen the thunder of the NDC, a self-avowed social-democratic party.
The well-crafted adverts from the NPP show serious professionalism that showily demonstrated the fact that the party’s chairman was an advertising guru before he branched into politics.
Everyone can relate to the NPP’s main manta: “Free SHS Now.”
By telling us that the president was a beneficiary of a free education policy, the NPP makes it extremely difficult for the NDC to continue to lampoon the free education policy.
This is simply brilliant.
Wow, funny that the Danquahists borrowed Nkrumah’s battle cry of “Independence, now!”
The NPP’s candidate, Nana Akuffo-Addo, have also transformed himself into a more human, humane, accessible person who is even capable of social banter.
The picture of his eating Kenkey at a side chopbar was also an endearing one.
Kudos must go to Paa Kwesi Nduom, the Progressive People’s Party candidate. With its bold ideas and policy thrusts, the PPP has live up to its billing as a truly progressive party.
There is no deny the fact that for sheer organizational skills and personal dynamism, none of the presidential candidates comes close to Paa Kwesi Nduom.
It must take lots of ability and skills to single-handedly formed and launched a party and gave it national prominence within a very short time.
Those types of prodigious abilities ought to be saluted and celebrated irrespective of what we think of the man’s personal politics.
Not only that, the PPP’s programme remain the most visionary and the best articulated among the parties.
Were people to vote on pure merit alone, the PPP will win handsomely.
CPP’s Abu Sakara’s proved his mettle during the presidential Debates as he projected the image of a confident leader on top of issues.
His performance was simply sterling.
Alas, Nkrumah’s party continues to operate at the periphery of Ghanaian politics!
Top officials of the CPP told this writer that they know what they are doing at the grassroots; I can only hope that the party of Africa’s favourite son is able to spring a surprise in this year’s election.
On the other hand, my younger brother, Deji, always tell me that hope and prayer are not strategies!
And we cannot forget the comic relief provided us by the PNC leader, Hassan Ayariga – thank ye, gods, for small blessings.
The man gave us occasions to laugh and relieve our tensions.
He even managed to drag his mother to come out with an appeal in his behalf! But as we said before, Hassan Ayariga is no presidential material and he, undoubtedly, knows it. Even members of his own party appeared scandalized by his antics.
Let it never be said that our politics lack a dull moment or that it is devoid of joksters. Our political lexicon have been greatly enriched by words like ‘Ayarigate,’ and we all know what Ayaricough now mean.
Whatever happens, Ghana appears to have crossed a political Rubicon: Free Education has become the standard by which every political party will be judged.
In this column we have consistently advocated for the implementation of a free and compulsory education for every Ghanaian.
A free education for youth should go in tandem with a comprehensive adult literacy education programme to ensure that illiteracy is totally wiped out from our society.
No nation that haboured illiterate citizens has ever been able to break out of the under-development logjam.
We are either serious or we are not. We cannot eat our cake and expect to keep having it. Let no one tell us any lie; without full complement of educated people, we shall never break out of our Third-World status.
As we wrote in, “It is education, stupid”: In a globalized world, we need to produce global citizens who can successfully compete with their peers from anywhere in the world.
We need to seriously reconsider our education system under which we continue to graduate people who cannot think critically.
We cannot continue to operate a system whereby our graduates are good at only quotology – swallowing and regurgitating facts like parrots mimicking human voices.
Our next leader should be someone prepared to break away from the crowd and lead. He should be a confident person and one that is bold enough to tell us basic home truths. Principal among this that there is no way we can continue the way we are going and expect to get anywhere.
Our next leader should be one emboldened to change the whole paradigm of our education system.
Our next leader should be an education President. If he only could successfully prosecute an education agenda that give our children quality education, linked intrinsically with our core traditional values, he would succeed beyond measures.
Thursday, November 22, 2012
Of Criticism and Higher Criticism
“You believe in a book that has talking animals, wizards, witches, demons, sticks turning into snakes, burning bushes, food falling from the sky, people walking on water, and all sorts of magical, absurd and primitive stories, and you say that we are the ones that need help?” - Mark Twain
“(Mankind) is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell” – George Orwell
My article, What if I don’t want to be saved?, excited many people.
For a writer that is good news as it shows that people do read – contrary to widespread perception. It is also nice to know that what one writes made some people to start to think.
Thinking can only be good for the human brain.
I did not ask for anything more than that human beings (especially Africans) should use their brains to THINK instead of holding tenaciously to dogmas.
