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24.09.2008 Feature Article

SPINNING OUT OF CONTROL

SPINNING OUT OF CONTROL
24.09.2008 LISTEN

Since the NPP assumed the reins of power in 2001, it has, through its newspapers and lately even state-owned papers like Daily Graphic, spun and spun every bit of information fed to the Ghanaian public. This is done almost as if the NPP government is completely infallible. In as much as its officials are wont to lay blame on the doorsteps of others, they do not accept any blame. Ghanaians want to inform that we are tired of their spin.

For some time, the spin-doctors proclaimed Prof. Mills' demise and even today, a newspaper has published that the NDC has flown in a German doctor to attend to the NDC presidential candidate Yet, none of these spinners informed us that the young, affable, and respected Finance Minister, Hon. Kwadwo Baah-Wiredu, had been flown to South Africa for medical treatment. Had they publicized it the way they did Prof. Mills', we would have prayed for our dear brother and who knows, he might have been spared. Why does it have to be “kata wo de so na bue obi de so”?

From the IFC loan fiasco to “Ananegate”, “Amoatenggate”, “Gizelle Yadzigate”, presidential aircraft “acquisitiongate”, etc. the government and its supporters in the media have sought to throw dust into the eyes of Ghanaians. They have sought to justify their misdeeds and missteps by spinning information to a point where it is no longer funny. Just look at last week's Daily Graphic proclaiming that the president's recent USA trip yielded $350 million! As if the mere fact that the president was in the USA got the country that loan!

The stupidity in this piece of news is that we all know that such loans are not arranged in a day; therefore the president's visit had absolutely nothing to do with it. What the president's spin-doctors wanted Ghanaians to believe was that somehow there was a direct causal relationship between the trip and the loan. The truth is that one has nothing to do with the other. What these spinners wanted to do was to preempt any condemnation of the president's insatiable appetite for travel against the backdrop of Hon. Kan Dapaah's revelation that it costs Ghanaian taxpayers $390,000 to transport the president and his entourage from Ghana to Europe (and logically a lot more to the USA) and because the president has made close to 170 overseas trips, they felt the need to justify this trip.

What these spinners must know is that we are not that gullible; that they can fool some of us some of the time, but they cannot fool all of us all the time. We know that even if there was a loan agreement to sign, it did not have to take a whole president to do it. What are our ministers and ambassadors for? If the president is serving as his own foreign minister and roving ambassador, he should inform us officially. His failure to utilize the professional services of our diplomatic representation abroad on whom we spend so much, to me, constitutes “causing financial loss” to the state.

In tandem with the justification of the president's trip is the issue of the size of his entourage ( including some of his spin-doctors) and the amount of per diem they received. Kwaku Baako's name has come up and just like his colleague NPP spin –doctors, he has challenged accusers to provide evidence. Wasn't this same Kwaku Baako who claimed in December 2001 that he had evidence that several former NDC ministers and officials had stashed away millions of dollars in foreign banks and that he was not only working hard to reveal their identity but also working for the return of the alleged booty?—Something he divulged to Kweku Sakyi-Addo on GTV as an industrial secret! What happened to this story? What evidence did Kwaku Baako provide to support his allegations? He just dragged people's hard earned reputations into the mud! But just look at the extent to which he is going to damn his accusers!

Remember the anger with which Nana Ohene-Ntow, the NPP General Secretary, attacked JOY FM's report on the Coalition of Domestic Election Observers' (CODEO) findings of NPP political corruption? Because they have cocooned themselves in air-conditioned offices, bungalows and expensive vehicles, they do not see what the rest of us see. Aren't all of us witnesses to the NPP's cash distribution across the country? Wasn't it evident at their December congress? Didn't people like Hon. Hackman Owusu Agyeman complain about this when he suffered the humiliation of NPP supporters abandoning him to collect their share of Allan Kyerematen's largesse?

It really does not have to take CODEO to point these things out. “Yenim fri tete”. And we see it everyday. We are not making noise and not questioning the source of the $25,000 each of your presidential aspirants paid just to contest the primaries not to mention the billions of cedis squandered in the campaigns and the numerous pick-up trucks and motorbikes hitherto poor citizens who are now ministers and party functionaries are now able to purchase and distribute.

As Odhiambo Oketch, of Kenya wrote of Kenya under President Mbaki in the African executive of 24th September, 2008, “If there is one administration that knows how to play Public Relations as it loots the country's coffers, then this is it. The country has been so massively looted that the cost of living has become unbearable. The current administration does not care about the plight of the ordinary citizen….Is this the kind of society we want for our children? A society where role models are lacking? A society where thieves are rewarded? A society where the high and mighty are law unto themselves? A society where the police engage in blatant crime? A society where justice is denied to the deserving? Odhiambo might as well be asking our leaders these questions.

We know the answers to these questions but have kept quiet because we do not want to be harassed.. We will speak with our thumbs come December 7th.

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