.jpg "Ivor Kobina Greenstreet")
Introducing…President Greeenstreet!
For his oratorical skills, for his confidence and not only his vision but also his ability to spell it out so cogently and so convincingly as he did at last Tuesday’s IEA forum, Ivor Kobina Greenstreet should be Ghana’s next President. His manifesto is the stuff by which presidents build nations.
Advertisement
His promises were not bread and butter; nor were they the usual mantra of “Sokode-Mamobi-Kotokoraba road; so-and-so number of CHPS compounds and two million schools under trees, etc. As I have always written (not less than twice on this page in the Daily Graphic), even an SHS-1 student, elected as President, will build toilets, roads, schools and clinics. All he/she needs is a loan – and who would not give you a loan when you have crude oil!
I don’t know what others heard. What I heard Greenstreet promise is a return of Ghana to the Kwame Nkrumah-paradigm where our scientists and researchers would be consulted; where brick and mortar would yield place to science and technology.
Greenstreet’s ‘Almond Tree’ and ‘Energy Policy’ are not castles in the air; they are based on empirical facts and figures resulting from years of research by men and women of no mean scientific accomplishments, one of whom being Crusading Engineer Wood.
The CPP flag bearer is asking for the people’s mandate to redefine Ghana’s path to prosperity. One such path is what we must do with the things around us; an example being his almond tree crusade, work on which has been done by someone he describes as Ghana’s foremost almond tree expert, Nana Kwesi Abura.
The tree is tropical so his reference to California is not far-fetched. This American state alone produces about 80 per cent of the world’s supply and earns income running into billions and billions of dollars. Ivor asked his listeners to check; so I did, and discovered the truth, that indeed the price on the international market for almond oil is in excess of US$10,000 dollars per tonne.
To transform Ghana into an almond country, the CPP promises mobilising two million youth to plant 32 trees per person in an eight-hour work day or 1,280 million trees in 20 days at 175 trees per hectare. That gives us a total area equivalent to 7,314,285.7 hectares of almond.
Talk about almond trees, and I will talk about agriculture in general. The capitalistic mode of development may frown upon this approach, but does it make sense that this country has millions of young people selling dog chains with a gross profit of GH¢5 a day (and go hungry), while we import onions, tomatoes et al from Burkina Faso, a desert country? Is it over-simplification of the fact to state that all we need to do is send these unemployed, mostly post-JSS/SHS youth to farms owned by the state but managed by Ghanaians with private sector mentality and background? Does anyone doubt that we have such turn-around management experts to run these farms? Listen to Citi FM every day.
Greenstreet is still getting rave reviews from the Tuesday night performance. Unfortunately, the reviews are taking place only in Senior Common Rooms of the universities and such like places. The CPP flag bearer’s message is the type that must be taken to the streets of Ghana, to the countryside. He needs a brand specialist and a sales/marketing witch.
Great speech, by all standards. But ask me: Has the CPP ever run short of orators? Professor George Hagan, Abu Sankara Forster and Kwesi Nduom are great speakers. In our part of the world, however, the votes go to candidates from political world banks.
I want to return to Ivor Kobina Greenstreet. Met him only once at the CPP headquarters where I had gone looking for Samia. But I know the Greenstreet type because I know that once upon a time, a man with physical disability ruled America, the most powerful nation on earth, from a wheelchair, from 1933 to 1945.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, crippled by polio, led the United States through the Second World War and during its worst economic crisis. Before the elections, his opponents criticised his physical limitations, but he used his powers of persuasion and charm to get the ordinary American to vote for him. By his performance in office, Franklin Delano Roosevelt has been labelled “the greatest President since Lincoln.”
Greenstreet is promising a “New Covenant” or “Apam Foforo” with Ghanaians. Strange, but do you know that Roosevelt came to power on the promise of what he termed the “New Deal”, his programme for relief, recovery and reform, expanding the role of the federal government in the economy!
What if Greenstreet does not win? Fortunately, for the likes of Kwesi Pratt, his handlers are operating under no illusions. Their best bet is that the CPP, under Ivor, would garner about five per cent of the votes in this year’s election. My own permutation is that if he succeeds, he could easily, together with Kwesi Nduom, force the election into a re-run. That will make Ivor a kingmaker.
What happens thereafter is not a subject of my speculation in today’s column, except to say that it is very obvious from the words of Greenstreet which of the two dominant parties (NDC/NPP) he will take the CPP to.