The mind, they say, is a terrible thing to waste, human beings should refuse to turn themselves into mindless zombies in the name of a religion.
In writing the article, little did I know that many Africans feel as strongly as I do by the activities of the so-called Christians, with their ignoble lies and the teaching of a fabricated religion constructed entirely on falsehoods.
Many Africans told me that they also feel affronted by the havoc the Christian and other imported religions have wreaked on our continent - the wholesale massacres; the wanton destruction of African cultural patrimony; the forceful imposition of European norms on us; the capture of the African mind and the turning of Africans into unthinking mass of automatons.
Many wrote to give me new information; to them I remain grateful and indebted.
Whereas many Africans wrote to give me kudos for the article, many Christians decided it was time for them to vent their anger and frustrations.
Even though I committed no crime in writing out what I believe to be true, but many of those that go around preaching love, tolerance and forgiveness decided that I have committed capital crime and must be condemned!
A lady from Kenya who called herself Catherine Otieno decided to vigorously masturbate in my inbox with some mind-boggling mindless drivels.
I answered her that I do not possess the mind or the time to waste of her jejune bunkums.
I never would understand these Christians!
Why would an Almighty, Omnipotent and Omniscient god requires ordinary mortals to come to its defence?
Many Christians said that they pray for me so that god will forgive me my sins so that I can be allowed to enter paradise!
Tchaah!
I wrote in my article that I was not interested in any paradise, and that one life is simply enough for; but it looks like our Christians, in their hastes to condemn, refused to digest the gist of my article.
This is sad!
If human beings can evolve a system of justice that refuses to condemn a man for crimes committed by another person, why should the Christian believe the malarkey that their god would roast me because of a sin committee by some Adam and Eve?
Honestly, the Christians are the worst recommendations for their faith. If they live exemplary lives, we can try to emulate them. But few honest people can relate to the mindlessness we see in Christiandom.
I do not care for the company of the Christians that I know to want to be with them in any paradise.
Some of them even asked that I repent, accept Jesus and believe that the Bible is the word of god so that I can be forgiven my sins and be allowed to enter paradise.
What type of bribery is this, and why do people in this age and time believe in this utterly stupid proposition?
So, according to these Christians, Jehovah, in his infinite wisdom will not judge me on the strength of my character; he will not be interested in whether or not I was a good husband, a loving father who never steal and always kept his word. Jehovah will not be interested that I never visited violence on anyone and that I am all for justice.
He will determine my fate solely on my believing that a fiction, some pious priests invented and called his son, and that he wrote a collection of forged, utterly absurd books they called a Bible!
Jehovah will be so angry with me for not believing the stupid tales of the Christian Bible, so much so that he will sentence me to eternal hell-fire, where he will spend eternity roasting me in fire!
Could anything be more preposterous to thinking than this stupid idea?
I know enough chemistry and have been to many cremations to know that it takes all but few minutes of intense fire to reduce a cadaver to ashes; so why would Jehovah be spending eternity roasting poor me?
Why would any god derive any joy in turning itself into a pyromaniac that enjoys the stench of roasting human flesh?
Do the Christians really expect me to cringe in fear?
None of the avowed Christian that wrote questioned the integrity of my article; none queried its accuracy and no one challenged me for peddling falsehood.
Why then are people not interested in the truth?
Why are the Christians afraid to use their brains, do some thinking and arrive at conclusions that accord well with reasoning?
Are they afraid of what they will discover?
Didn’t their Bible plagiarize an Ancient Egyptian injunction: “You will know the truth and the truth will make you free?”
Some of the Christians said that I should accept Jesus and keep referring to him as Jesus Christ as though it were his surname.
The simple fact that two of the gospels, Matthew and Luke, gave two completely different and contradictory accounts of the central figure of their faith, appear not to bother the Christians at all.
That the inspired words of their god should contain so much violence, so much absurdities do not trouble these Christians at all.
According to the Biblical account, Jeshua (Jesus) purportedly lived up to thirty three years of age before he was crucified.
There was no account of him going to any school or learning a trade. He was not reported to have held any job or earn an honest living. Most Christians denied his ever loving his gossiped lover, Mary Magdalene. The Biblical Jesus was painted as a one-dimensional man with no depth. He was as ignorant as the worst of his age. He uttered neither a single intelligent nor an inspiring word. He cursed like a sailor and appeared to be totally ignorant of simple laws of economics as attested to by his reportedly telling his disciples to give unto Caesar what his Caesar - he ignorantly believed that money belongs to those whose portraiture they bear and not to the man that toiled to earn it.
