IMF Intervention Will Reduce the Otiose Politicking around Our Social-Intervention Programs

It was quite refreshing to read the news piece in which the Dean of the School of Business at the University of Cape Coast was reported to be lauding the $ 3 billion (USD) economic bailout deal struck between the Akufo-Addo Administration and the Governing Board of the Bretton-Woods establishment of the Washington, DC-based International Monetary Fund (IMF). Very refreshing because Prof. John Gatsi is not well known to back development programs initiated by the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP). Oftentimes, he writes articles lambasting the national policy agenda of the NPP, although the fiery National Democratic Congress’ partisan does not offer any worthwhile or socioeconomically constructive policy alternatives, for the most part. In the process, this inveterate Akufo-Addo critic tends to sound more like a political propagandist than an objectively focused public intellectual or even a progressive-thinking statesman.

At last, the quite vocal but not necessarily influential or remarkably reputable economic-policy critic and commentator seems to be fortuitously having what might be aptly described as a positive and progressive turnaround (See “$ 3 billion IMF Deal: Government to Review Free SHS Program – Prof. Gatsi” Ghanaweb.com 5/21/23). Not very long ago, for example, a former in-law – I guess in-lawship has no expiration date of any sort, the invalidation of the conjugal relationship that brought the same into existence notwithstanding – called yours truly to bitterly complain about some of the peevish anti-government servings by the “Cape Vars” Dean, as the University of Cape Coast is also popularly known. He earnestly pleaded with this writer to give Prof. Gatsi the sort of backhanded slaps that I had been admirably serving with high-velocity impact to National Democratic Congress’ charlatans like Messrs. Samuel Okudzeto-Ablakwa, Clement Apaak, Johnson “The Lieutenant-Colonel” Asiedu-Nketia and, Dear Reader, your next guess is absolutely on the money, to wit, Candidate-General John “Gnassingbe” (European Airbus Payola) Dramani Mahama.

I responded to the aforesaid in-law, he shall remain anonymous for our present purposes, that as an academic with expertise in subjects other than economics or business management, I preferred to leave the mischievously calculated annoyances of Prof. Gatsi to New Patriotic Party insiders who were actually professionally paid by the government to regularly respond to determined government detractors like this grossly misguided and intellectually alienated or dishonest Cape Vars Dean. Now, though, I guess it is time to examine Prof. Gatsi’s take on the latest IMF deal with the Akufo-Addo Administration.

Interestingly and significantly, as I noted at the beginning of this column, Prof. Gatsi makes quite a bit of very progressive observations about the thrust and the objective of the IMF principals, which is downright contrary to past practice, even as the late Prof. Kwesi Botchway-led 2015 negotiations with the IMF, which did little to absolutely nothing to significantly meliorate the legion socioeconomic problems then plaguing the country under the John “Gnassingbe” (Akonfem-Kanazoe Ouagadougou) Dramani Mahama-led rag-tag regime of the National Democratic Congress, with specific reference to the unspeakable blight of Dumsor, that is, the perennially erratic energy supply that caused the effective collapse of approximately half of all privately owned Ghanaian businesses and an unprecedented skyrocketing in the level of unemployment in the country.

Under the Mahama regime, such purportedly fiscally disciplinary measures as the summary abrogation of the age-old professional training allowances for teachers and nurses, to name just only a couple, did absolutely nothing to enhance the efficiency and liquidity of the government du jour. It would shortly turn out that the problem was much less about the stringent imposition of the so-called IMF CONDITIONALITIES. Rather, it almost wholly and exclusively had everything to do with the kleptocratic shenanigans of the key operatives of the Mahama cabinet appointees who would, in due course, be exposed for illegally and criminally taking home double salaries, when these extra unearned and undeserved incomes ought to have been invested in sectors of the economy where such funds were direly needed, such as the survival and the significant upgrading of the effectively Mahama-collapsed John “The Gentle Giant” Agyekum-Kufuor-implemented National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), and even the practical possibility of a partially targeted implementation of the landmark Akufo-Addo-implemented Fee-Free Senior High School System, which the then President Mahama had publicly disparaged as being the chimerical figment of the delirious imagination of a megalomaniacal politician hellbent on grabbing power at all costs.

Later, this peevish copycat and crushingly vanquished and epically failed one-term President would quixotically claim that, in fact, the Fee-Free Senior High School System had been originally proposed by the leadership of the Cash-and-Carry advocating and Social-Darwinian proponents of a populist and faux-socialist National Democratic Congress. Ultimately, however, what Prof. Gatsi ought to have highlighted in his TV3 News 360 interview is the fact that unlike the characteristically desultory or incoherent IMF deal amateurishly brokered by the previous Mahama regime, referenced above, as well as several others before the latter brokered by the leaders of the National Democratic Congress, notably the late President Rawlings and John Evans “Atta-Woyome” Mills, the present Akufo-Addo-brokered IMF deal preserves nearly each and every social intervention and signal national development program, except that in a significant and unprecedentedly progressive departure with or from past experiences, the Akufo-Addo- and Ofori-Atta-brokered deal strictly clamps down on any kleptocratic and morally unconscionable politically unwise attempt to wastefully spend or frivol with taxpayers’ money. For, ultimately, the $ 3 billion (USD) IMF package deal is a loan, that is, money that has to be paid back with interest over time.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
June 3, 2023
E-mail: [email protected]