Letter From The President II

J. A. Fukuor Mauritius

Countrymen and women, loyalists and opponents; As you may be aware, I am currently in an Indian Ocean island, chilling my soul away and begging some rich people to help me create my golden age of business. Am really enjoying myself and thanking my stars that I was not home when members of Jerry Boom’s Not-so Democratic Congress (NDC) decided to MARCH for their survival. Wonders, they say, will never end. Seriously, I think that the march was a futile exercise which points to the fact that the NDC has run out of ideas. How can people who claim to be hungry, feeding on just kenkey and ‘shitor’, march in the scorching sun for four hours, and yet claim that they are doing so for their very survival. They should rather be grateful that they are eating kenkey and shitor, without fish. When Jerry Boom was on the Black Star Stool, those day when I was in the wilderness and I had only Okanta to turn to, I knew a lot of people who were just feeding on red-hot ‘kpakpo’ shitor. They were on the verge of death – that’s why we referred to our protest march against VAT as ‘Kume Preko’ – ‘kill me at once’.
The real motive for that NDC march, think was to stem the fast declining popularity of the party and not really to complain about my well-thought out HIPC policies, which include a proposal to increase the VAT rate to 17.5 percent. All NDC supporters and sympathisers reading this letter of mine should be informed that with the ever-increasing number of my MPs in parliament I now even have more power to do what I like – that which I think is good for Ghanaians. The VAT rate will be increased, sooner or later and the NDC can whine for as long as they want – I won’t lose sleep. Petroleum prices, as well as water and electricity, and several other utility tariffs will be upwardly adjusted, progressively – like a slow poison, whether the NDC like it or not. However, wages and salaries will not be proportionately increased and no ‘march for survival’ will change my mind. Tell me, do you think I have large enough balls to defy the IMF and the World Bank. For all his bravado, and large balls, Jerry Boom could not stand up against the IMF and the World Bank.
Anyway, am glad to hear that the police are giving the NDC supporters full marks for comporting themselves. They must also commend those loyal to me for not creating any confusion during the so-called march for survival. When we staged our ‘kill me at once’ demonstration, they attacked us with all sorts of weapons – guns, stones, bottles, machetes and even laddles. When I end my Indian Ocean vacation and return home, I will try and organise a ‘small’ party for all my loyalists. They’ve really made me proud, even though I would have had a good laugh if Jerry Boom and Poodle Mills had been hit by an egg so they can have a taste of their own bitter pill. And I would have been even happier if Jerry Boom had said something very ‘provocative’. I don’t know why but I think either he’s not very well or perhaps, some of the dons at Boston University managed to pump some wisdom into his hard skull, restraining him from flying off the laddle.
So much for that demonstration. Last week was one of the happiest weeks in my life. It came quite close to the week I was took the oath to sit on the Black Star Stool. Relaxing in my hall near Shangri-La and watching the TV networks, I couldn’t stop the rivers of joy from flowing in my heart. Those rivers flowed in torrents as I watched some scruffy police officers (can someone do something about their uniforms, please) dragging three former officials of the previous government into a van, which drove them to the Nsawam Prisons to serve various jail terms. How I wish they had used one of those old rickety jeeps instead of the recently-purchased peugeot van, for which their party employed all sorts of constitutional and legal tricks to stop me from buying for the police. I saw one of them wiping heavy beads of perspiration off his face and I said to myself, “yes, the lizard is sweating for the pepper he chopped”. And so it should be.
For a brief moment, I was sad when I saw the mother of one of the convicts snapping her fingers and crying for her son. But it dawned on me that every mother will do that. When, as a little boy, I was caught dipping my fingers into someone’s soup my mother expressed her sadness by snapping her fingers and crying that I had embarassed her. So I suspect that was why the woman was crying so uncontrollably – that her child had embarrassed her. She should be saddened and I sympathise with her, not for the fact that her son has been thrown into the bunker, but because she seems to have wasted her resources educating a son, who paid a lot of money to a cotton in return for rice. It’s just like expecting the crab to give birth to a bird. I’ve just been informed that the legal counsel for one of the convicts is threatening legal action against any media organisation which discusses the matter so I won’t say much about the case itself. I hope to get another opportunity someday to say all I want.
Dixon Nixon’s verdict on the ‘Cotton for Rice’ scandal really scares me. If I consider all the corruption allegations being made against some members of my governing team, I get the jitters. You see, in a few years, another fast track judge could proclaim that ‘somebody up there really messed up’, just as Dixon Nixon said of that Cotton woman that “somebody up there liked her”. I don’t want any judge to say anything like that about me so I am using this medium to warn people like Okanta, Akrapu and Dan Kapaah to change their ways. I demand that Okanta puts a stop to all his Mormonic dealings, I command Akrapu to end all his support for that queenmother, whose ‘apus’, am told, he’s being feasting his lustful eyes on. And to Dan Kapaah, I will say, “no more Sahara”. I am also seriously considering my actions and inactions, reflecting on whether or not I could one day be accused of causing financial loss to state by, for instance, refusing to fly in the presidential jet and choosing rather to fly first class in British Airways and Lufthansa.
Ei, I almost forgot that am on vacation in this exotic Indian Ocean Island and that am not supposed to do a lot of work. For your information, I am writing this from a beach, with white sands so pure. No blocks of solid waste from the human body here. Am really enjoying the breeze with Mama Tess right by my side, in a brand new swim suit.
Your Excellent One, J. A. Fukuor