They brought the coin, and he asked them, "Whose portrait is this? And whose inscription?" "Caesar's," they replied. Then he said to them, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's." Matthew 22:21.
Jesus reportedly magically fed people with fish, cast out demons and walked on water.
Jesus believed that diseases were caused by demons; Science proved long time ago that diseases are caused by germs and not by demons.
That is the sum total of the life of the person the Christians called a Saviour!
The story of how the Bible was collected is well document; readers only have to read the accounts of the Nicaean Conferences to know the true origins of the so-called Holy Bible, and discover that the books were chosen by dubious priests inspired only by a desire to make money and grab power.
As to the authenticity of the books of the Bible, if the efforts will not kill the Christians, they should try and compare the Epic of Gilgamesh (available online) with the Biblical fable of Noah.
But seriously, why is using one’s brain to learn new things of less importance than holding tenaciously to a blind dogma?
The mind, they say, is a terrible thing to waste!
Finally, I commend the Christians to Buddha: “Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.”
Monday, November 19, 2012
Not you too, Tony Aidoo
It is a great pity that our elected officials in Africa appear to have abandoned all sense of ethics and morality.
To them all that matters is legality.
So long as something does not appear to breach the laws (which they drew up, lest we forget), it is considered OK.
As things stand now, people see politics as nothing but an avenue to loot state properties. We have the sad situation today where we go to great length to borrow money for development.
Our officials expend big chunks of these loans into building mansions for state’s officials. They also use part of it to buy the best 4*4 jeeps money can buy. Parts of the loans also go into paying the astronomical salaries and emoluments they crafted for themselves.
Little thought is given to providing basic services for the hoi polio. Our taps are still dry and electricity generation and distribution is still a big challenge, so much so that where I live we sometimes get four hours of electricity a day.
At the end of their four years, our officials will get juicy ex-gratia pay-checks. As though that were not scandalous enough, they will also get to buy the state properties allocated for their use at thieving.
The new boys on the block will blame the old guards as corrupt infidels and make loads of noises and threaten fire and brimstone.
All is shakara, as they say in Nigeria.
Before long they also will think that it is their turn to eat.
That in a nutshell is the story of governance in our Africa.
In the article I wrote to condemn the Chief Justice of Ghana for her unethical behavior in acquiring state’s land, Can the CJ spell ETHICAL?
I wrote, inter alia: “I don’t know who her advisers are, but those who advised (mis-advised in my opinion) the Chief Justice to release that capricious statement did her a terrible dis-service.
It is best to shut your mouth and let people wonder whether or not you’re a thief than to open it and remove all doubt.
Madam CJ’s statement revealed a pathetically amoral soul with absolutely no capacity for ethical or moral consideration whatever.
To her, it is all about legality, legality and legality!
Sadly, for our CJ, as long as something is legal, then it must be right.
But this should not be so. In our actions or inactions, thoughts should also be spared for the ethical dimension.
Sorry, Madam CJ, do you mean that your serving “this nation conscientiously for the past thirty-eight years as a public servant,” entitles you to engage in free-booting on government’s property?
I simply hate it when I hear people like the CJ telling us how conscientiously they have serve Mother Ghana. We are all in our own little ways serving our country. And heaven knows that we have well-remunerated high officials like the CJ without their dipping their hands to loot from the government property.
HIPCed (Highly Indebted and poor Country) as we are, we still manage to pay our officials well – at least by our modest standards.
What exactly is Madam CJ talking about? Is she telling us she is a more deserving public servant than the poor farmer or the poor teacher both of whom are toiling under great deprivations to contribute to our nation’s development? Did Madam ask herself since when the Government of Ghana become a land seller? Were the lands sold to the CJ and her fellow travellers advertised and disposed off according to laid down regulations? Was our CJ unaware that she was paying an unusually low price for her land in that part of our blessed republic? When lands acquired for government services were under-handedly sold off at thieving prices, where did our CJ expect the government to get the land when the needs arise, or is our CJ suggesting that the government will not undergo natural growth?
And she had the temerity to tell us about ‘serving conscientiously!”
Kindly sing us another song, Madam.
She further said: “I did not acquire the subject matter illegally or through some other unorthodox means.”
I pray that Madam CJ is not suffering from inadequate grasp of Basic English as my dictionary defines unorthodox as “unconventional: failing to follow conventional or traditional beliefs or practices.”
