Ghana? - Forget It; We Can Never Make It. Period (12)

Ghana Flag

'Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?' – which means, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'

-  Mathew 27:46
'A crisis that reoccurs a second time is a crisis that must not occur again. A well-managed plant, I soon learned is a quiet place. A well-managed factory is boring. Nothing exciting happens in it because the crises have been anticipated and have been converted into routine'.

-  Peter Drucker
There are three critical factors in leadership which all the developed western democracies do not countenance and hate like the plague. These are leaders who tell lies, leaders who are not effective and decisive and leaders who are corrupt.

No society can develop and grow with leaders with these identified characteristics.

Any western leader who is accused of exhibiting these deplorable traits provides grounds for impeachment from office. Unfortunately, since independence Ghana has been saddled with leaders who possess these negative characters in plentiful supply.

In recent past, two events on the national landscape have fortified my belief that we cannot make it as a nation.

The first one is the workings of the Justice Yaw Apau Commission on Judgment Debts. It is unfortunate that the sittings of this Commission have not been given the needed media coverage it deserves. I cannot wait to see the final report of this Commission. I do not have any doubt in my mind that the report of the Commission will put the final nail in the thinking of all those who harbor the slightest hope for this country. The level of unprecedented gargantuan corruption being revealed, the expansiveness of the involvement of persons holding both elected and appointed positions in society and the depth of their involvement make my blood boil.

If the level of corruption displayed by Ghanaians and lack of patriotism on the part of office holders as being revealed at the Justice Apau Commission is anything to cause Tsunami, then the article, which appeared on page 4 of the DAILY GUIDE of Tuesday, May 28, 2013 entitled; 'Are Justices Atuguba and Adinyirah not hijacking the court' should be a source of concern to all the patriotic and peace-loving people of this country who seek justice in everything they do.

The writer of that article, James Ofosu must be congratulated for his bold initiative and objective observation of what is going on at the Supreme Court which has hardly attracted the necessary attention and commentary from the media. Any act of omission and commission on the part of the Supreme Court to scuttle justice in the ongoing case will lead to unfortunate consequences which nobody in his right senses can predict.

So far all keen observers have given the benefit of doubt to the nine members of the Supreme Court to bury their own tribal and political inclinations and allow justice to take its due course.

It is not because the good people of this country have collective and absolute faith in all the nine members of the Supreme Court individually to allow his or her conscience to be his or her guide but because the good people of this country do not want to create any impression that the nine justices cannot rise above board.

Definitely every discerning observer rightly can predict with uncanny accuracy where the sympathies of some members of the Supreme Court lie. If people are not openly talking about it, it is because they want to give peace a chance and the nine members of the Supreme Court the benefit of doubt.

All these bring to mind the famous work of Prof James Watson who is reported to have said that he is: 'inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa' because 'all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence (Africans) is the same as ours (whites) - whereas all the testing says not really.'

It is the hope of Prof. James Watson that everyone is equal, but he counters that 'people who have to deal with black employees find this not true.'

He says that 'you should not discriminate on the basis of colour because there are many people of colour who are very talented, but don't promote them when they haven't succeeded at the lower level.'

He writes that 'there is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so.'

Naturally, anybody who reads this statement would want to believe that Prof. Watson is a racist born and bred in the old South African apartheid era.

But was he saying anything different from Lee Kuan Yew's observation when he visited Africa? What has been the state of the African continent since independence first came to Africa and the need to assemble despotic African leaders at the expense of the poor suffering masses of African leaders to celebrate 50 years of African Unity.

The last straw which has broken the camels' back was the performance of the principal witness of the first and third respondents, which contradicted the views of all persons who branded Prof. Watson a racist.

This is an uncouth self-confessed palm wine tapper without any certificate in law and a tongue of a rattle snake who had sworn the oath to speak the truth and nothing but the truth in front of the highest court of the law in the land and led in evidence by a touted legal wizard and yet proceeds to tell the most unprecedented gargantuan lies any human brain can manufacture.

This is the person who is at the leadership of the ruling party. This is the person who is the embodiment of the ruling party. This is the serial propagandist and serial liar the NDC and Mr. John Mahama could put up as the person in whom they are well blessed and therefore could represent them at the Supreme Court. The performance of the star witness for the NDC and Mr. John Mahama amounts to perjury, a very serious criminal offence.

Undoubtedly and highly unfortunately, this is the face of the leadership the nation portrays to the world. It shows the quality of the leadership ruling this country. Oh Allah how grievous is the sin that we have committed against you to deserve such punishment?

 
What did Prof. Watson say? He said: 'you should not discriminate on the basis of colour because there are many people of colour who are very talented, but don't promote them when they haven't succeeded at the lower level.' Today, if the individual members of the Supreme Court have their personal prejudices, it has been proved beyond reasonable that they should put those personal prejudices aside and do the right thing. This country can never make it with the type of corrupt leadership, a leadership whose stoke-in-trade is telling lies and a leadership which cannot make a single correct decision in the interest of the nation but only make decisions which benefit the corrupt leadership and their cohorts.  If the NDC and Mr. John Mahama have any honour left, the right thing would be for them to withdraw from the case and throw in the towel and pack out from the State house.

The Supreme Court has its work cut out for it. The verdict should be unanimous and not a split 5-4 decision. But this is Prof. Watson's black Africa.We can only wait with baited breath. Ghana, we can never make it, forget, period.

The country is currently witnessing is leadership decay in every field of human endeavor and corruption has reached an unprecedented epidemic and endemic proportions. We see corruption all around us on daily basis.  Productivity in the public service is so low that a former head of state was once quoted to have remarked that public servants pretend to work while the government pretends to pay them.

There is corruption in the delivery of social amenities like education, health, water and electricity. There is corruption in human institutions like politics, sports, security services, revenue agencies, religious organisations and fraternal clubs. Procurement contracts such as construction and purchase of equipment, goods and services are all vitiated with corruption.

Citizens have to pay bribe to access education, and health, obtain electricity and water connections to their premises. Job seekers have to offer money or sex to be considered for employment.

Road users pay bribes on continuous basis to the police on the road for the slightest infringement where caution could have done the trick.

Justice is for the highest bidder. Politicians offer money and goods to the electorate for their votes and then turn round to steal funds entrusted into their care once they win political power. Public servants create bureaucratic orbiting in order to force people who have the right to their services to pay bribes. Journalists demand 'soli' from newsmakers before their stories are published or aired. Students pressure lecturers for marks they do not deserve while lecturers demand gratifications from students to pass them.

The list is endless. In issues of corruption, both the giver and the receiver are equally guilty. Unfortunately, in some of the examples cited, the potential giver very often finds himself or herself in a very weak position.

E-mail: [email protected] mailto:[email protected]

By Kwame Gyasi