Deceit, Darkness and Light

Published on 8th May 2007

Any politician who has the courage to point to his party's achievements in the last fifty years should be thankful that Ghanaians are a tolerating lot (if not gullible) to the cacophony of sweet and empty promises during elections. What makes me pity our countryside folks is the deliberate policy to marginalize them from the hobnob of creative enterprise for most part of a party's term in office but later patronize them a few days to elections with maize, salt, cooking oil, chicken thighs, building materials and party T-shirts. Without much choice, our rural folks settle for these things as their only reward for giving their voting rights away.

The cheap political baits are the very things they would have been able to create or purchase if their travails and produce from mother earth were recognized, just as it was easy for a bureaucrat to see his pay check accumulate with raises, even when the general outlook of the economy is retrogressing.

I'm not talking of a recognition that begins and ends with huge rallies to award a myriad of subsistence farmers for doing so well to remain subsistent but rather about the ability to hire and fire those who they entrust their taxes, hopes and aspirations to.

Having been gatekeepers of national resources and a five-decade long penchant for   aggressive wide-eyed policies of chasing free dollars abroad, the desire to look within for redemption from poverty is light years away.

Poor people's taxes in the rich western world are being spent by questionable politicians in the hope that all will trickle to the unrepresentative poor.   How much have we sunk into agricultural projects without a careful thought on marketing the produce? How much have we sunk into poverty alleviation projects without due diligence, monitoring and evaluation? 

In truth, not all the IMF/World Bank reforms yielded nothing.  Poor evaluation, deliberate weakening of oversight institutions and profligate spending on the part of beneficiary countries meant little of the booty was left for diversifying the economy. We have had our own experience with how gains from Structural Adjustment and Economic Recovery Programmes, even if they were minimal as some may argue, were used to politicize life in Ghana. Sadly, when the first energy crisis hit us in the late 90s, we could not keep up. It was worsened by the financial crisis that hit Asia.

The world has learnt very little from this betrayal. The providers of the aid dollars are happy to keep their jobs of fighting poverty; so their ability to dole out aid dollars like a rudderless ship means they are doing so well.  Recent happenings within the World Bank point to this efficiency poverty.  Of course, if all our poverty ended too soon, aid agents would be out of jobs. 

So, here we are with a political party that began well, reversing the misfortunes that plagued our economy under pseudo autocracy. However, it began trumpeting its relative success and then stood still while receiving accolades from far and near. But the bolts soon came off the wheels, carrying the past glories and plunged everyone who wanted political change into a deep, distracting energy crisis. Aside the unnecessary chest-thumping that, they were going to get Ghanaians out of the blackout, the problems appear to worsen with dire consequences. Close to 35 percent of businesses are either out of operation or beating the path way of high operational costs due to use of electronic generators.

But having blamed the previous government for every wrong thing under the sun, it has now turned to God. He is responsible for the shortage of rain, ostensibly punishing law-abiding and tax-weary Ghanaians for not being prayerful enough. The good thing though is that, the anti-development alarmist slogan of Climate Change is not being cited as the culprit. 

Humor aside, one can only describe as bleak, a future that less than a year ago looked brighter but has under the aegis of political naivety began an avalanche of reverses due to a deliberate putrefying vision of sleeping by our energy poverty for years.

Even if it seems ominous that the current government might be booted out of power for such gross ineptitude, the question is, whom are they handing over to? The alternatives staring at us have a warped view of running an economy. Some say Socialism is the new kid on the bloc. Then there is social democracy.  Apostles of this version of political creed argue that, it is better to stay in the middle than being on the extreme right or left--but that's a confused formula for running an economy- one can predict with certainty that the scales would turn toward more centralist planning as has been with countries that practiced social democracy. They are being rejected in rich countries like France.  Winston Churchill is instructive here-"The inherent vice of capitalism is the uneven division of blessings, while the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal division of misery."

If only the current leadership and their successors will accept that politics is not magic, but an art that could win over hearts and minds of people with the right choices, choices that give opportunity to every one to excel, choices that accommodate dissenting opinions, choices that reward innovation and enterprise, choices that allow ordinary people to say what form of enlightened government they want, ultimately that would be the voice of truth, light and growth. The contrary is deceit, darkness and economic depression.


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