There are well-laid-down rules governing the disposal of government assets, part of which I understand is that such sales must be publicly advertised.
What type of banana republic are we running when people can meet in secret and sell state properties to themselves and their cronies!
And Madam CJ is mouthing some effluvial about following orthodox path in acquiring her land. Madam should kindly tell us when and where the land she purchased was advertised. If it was not advertised, how did she hear about it?
It is sad when people like Madam CJ simply cannot get it into their heads that public service is a calling. It is sad indeed that those privileged to be called to serve their nation did not consider it great honor indeed. Sadder still when they consider it a way and means to loot their proverbial share of the national cake.
It was recently revealed that seventy-five (yes, 75%) of our national income is devoted to servicing the machinery of government – that is to pay concurrent expenditure like salaries and emoluments.
So, our blessed republic is left with ONLY 25% for its capital expenditure – roads, schools, hospitals and other infrastructural projects.
Do you now begin to understand why we are mired in seemingly intractable poverty quagmire? Do you now know why our leaders need to go around the world with begging and supplicating like common beggars? Do you now know why any announcement by the Japanese and the Chinese about grant always send our rulers dizzy with excitement?
Do you now begin to realize why we are perpetual recipient of ‘aid?’ Do you now begin to know why we command no respect in any part of the world and why the other races keep looking down on us?
That is not all about the sad state of our affairs. Our elite (remember greedy bastards?) are not satisfied with collaring 75% of our budget for their comfortable upkeep, they still want a share of the paltry 25% left for our development.
How?
Remember that it is from the 25% that government must pay compensation for lands acquired for state’s use.
So, when our greedy bastards (sorry elite) started parceling out these lands to themselves at simply ridiculous prices, they are literally stealing what belongs to the commonwealth.
Methinks that it is this culture of entitlement by our public officials that must be disabused. Why do our public ‘servants’ think that because; ‘I have served my country, so I am perfectly entitled to loot her meager resources.’
We had a departing speaker of parliament, not satisfied with his whopping ex-gratia award, literally and figuratively stripping his bungalow of every item his thieving hands could grab. No sanction was imposed on him. A departing minister also bought his official residence for a song; today he chairs one of our major parties!
Our MPs ‘serve’ for four years and believe that they deserve ex-gratia to the tune of 800million cedis.
According to Madam CJ: “In order to protect the high office of the Chief Justice of the Republic of Ghana, I would like to relinquish my interest in the plot of land under reference.”
Methinks that this is simply not enough. By purchasing government land under very questionable circumstances, the CJ has severely compromised her ethical authority.
The government of Ghana is not a land-seller, period. Madam CJ, like any other Ghanaian, should know better whom to approach when in search of land to buy.
How, on earth, does Madam CJ expected to be taken seriously whenever she pontificate about the virtues of honest living. Does she still expect to be taken seriously when she admonishes people about crime not paying? How would she adjudicate in a land dispute when she herself is a beneficiary of a dubious land deal?
While it might be true that she breaches no law in acquiring the land, she patently breached the ethical standards her high office demands. Her behaviour might not be strictly illegal, it is certainly not ethical.
And this is precisely where the CJ’s problem lies: Her lack of capacity to either comprehend or appreciate the ethical dimensions of her judgments reveals a person whose moral standards are questionable, to say the least.
“Ethics (Greek ethika, from ethos, “character,” “custom”), principles or standards of human conduct, sometimes called morals (Latin mores, “customs”), and, by extension, the study of such principles, sometimes called moral philosophy.”
And what was Madam CJ trying to tell us when she wrote: “this is the only piece of land that I have acquired from the Lands Commission, for which reason I have supplied my full maiden name to enable the facts stated to be verified.”
I guessed she expected Ghanaians to dance with joy because she had acquired only one piece of government land.
Sorry, Madam CJ, I refused to see the logic of your argument. I wonder how you’d treat a criminal who plead in your court that he had stolen only once. And pray, what was Madam CJ trying to do by employing her maiden when she was a married woman!
Land is a highly prized finite commodity and a visit to our court houses will reveal heart-breaking stories of land cases stretching back to time immemorial.
There are serious allegations that many judges had received parcels of land over which they sit in judgment. How do we expect to get impartial judgment from such judges? And our judges expect to continue to receive our adulation!
The big question Madam CJ fail to address is: Was it right for you to surreptitiously buy government property?
