Monday,
October 15, 2012
The ugly noise that Rawlings continues
to make about his so-called principles of “probity and accountability”—which is
the motivation for his persistent undermining of his successors—is more than annoying.
According to him, everybody in
Ghana is corrupt except him and his wife. As he continues to fight against the
interests of the very party that he toiled to nurture into a formidable force
in Ghanaian politics, Rawlings casts a huge doubt on his own integrity, more so
as he bases all considerations on his claim of corruption.
And he worsens his credibility
problem by constantly annoying Ghanaians with incessant references to the so-called
principles of probity and accountability as the hallmark of his politicking—and
the yardstick by which he has continued to judge all governments except his own.
As he continues to muddy the
political waters, we want to remind him that whatever lapses he is complaining
of are the direct upshot of his own failures and inadequacies as a leader. Our
thesis is that if for all the nearly 20 years that Rawlings ruled Ghana he had
done the right thing, bribery and corruption would have been rooted out and not
patronized to become our major national canker.
But he couldn’t do so and
corruption flourished under his watch to be become a national plague. His
failures fertilized the grounds for corruption to bloom. Why should he be the
first to cast the stone, then?
If Rawlings had been honest, he
would have known better how to behave. Now that he has found his wife’s NDP as
a tool with which to fight the NDC, we need not go far to know how the tide
will flow for him. Apparently, those he has surrounded himself with aren’t
saints either.
Dr. Josiah Aryeh failed the simplest
tests of all, putting at naught the principles of probity and accountability
when he stooped so low as to be bribed with 3,000 Dollars by the NPP to betray
the NDC’s cause, losing his place in the NDC. Today, he is the National
Chairman of the NDP, earning Rawlings’ respect.
Our ears are full of his
allegations against Kufuor and his appointees and those led by ex-President
Mills and now in the hands of John Dramani Mahama.
It is not difficult to guess how
Rawlings is torn apart by a recollection of the past and a difficult future
lying ahead of him, viewed against the present circumstance in which he lives.
Such a person is suffering all kinds of pangs and isn’t at peace with himself
and all others he sees in his paranoid state as his enemies, especially those
in the NDC administration that he has qualified as “evil dwarfs” or “greedy
bastards.”
Truth be told, these “greedy
bastards” are the products of Rawlings’ own administration. They worked with
and for him in all the almost 20 years that he ruled the country. They did
assignments that he gave them and virtually learnt the ropes of governance
under him.
So, having been groomed by him, what
are they doing today that we cannot trace to the intricacies of the grooming
that Rawlings gave them?
There is nothing happening in
Ghana today that didn’t happen when Rawlings was in power, taking out the “strongman
mentality” with which Rawlings superintended over national affairs.
So, where did the line become
distorted for Rawlings to see corruption in governments succeeding him that
didn’t happen under his own watch?
If corruption is the measure for
testing the efficacy of Rawlings’ so-called principles of “probity and
accountability,” there is no gainsaying the fact that he himself has had no
moral justification all these years that he has been in the limelight.
Under him, corruption was rife,
despite the draconian measures that he took to punish supposed corrupt
personalities. The excesses that characterized his administration’s use of
brute force to fight corruption led to lives being snuffed out and many
prominent citizens losing their businesses and sense of humanity. The impact of
such “unprecedented revolutionary action” is still evident in many departments
of personal and national lives.
But corruption is still as
pervasive as it was under the watchful eyes of Rawlings and his band of
revolutionaries. Truth be told, these apostles of probity and accountability
were themselves soiling their hands and reputation while finding clever ways to
shield themselves against public scrutiny and justice.
No one has been able to question
the PNDC Account 48 that Rawlings’ AFRC said it had created into which were to
be lodged huge sums of money forcibly extorted from business enterprises and
people cowed into submission. Nor has
Rawlings been able to account for the 50-Cedi notes that his PNDC collected
from Ghanaians for the operation of the “People’s Shop.”
Above all else, many clear acts
of bribery and corruption against major players in the Rawlings government were
investigated by the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice and
adverse findings made against them. What did Rawlings do to confirm his
adherence to the principles of probity and accountability in those cases? He
stoutly defended his appointees—labeling them as men of integrity—which
emboldened them to defy the CHRAJ’s findings and go away with their ill-gotten
wealth.
Many other instances attest to
our claim that Rawlings’ pontification of uprightness—which is the basis for
all the goring he does of everybody else—is a mere smokescreen behind which he
hides to pursue his sinister political agenda.
If, indeed, he and his wife were
that much upright, why would his government encourage the divestiture of state
property for the benefit of those close to them? If Nana Konadu’s 31st
December Women’s Movement had competed with other bidders and genuinely acquired
the Nsawam Cannery or the cocoa-processing factory at Tema being run by them,
would the Kufuor government have taken action against her?
We insist at this stage that any
denunciation of the current members of government—or even the Kufuor
administration—of being corrupt is a throwback on Rawlings himself. It is not
difficult to fathom it as a sad reflection of his abject failure as a leader
who stamped his animalistic authority on the country for nearly 20 years but couldn’t
tackle the very problem that is at the center of his political rhetoric.
The overarching question is: If in
all those 20 years Rawlings had succeeded in tackling corruption and making it
unappealing, would the vice have spread and stabilized in public office?
Although he is quick to pointing
gossipping fingers at others, he is ill-at-ease to be told that he is part of
the problem. His short-sightedness and fixation on the “strongman mentality”
blinded him to the fact that corruption cannot be successfully fought without the
requisite state institutions.
What did Rawlings do to strengthen
the arms of these institutions? Nothing to make them viable and potent enough
to fight corruption. So, when he left office with his “strongman mentality,” what
did he leave behind to fight the vice? Nothing. And as the Greeks have it,
nothing comes from nothing.
Knowing Rawlings for who and what
he is, there is no doubt in my mind that he will continue to blame others and
look for opportunities to mount rooftops to pontificate on issues for which he
is morally deficient.
His inability to tackle
corruption decisively paved the way for what we’ve had so far in this 4th
Republic.
The fear of retribution may be why
none seems to be tackling corruption. Perhaps, what frightened Kufuor into
curtailing the trial of Nana Konadu and five others for their part in the
divestiture of the former Nsawam Cannery and other acts of malfeasance for
which they should have been duly prosecuted and jailed.
But Kufuor cunningly let her off
the hook, fearing what might happen to him in the hands of an NDC government
after the 2008 elections. Had Kufuor not intervened this way, Nana Konadu would
have suffered the Fate that she deserved—and we would have been spared all this
nuisance from her and her husband.
The motivation behind Kufuor’s
intervention seems to be re-appearing in the case of Rawlings too, apprehensive
or gravely worried at what an Akufo-Addo government might dish out to him for
his role in human rights abuses and others that the NPP has not hesitated in
raising dust over.
Of course, functionaries of the
NPP are the most vehement in calling for the repeal of the 1992 Constitution
and removal of the Indemnity Clause just to get at Rawlings. He knows full well
that Akufo-Addo might be behind such agitations and taking a sneak peek into
the immediate future, he seems not to like what he sees.
An Akufo-Addo NPP government will
definitely take the battle to him and, the coward that he is, he has become
sober enough to be afraid of his own shadow; hence, his appeal for protection for
NDC functionaries (himself as top most) under such a government.
The persistence of corruption in
Ghana is the direct upshot of Rawlings’ failures as Ghana’s leader with the
longest tenure. He should spare us his tantrums and wait for the day of
reckoning.
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