Abuse! Abuse! Abuse!
The wedge between abuse of privilege, power and position is thinnest among hosts. Decorum is the guy who hisses the injunction to keep off a breach. Of late he has come openly in want of a lasso as the piling found-outs add to nervousness relative to where this country is heading.
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Omitting recent history, the litany from only the beginning of this year starkly says it all—endemic racing into terminally cancerous, because the country has been either smug or never thought through surgeries to exterminate it.
Look back at the vetting bribery and how it ended—shoddy; then anti-illicit mining with the big names et al being fudged; the Chief Justice berates the plethora of “galamsey” schools for training lawyers, might be stealthily shoved to subterranean, comme d’habitude du pays and the story engulfing Parliament of diplomatic passports and visa scam, both wrongs being an old hoodlum. All are haranguing today.
Alright mistakes occurred. I have blamed it on national collective laziness though often demarcated in partisanship; but the other causes are hypocrisy, the webs of cultural, old school-tie connections and the anonymous “pressure” or its regular variant “order” from above ”syndrome, capped by hope that the errors would self-correct, the longer they last.
I doubt there is any or indeed much extenuating circumstance(s) to think and believe the members of Parliament (MPs) are non au fait with the rules of engagement using the very exclusive privilege from the cloister of the House Protocol Department for valid travel facilities—Visas.
Without impugning, a member by-passing this route raises several untoward questions, internally and in extensor the foreign mission which decides to pass application via agents. The present issue of the “MP-Trio” may sound triumphant for the British High Commissioner.
However, I am afraid that is not all there is to this. There are two parts to it--a perhaps unintended propaganda and vague smear simultaneously—‘we told you so; that they are a people who can’t get anything done right’; an apparently camouflaged condoned corruption snores but explicitly signs a certain fed-upness by the High Commissioner. With regard to the House Speaker’s intimated “investigation”, the subordinate clause reportedly “when he returns home” is the first discord to pigeon-hole. It carries the meaning of taking the issue lightly despite being quoted as remarking he takes the issue “very, very seriously”.
Secondly, is it that he cannot delegate? A third frame exists which is that he probably is being over-cautious, betraying despite rightly his high sensitivity to public concerns about the handling of the “Ayarigate”. Mike, the Rt.Hon. Speaker is a careful person, who would have to understand the public’s pulse on this would that the terms of reference for the investigation would extend to the heap across the foreign representations here. It is not witch-hunting.
It is a means to determine the extent of the rot to enable Parliament and country to place a cordon sanitaire around the image with regard to the involved processes. Another plea is that “go and sin no more” is marked indelibly absent at the end.
However, more seriously wrong on our side is how and why this story should play for more than 24 hours in the electronic media. They have nothing else, it demonstrates as often. Or is it a continuous case of “Bature ya fadi” [the white man said it]. Information from that shocks as it after all unveils only in public not for the first time, it seems, the small lid on a Pandora’s Box stuff which exists everywhere.
Of course our missions abroad would have been rejoicing and quietly crying because I am certain that there are cabinets at Foreign Office and Immigration holding comparable misdemeanours of some aliens who arrived here.
That is the kind of research our media could have made to background the story—not tit for tat but for balancing professionally. You wonder it is a matter of education or some deficiency between lack of self-awareness and diffidence.
Law Schools
Once on the education tangent, writing now about the beaucoup Lawyer Teaching Institutions is a safe sequitur. The CJ has finally joined in the worry about the inexorable growth of professional training schools at the highest level without….The misunderstanding and excuses given are that the critics are simply bent on denying education to others or to destroy by a perceived competitor. Neither is true and if it is conjecturally why would you not do what the rules say to avoid bother? Unfortunately, the “excuse” is usually premised with pointing to or exhibiting a letter of intent or consideration from the accreditation board and that seals the conviction for persons to sign on.
Chances are that the National Accreditation Board( NAB) has always held the faith that the shortcomings would be voluntarily addressed to pre-empt shut down. This freeze policy falls under the “hope” reason. Whereas the installation futurely of an independent examination council would be superb, I think the CJ inadvertently glossed over the fact that the mechanism without the added spell out as reported in the press, would appear to give blanket recognition to quacking that is central in the complaint. It is not petty in a country where I suspect that the overburdening debris of misconduct could only be resolved by writing medical doctor’s prescription cards for everything. Somehow getting some of the medication would need connection.
It is not petty in a country where I suspect that the overburdening debris of misconduct could only be resolved by writing medical doctor’s prescription cards for everything. Somehow getting some of the medication would need connection.
The old school tie superseded family and who you know after independence for white collar work positions—entry to promotion, receiving heft through the years via order or pressure from above. “Above” refers to the power of the day. I like to share an interesting experience to conclude. There was a Director of Passport I knew as we both
There was a Director of Passport I knew as we both globe trotted in the service of our country pursuant to our separate jobs. At that time there was so much den about Osagyefo the President, Dr Kwame Nkrumah’s so-called unclaimed huge cash legacy. The man received an order from the Castle to give diplomatic passports to a group of six and their leader who claimed full knowledge about that Nkrumah treasure trove.
He refused because this very senior diplomat knew the hoax. He drove personally for an audience at the Castle with the “Big Man” and explained the denial. Now, the route from the Castle to the passport office then located at the beach after the Black Star Square veering left at the junction of the new court buildings off the Prof. John Evans Atta Mills High Street and straight down south of Accra Club, was a short time drive distance —less than 10 minutes. He arrived to find a letter on his desk announcing his appointment as an Ambassador to leave soonest to the new posting. Eventually, I was in Brussels when the “show boat” seen off with almost a State fanfare in Accra, arrived motorcade paraded--- fizzled and returned home empty-handed. I thought then and now that poignant lessons derivative is one of two virtues: either you stand up to illegitimate cajoling by authority or succumb. Regrettably, the latter is the prevalent option today probably throughout the systems here. I agree that the first of the choices is a crunchy crusher in current environment; but such is the litmus test for a legacy to be respected individually, severally and collectively as a nation and people.
I thought then and now that poignant lessons derivative is one of two virtues: either you stand up to illegitimate cajoling by authority or succumb. Regrettably, the latter is the prevalent option today probably throughout the systems here. I agree that the first of the choices is a crunchy crusher in current environment; but such is the litmus test for a legacy to be respected individually, severally and collectively as a nation and people.