Sorry Madam CJ, but it is not the frequency of your UNETHICALLY acquiring government property that is worrisome: it is your failure, as the Chief Justice of Ghana, to adhere STRICTLY to the rules and procedures of how government’s properties should be disposed off.
It is your lack of moral etiquette that is most baffling. Your action might not be illegal but it is grossly unethical. And it is your inability to distinguish between illegality and unethicality that is making your holding the position of the Chief Justice of our blessed republic quite untenable.
I will, once again, advice that you advice yourself about the ethicality of your continuing to hold your current exalted position.
You may quote all the law books to support your position, but on the ethical or moral scale, you simply have failed, miserably.”
Sadly, the CJ did not heed my advice to resign her position; she is still there. And if anything the primitive acquisition of state properties have increased. The latest is the saga of Dr. Tony Aidoo.
According to those that knew him very well, Dr. Tony Aidoo was a Marxist-spewing left-leaning, no-nonsense university don who’s very fond of his cigarettes.
He reportedly tooled around Kwame Nkrumah University campus in an ancient jalopy and appeared not to have other ambitions than to trudge it out as a lecturer until retirement.
Apparently his Marxists rhetoric caught the fancy of then President Rawlings who plugged him from obscurity to fill the position of a deputy Minister at the Ministry of Defence.
He was not distinguished in that capacity and left office when the term of his boss ended in 2001.
Little was heard of Dr. Aidoo again until the late Beloved President Mills dragged him to the Castle and seconded him as the Head of the nebulously-tiled Policy Monitoring and Evaluation Unit at the Presidency.
It was a position that appeared to fit our erstwhile Marxist perfectly.
Like every petty bureaucrat, he quickly cut a niche for himself, made himself relevant, pushed papers around and at the end of the month collects his juicy pay that benefits a presidential staffer.
Occasionally, Dr. Aidoo emerged from his obscure office to vent his anger at the opposition. At times he roared like an Old Testament Patriarch whose children have disobeyed Jehovah. He spared neither the low nor the mighty in his vile invectives against corruption and other vices. He bellowed angrily whenever any opposition dare criticize the government.
Generally, Dr. Aidoo cut the picture of a pious, self-righteous and upright man totally against all and every evil and vices.
He was said to have personally led agents to retrieved state properties from former officials of the NPP.
Dr. Aidoo was recently in the news demanding that President Mahama named those he considered ‘babies with sharp tooth and evil dwarfs,’ whom President Rawlings reportedly said were the Greedy bastards that cause confusion in the ruling party and are busy looting state’s resources.
There were no reports that the president ever answered him.
Then, the communication team of the NPP did the nation proud by releasing documents that showed that the self-righteous Dr. Aidoo was not so incorruptible, after all.
Addressing a news conference in Accra, a Deputy Communications Director of the NPP, Mr Sammy Awuku, accused Dr. Aidoo of buying a Ford Expedition for 6,200. Mr. Awuku said the car, which was part of former President Kufuor’s fleet of official vehicles, was bought on auction by Dr Aidoo and the money paid to Shargaw Ventures, a licensed auctioneer.
According to him, the deal smacks of corruption as the vehicle was released to Dr Aidoo at a “ridiculously low price".
Six thousand, two hundred cedis is, of course, a steal for that type of vehicle, auction or no auction. I recently sold my 2001 Opel Astra Estate wagon for 6,500!
In his defence, Dr. Aidoo lame excuse was that the said vehicle was in “a very bad condition," and that: “I am not the one who took the decision to scrap the car...and ordered its public auction. I am not the one who valued the car and set the price on it.... So where arises the conflict of interest?” he asked.
Tchaah!
I did some Googling and discover that the average selling price Ford Expedition 2005 in the USA is US$13,294: 2005 Ford Expedition Price
We then have to add the shipment/freight and the duty price to get the actual price it could have been sold in Ghana.
The paltry 6,200 Dr. Aidoo paid will hardly cover the Duty alone.
His claim that the vehicle was in bad shape could be true but could not have depreciated to the level where it could be sold for that ridiculous amount.
And maybe Dr. Aidoo needs to talk to his auto-mechanic as automatic vehicles do not have gear boxes as he claimed.
But the real problem here is that Dr. Aidoo like those who have partake in looting state properties can simply not grasp the unethicality of their actions. They cannot see the conflict of interests in buying properties of the government in which they serve.
This is the real tragedy for the country.
It is sad for the country when we have people like Dr. Tony Aidoo being caught in the web of corruption against which they have vociferated so loudly not too long ago.
