Blabbermouth Rawlings and an FOI Act

On Sunday, July 6, 2008, Ghanaweb.com carried an old and familiar photograph of Jato Dzelukope with the caption: “Rawlings Still Dominates Ghanaian Media.” I winced a little bit and chuckled to myself and tersely remarked, largely to myself, since I was alone home with my two little sons, namely, Nana Kwame III and Osofo Sintim: “Indeed, this is the bane of the Ghanaian media, an institution so lazy and unimaginative as to find prime grist in the erratic and morbid ravings of a grizzled retired dictator who has absolutely nothing to offer our country, except his perennial and usual self-righteous guff.”

I had also just finished reading a computer printout of an article titled “Open Letter to His Excellency President John Agyekum Kufuor” and dated September 28, 2006. It was originally posted on the website of an Accra newspaper that I used to write for but was unceremoniously bounced off from, on the purely political account of my ardent support for the candidacy of Nana Addo-Dankwa Akufo-Addo. What struck me, though, is the fact that virtually everything is related to every other thing. Don't over-interpret this observation: I am no monist philosopher pondering the organicity of all the elements of Nature. For the article, published as an open-letter to President Kufuor, also had the subtitle of “The Right to Information Bill 2005.”

It quizzically appeared to me that, in reality, constitutional democracy returned to Ghana only in 2001, not 1992, as many a political cynic is apt to reminding those of us who still flatly refuse to be conned into accepting the “constitutional” government of the so-called National Democratic Congress (NDC). This open-letter, once again, confirmed my deep-seated conviction that, indeed, Fourth-Republican Ghanaian democracy began in January 2001, not 1992. It had appended to it, the familiar names of Nana Oye Lithur, Prof. Kwame Karikari, Daniel Batidam, Douglas Korsah-Brown, Kojo Asante, Charles Ayamdoo, Akoto Ampaw, Francis Ameyibor and Samuel Annan, all practitioners and human-rights advocates in one form or another.

What struck me as almost veritably hypocritical was the fact that I had neither before seen nor read a similar open-letter from the same signatories between 1992 and 2000, when Mr. Rawlings had Ghanaians by our scruff, literally speaking, and self-righteously pretended that Fourth-Republican democratic culture was still a bona fide part and parcel of the Provisional National Defense Council junta era. “Veritably hypocritical” because it seemed as if the signatories to the open-letter had determined to push the Kufuor Administration about as far as the latter would allow, in as much as the so-called National Democratic Congress (NDC), while it held political sway, had budged nary an inch on the question of fundamental human rights. The simple riposte by the Rawlings government to any and all who would presume to hold the NDC to account on the basic question of human rights, was some fetid phenomenon called “SHIT-BOMBING,” which time does not permit the author to fully delve into.

I had saved this 2-year-old article in hopes of finding something to do with it by way of generating an article or two out of it, as the theme of “Freedom of Information” seems to have become the staple diet of a few Ghanaian been-tos of the United States of America on Ghanaweb.com for quite a while now. “The Right to Information Bill,” indeed, I mused lightheartedly. “Lightheartedly” because in my heart of hearts, as it were, I don't see any crying, or gaping, need for the passage of a “Freedom of Information Bill.” After all, Ghanaians lived through two long decades of P/NDC reign-of-terror without any Freedom of Information Act, or even a bill of the same title being broached, either in the legislature (from 1992 onwards) or even in the public marketplace of ideas.

Needless to say, it is primarily, though not exclusively, the preceding distinction between the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), that makes any well-meaning Ghanaian want to pray for the New Patriotic Party to stay in the democratic seat of governance for at least a generation or two, until such time that Ghanaians are able to produce an alternative ideological school or political party that fully appreciates the democratic rule of law and order.

The open-letter regarding the imperative need for Ghana to pass a Freedom of Information Act had one curious aspect to it which, I firmly believe, would not have been included in the letter had the signatories, or whoever drafted the letter, pondered its practical and moral implications before proceeding to have it published. In presuming to give credence to the imperative need for the Ghanaian parliament to pass the Freedom of Information Act, the authors observed, rather superfluously: “As Your Excellency is aware, Article 21 (1) (f) of the Constitution (1992) guarantees that all persons shall have the right to information, subject to such qualifications and laws as are necessary in a democratic society. The sentiments of the constitution are echoed by the African Union Declaration of Principles on Freedom of Expression in Africa, which expressly calls for the right to access information to be protected by law.”

At this juncture, nightmarish pictures of continental African leaders like Yahya Jammeh, Muamar el-Qaddafy, Hosni Mubarak, Paul Biya, Robert Mugabe, Yoweri Museveni, Omar Bongo, Sassou Nguesso, Omar al-Bashir, Blaise Campaore, Paul Kagame, etc., began flashing through my mind. For does any Ghanaian of sound health and intellect really believe that any principles on free speech and access to information endorsed by the so-called African Union (AU) membership of junta leaders and brazen civilian dictators are worth the paper or computer screen on which they are published?

Recently, for instance, ex-President Rawlings, the man who dominated Ghana's political landscape for some twenty long years and continues to make a nuisance of himself as well as public peace, was quoted to be claiming that “Any lizard can become President of Ghana.” Interesting, because I have always envisaged this creature as something other than a bona fide member of the human species, although looking at the photograph published on the website of Ghanaweb.com (the same photograph also appeared on other websites), you wouldn't have, even for a second, surmised, dear reader, that you were actually looking at the photograph of an Agama lizard!

It was also quite interesting reading about the spin which the signatories to the open-letter to President Kufuor, regarding the need for Ghanaians to have an FOI act passed by Parliament, namely, to reduce corruption in government, put on their submission. I said to myself, with bashful amusement, this is precisely what happens when people demand to have something that people of other nationalities have, merely because it makes Ghanaians also look as if we have arrived. Well, while, indeed, it is not in the least bit far-fetched to envisage an FOI act as one that could remarkably help in reducing the high spate of corruption in government, the primary objective of an FOI act is actually to enhance the quality of the human rights of the proverbial average citizen. If, indeed, in the process of enhancing the rights of individuals in society corruption in government and public service is also markedly reduced then, I heartily say, all the better!

Still, the entire battle for an FOI act began to make perfect sense, once a friend phoned to direct my attention to the published findings of an investigation published in the Ghanaian Statesman, regarding how ex-President Rawlings prevailed on a European private company to foot the high school and/or college bills of two of the Rawlingses' daughters to the whopping tune of £ 42,000 (Forty-Two Thousand Pounds Sterling) per annum, even as Mr. Rawlings proceeded to vitiate the quality of Ghanaian education by creating the largely dysfunctional system of JSS and SSS, a system best suited to recently manumitted slaves, which the former Ghanaian strongman, allegedly, claimed to be woefully ill-suited to the caliber and temperament of his own children.

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is the author of 17 books, including “Ghanaian Politics Today” (Atumpan Publications/lulu.com, 2008) and “Dr. J. B. Danquah: Architect of Modern Ghana” (iUniverse.com, 2005). E-mail: [email protected].