Random thoughts
When I hear politicians and government functionaries outlining achievements upon achievements against popular belief, the question that naturally comes to mind is whether they are the only ones with eyes to see or that they are blinded by sycophantic partisanship.
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When something is patently observable, no one needs to tell us about it. For instance, when government activists maintain that the government is doing something about the Kumasi road, do they have to daily drum that into the ears of those who use the road to confirm that? That is where propaganda will fail against reality.
In the early years of the Fourth Republic, I incurred the displeasure of a very good friend, Alhaji Huudu Yahaya, when I criticised the government for retaining him as a Minister of State when he had been elected General Secretary of the National Democratic Congress (NDC). I am of the conviction that there is the need to distinguish government from party. To keep a party executive in state employment is to compel the state to finance the operations of a political party.
One of the legacies, dysfunctional though, that Prof. J.E.A. Mills bequeathed is the number of party executive officers appointed as presidential staffers, with no defined roles in government but with publicly paid-up employment to work full time for a party. It seems the NDC has formalised the situation with the expansion of its delegates list to include presidential staffers. The NDC has moved a step further by making ambassadors delegates of the party.
How on earth can ambassadors be made delegates of a political party? But in our case, even some members of the Council of State do not wink when they are charged to represent the President where some of them present highly contestable partisan positions.
At the NDC congress in Kumasi, the master of ceremonies (MC) went as far as introducing the director of state protocol as one of the dignitaries. If he had to be there because the President was there, should he be introduced? We must all rethink the political history we are charting and do the right things at all times rather than making political mistakes which are condemned but repeated to be condemned depending on which political party is in government.
Needless advocates
Then also were the needless advocacy made by Chief Executive Officer of the National Petroleum Authority Mr Moses Asaga and Mr Senyo Horsi of the Bulk Oil Distribution Companies that because the government had incurred debts, the windfall from crude oil prices should not be passed on to the people. The natural question is, when did the two bodies become debt-collection agencies for the state or realise that Ghanaians had to contribute to salvage the government from the economic mess?
When the bulk oil distributors created artificial shortage of fuel products to the compel government to pay them, were they informed by the national interest or their profit? When the NPA proclaimed its independence, was that done sycophantically to government because the government did not want to be associated with spiralling fuel price hikes or in the interest of the people?
Those who are privileged to be appointed to manage public institutions, where they lack the capacity to strengthen the independence and autonomy of such institutions, must not surrender and mortgage the power and authority of such institutions to government. We need to learn from the example of Dr Kwesi Botchwey and the Ghana Gas Company.
Whilst Dr Botchwey admits that the board was appointed by the government, he, nevertheless, maintains that there must be procedure to deal with matters that are consistent with good corporate governance practices.
That is the same measure of the Speaker of Parliament who was not at the NDC congress in Kumasi. Though the Speaker came from a political organisation, the obligations imposed on him transcend partisanship. Indeed that is the level of statesmanship that we demand from all those employed by the state. Their primary loyalty and obligation must be with the state, not individuals. In that wise, the Speaker proved himself better than members of the Council of State who were present at the congress.
As we begin a new year, we have to be open-minded and accommodating of all others, since the essence of democracy, as someone has noted, is not to accommodate the views we share but to tolerate and accommodate the views we detest.
We need to congratulate the NDC for having a peaceful and orderly congress, compared with the violence which dogged the election of the youth organiser, and especially the courage to expand the base of its electoral college.
Welcome Comrade Kofi Portuphy, a long-time associate from the School of Performing Arts University of Ghana. We featured together in the drama production of Kwasi Adu Amankwaa, way back in 1980.