It is equally sad that the President did not deem it fit and proper to fire his errant aide as soon as the story of the scandal hit town. That action alone would have put the president in the best of light and would have send the strongest message that this indeed is the president that meant what he said about fighting corruption.
By firing Dr. Aidoo, President Mahama would have deftly stolen the thunder from the opposition.
Dr. Tony Aidoo was reported to have once said "hena na edaho na honey so go na noa wantafere" to wit: "who will not lick it if honey falls on his/her tongue?”
And this was the same man who said he felt scandalized when President Rawlings accused some in in his party of being sharp-toothed greedy bastards and evil dwarfs!
To them all that matters is legality.
So long as something does not appear to breach the laws (which they drew up, lest we forget), it is considered OK.
As things stand now, people see politics as nothing but an avenue to loot state properties. We have the sad situation today where we go to great length to borrow money for development.
Our officials expend big chunks of these loans into building mansions for state’s officials. They also use part of it to buy the best 4*4 jeeps money can buy. Parts of the loans also go into paying the astronomical salaries and emoluments they crafted for themselves.
Little thought is given to providing basic services for the hoi polio. Our taps are still dry and electricity generation and distribution is still a big challenge, so much so that where I live we sometimes get four hours of electricity a day.
At the end of their four years, our officials will get juicy ex-gratia pay-checks. As though that were not scandalous enough, they will also get to buy the state properties allocated for their use at thieving.
The new boys on the block will blame the old guards as corrupt infidels and make loads of noises and threaten fire and brimstone.
All is shakara, as they say in Nigeria.
Before long they also will think that it is their turn to eat.
That in a nutshell is the story of governance in our Africa.
In the article I wrote to condemn the Chief Justice of Ghana for her unethical behavior in acquiring state’s land, Can the CJ spell ETHICAL?
I wrote, inter alia: “I don’t know who her advisers are, but those who advised (mis-advised in my opinion) the Chief Justice to release that capricious statement did her a terrible dis-service.
It is best to shut your mouth and let people wonder whether or not you’re a thief than to open it and remove all doubt.
Madam CJ’s statement revealed a pathetically amoral soul with absolutely no capacity for ethical or moral consideration whatever.
To her, it is all about legality, legality and legality!
Sadly, for our CJ, as long as something is legal, then it must be right.
But this should not be so. In our actions or inactions, thoughts should also be spared for the ethical dimension.
Sorry, Madam CJ, do you mean that your serving “this nation conscientiously for the past thirty-eight years as a public servant,” entitles you to engage in free-booting on government’s property?
I simply hate it when I hear people like the CJ telling us how conscientiously they have serve Mother Ghana. We are all in our own little ways serving our country. And heaven knows that we have well-remunerated high officials like the CJ without their dipping their hands to loot from the government property.
HIPCed (Highly Indebted and poor Country) as we are, we still manage to pay our officials well – at least by our modest standards.
What exactly is Madam CJ talking about? Is she telling us she is a more deserving public servant than the poor farmer or the poor teacher both of whom are toiling under great deprivations to contribute to our nation’s development? Did Madam ask herself since when the Government of Ghana become a land seller? Were the lands sold to the CJ and her fellow travellers advertised and disposed off according to laid down regulations? Was our CJ unaware that she was paying an unusually low price for her land in that part of our blessed republic? When lands acquired for government services were under-handedly sold off at thieving prices, where did our CJ expect the government to get the land when the needs arise, or is our CJ suggesting that the government will not undergo natural growth?
And she had the temerity to tell us about ‘serving conscientiously!”
Kindly sing us another song, Madam.
She further said: “I did not acquire the subject matter illegally or through some other unorthodox means.”
I pray that Madam CJ is not suffering from inadequate grasp of Basic English as my dictionary defines unorthodox as “unconventional: failing to follow conventional or traditional beliefs or practices.”
There are well-laid-down rules governing the disposal of government assets, part of which I understand is that such sales must be publicly advertised.
What type of banana republic are we running when people can meet in secret and sell state properties to themselves and their cronies!
And Madam CJ is mouthing some effluvial about following orthodox path in acquiring her land. Madam should kindly tell us when and where the land she purchased was advertised. If it was not advertised, how did she hear about it?
It is sad when people like Madam CJ simply cannot get it into their heads that public service is a calling. It is sad indeed that those privileged to be called to serve their nation did not consider it great honor indeed. Sadder still when they consider it a way and means to loot their proverbial share of the national cake.
It was recently revealed that seventy-five (yes, 75%) of our national income is devoted to servicing the machinery of government – that is to pay concurrent expenditure like salaries and emoluments.
So, our blessed republic is left with ONLY 25% for its capital expenditure – roads, schools, hospitals and other infrastructural projects.
Do you now begin to understand why we are mired in seemingly intractable poverty quagmire? Do you now know why our leaders need to go around the world with begging and supplicating like common beggars? Do you now know why any announcement by the Japanese and the Chinese about grant always send our rulers dizzy with excitement?
Do you now begin to realize why we are perpetual recipient of ‘aid?’ Do you now begin to know why we command no respect in any part of the world and why the other races keep looking down on us?
That is not all about the sad state of our affairs. Our elite (remember greedy bastards?) are not satisfied with collaring 75% of our budget for their comfortable upkeep, they still want a share of the paltry 25% left for our development.
How?
Remember that it is from the 25% that government must pay compensation for lands acquired for state’s use.
So, when our greedy bastards (sorry elite) started parceling out these lands to themselves at simply ridiculous prices, they are literally stealing what belongs to the commonwealth.
Methinks that it is this culture of entitlement by our public officials that must be disabused. Why do our public ‘servants’ think that because; ‘I have served my country, so I am perfectly entitled to loot her meager resources.’
We had a departing speaker of parliament, not satisfied with his whopping ex-gratia award, literally and figuratively stripping his bungalow of every item his thieving hands could grab. No sanction was imposed on him. A departing minister also bought his official residence for a song; today he chairs one of our major parties!
Our MPs ‘serve’ for four years and believe that they deserve ex-gratia to the tune of 800million cedis.
According to Madam CJ: “In order to protect the high office of the Chief Justice of the Republic of Ghana, I would like to relinquish my interest in the plot of land under reference.”
Methinks that this is simply not enough. By purchasing government land under very questionable circumstances, the CJ has severely compromised her ethical authority.
The government of Ghana is not a land-seller, period. Madam CJ, like any other Ghanaian, should know better whom to approach when in search of land to buy.
How, on earth, does Madam CJ expected to be taken seriously whenever she pontificate about the virtues of honest living. Does she still expect to be taken seriously when she admonishes people about crime not paying? How would she adjudicate in a land dispute when she herself is a beneficiary of a dubious land deal?
While it might be true that she breaches no law in acquiring the land, she patently breached the ethical standards her high office demands. Her behaviour might not be strictly illegal, it is certainly not ethical.
And this is precisely where the CJ’s problem lies: Her lack of capacity to either comprehend or appreciate the ethical dimensions of her judgments reveals a person whose moral standards are questionable, to say the least.
“Ethics (Greek ethika, from ethos, “character,” “custom”), principles or standards of human conduct, sometimes called morals (Latin mores, “customs”), and, by extension, the study of such principles, sometimes called moral philosophy.”
And what was Madam CJ trying to tell us when she wrote: “this is the only piece of land that I have acquired from the Lands Commission, for which reason I have supplied my full maiden name to enable the facts stated to be verified.”
I guessed she expected Ghanaians to dance with joy because she had acquired only one piece of government land.
Sorry, Madam CJ, I refused to see the logic of your argument. I wonder how you’d treat a criminal who plead in your court that he had stolen only once. And pray, what was Madam CJ trying to do by employing her maiden when she was a married woman!
Land is a highly prized finite commodity and a visit to our court houses will reveal heart-breaking stories of land cases stretching back to time immemorial.
There are serious allegations that many judges had received parcels of land over which they sit in judgment. How do we expect to get impartial judgment from such judges? And our judges expect to continue to receive our adulation!
The big question Madam CJ fail to address is: Was it right for you to surreptitiously buy government property?
Sorry Madam CJ, but it is not the frequency of your UNETHICALLY acquiring government property that is worrisome: it is your failure, as the Chief Justice of Ghana, to adhere STRICTLY to the rules and procedures of how government’s properties should be disposed off.
It is your lack of moral etiquette that is most baffling. Your action might not be illegal but it is grossly unethical. And it is your inability to distinguish between illegality and unethicality that is making your holding the position of the Chief Justice of our blessed republic quite untenable.
I will, once again, advice that you advice yourself about the ethicality of your continuing to hold your current exalted position.
You may quote all the law books to support your position, but on the ethical or moral scale, you simply have failed, miserably.”
Sadly, the CJ did not heed my advice to resign her position; she is still there. And if anything the primitive acquisition of state properties have increased. The latest is the saga of Dr. Tony Aidoo.
According to those that knew him very well, Dr. Tony Aidoo was a Marxist-spewing left-leaning, no-nonsense university don who’s very fond of his cigarettes.
He reportedly tooled around Kwame Nkrumah University campus in an ancient jalopy and appeared not to have other ambitions than to trudge it out as a lecturer until retirement.
Apparently his Marxists rhetoric caught the fancy of then President Rawlings who plugged him from obscurity to fill the position of a deputy Minister at the Ministry of Defence.
He was not distinguished in that capacity and left office when the term of his boss ended in 2001.
Little was heard of Dr. Aidoo again until the late Beloved President Mills dragged him to the Castle and seconded him as the Head of the nebulously-tiled Policy Monitoring and Evaluation Unit at the Presidency.
It was a position that appeared to fit our erstwhile Marxist perfectly.
Like every petty bureaucrat, he quickly cut a niche for himself, made himself relevant, pushed papers around and at the end of the month collects his juicy pay that benefits a presidential staffer.
Occasionally, Dr. Aidoo emerged from his obscure office to vent his anger at the opposition. At times he roared like an Old Testament Patriarch whose children have disobeyed Jehovah. He spared neither the low nor the mighty in his vile invectives against corruption and other vices. He bellowed angrily whenever any opposition dare criticize the government.
Generally, Dr. Aidoo cut the picture of a pious, self-righteous and upright man totally against all and every evil and vices.
He was said to have personally led agents to retrieved state properties from former officials of the NPP.
Dr. Aidoo was recently in the news demanding that President Mahama named those he considered ‘babies with sharp tooth and evil dwarfs,’ whom President Rawlings reportedly said were the Greedy bastards that cause confusion in the ruling party and are busy looting state’s resources.
There were no reports that the president ever answered him.
Then, the communication team of the NPP did the nation proud by releasing documents that showed that the self-righteous Dr. Aidoo was not so incorruptible, after all.
Addressing a news conference in Accra, a Deputy Communications Director of the NPP, Mr Sammy Awuku, accused Dr. Aidoo of buying a Ford Expedition for 6,200. Mr. Awuku said the car, which was part of former President Kufuor’s fleet of official vehicles, was bought on auction by Dr Aidoo and the money paid to Shargaw Ventures, a licensed auctioneer.
According to him, the deal smacks of corruption as the vehicle was released to Dr Aidoo at a “ridiculously low price".
Six thousand, two hundred cedis is, of course, a steal for that type of vehicle, auction or no auction. I recently sold my 2001 Opel Astra Estate wagon for 6,500!
In his defence, Dr. Aidoo lame excuse was that the said vehicle was in “a very bad condition," and that: “I am not the one who took the decision to scrap the car...and ordered its public auction. I am not the one who valued the car and set the price on it.... So where arises the conflict of interest?” he asked.
Tchaah!
I did some Googling and discover that the average selling price Ford Expedition 2005 in the USA is US$13,294: 2005 Ford Expedition Price
We then have to add the shipment/freight and the duty price to get the actual price it could have been sold in Ghana.
The paltry 6,200 Dr. Aidoo paid will hardly cover the Duty alone.
His claim that the vehicle was in bad shape could be true but could not have depreciated to the level where it could be sold for that ridiculous amount.
And maybe Dr. Aidoo needs to talk to his auto-mechanic as automatic vehicles do not have gear boxes as he claimed.
But the real problem here is that Dr. Aidoo like those who have partake in looting state properties can simply not grasp the unethicality of their actions. They cannot see the conflict of interests in buying properties of the government in which they serve.
This is the real tragedy for the country.
It is sad for the country when we have people like Dr. Tony Aidoo being caught in the web of corruption against which they have vociferated so loudly not too long ago.
It is equally sad that the President did not deem it fit and proper to fire his errant aide as soon as the story of the scandal hit town. That action alone would have put the president in the best of light and would have send the strongest message that this indeed is the president that meant what he said about fighting corruption.
By firing Dr. Aidoo, President Mahama would have deftly stolen the thunder from the opposition.
Dr. Tony Aidoo was reported to have once said "hena na edaho na honey so go na noa wantafere" to wit: "who will not lick it if honey falls on his/her tongue?”
And this was the same man who said he felt scandalized when President Rawlings accused some in in his party of being sharp-toothed greedy bastards and evil dwarfs!
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