Don't hold your breath; it is just another era of “Watchful Waiters”!

Doubtful this form of words, Watchful Waiting, will have been employed in the first place to describe the frame of mind of a toad who has reached years of discretion and has found his appointed place along some fragmented run where many flies and spiders pass and repass on their way to complete the destiny to which it has pleased an all-seeing and merciful Providence to call them; but by an easy turn of speech it has also been found suitable to describe that mature order of captains of industry [and politicians] who are governed by sound business principles. There is a certain bland sufficiency spread across the face of a toad so circumstanced while his comely bulk gives assurance of a pyramidal stability of principles.

Thorstein Veblen
50.23% is not a governing mandate. It was a vote against the NPP, not for the NDC.

When the EC declared NDC the winner after the Tain count, a number of friends commented on the calm that descended on the nation. The conventional wisdom was that, after Afari-Gyan - mark, not the EC - single-handedly brought us from the brink of war, the nation was breathing again. While this may be true, I think the underlying reason, and one that is consistent with the narrow margin of the victory, is: we are not sure if we made the right decision.

The Kuffuor court, and the Akufo-Addo royalty that sought to succeed it were a curious and distasteful blend of arrogance and corruption, spiced with a sting of hubris. No wonder they were spat out by voters. The voters' choice is not indicative of voters' collective amnesia about misgivings during the NDC/PNDC era. What it reflects is a lack of options. We had to make do with what appeared to be a lesser evil - made less evil because of the distance of time and the treachery of our memory. The NPP has retired with their loot (or booty, if you prefer its dual but accurate hint of lewdness) safe in the knowledge that, at most in eight years, and before the bottom runs out of their spoils, they will make a return.

I have two observations to make about this assumption. It will be wrong to deduce from the two eight-year alternating terms of the two major parties that this trend is entrenched. If the voting public has signaled anything, it is that they are astute observers of the performance of their elected officials. I have a niggling feeling that if the NDC continues in the business as usual ways, they will last for only one term. Which, should things remain as they are, leave us, again, with the NPP. That is why we need a third alternative; I think the time is ripe for a third force. And by third alternative, I definitely do not have in mind the decimated and whorish CPP, PNC….

The evidence since 1957 does not give hope to Ghanaians that our newly appointed leadership will do any different from preceding ones. That self-interest will not be paramount and the public interest an afterthought. This, if I may, was the cause of the calm after Tain. It is a wait and see calm. I am not holding my breath that the NDC will be any different this time around. The personnel have not changed. Take a close look at the NDC transition team. I have never come across a sorrier bunch of Watchful Waiters. Well… except that attending the still-born Akuffo Addo court! For us the governed, sadly, every change in the guard must feel a lot like a game of Russian Roulette. With a barrel full of political leeches waiting for their turn at the trough of national coffers.

The lost opportunity to continue the fattening process, both figuratively and literally, is the single most important reason why the NPP nearly took us to the brink of war. But for Afari Gyan, our beloved Ghana will have set a world record for the onset of what is referred to as the Dutch Disease. The term used to describe poor nations tendency to self-destruct when they discover oil.

In most of the developed world the following have been the most effective weapons for checking public sector corruption: Discipline and restraint of the political leadership, an independent Corrupt Practices Bureau, and more recently, Freedom of Information laws.

The first is a rare leadership attribute, indeed a gift. Only a few and exceptional leaders in history have possessed and exhibited it when in power and when the institutional framework to check the exercise of discretion is not firmly rooted. But it is this quality more than any constitutional, legislative or statutory fiat that has set the tone for many well-governed and stable nation-states. This is the attribute that made George Washington, the first president of the U.S., refuse a third term of the Presidency. It is that same attribute that enabled John Marshall, the second Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, in the celebrated case of Marbury v. Madison, to establish Judicial Review and pronounce the Supreme Court the final arbiter among co-equal branches to declare what the law is. He achieved this by asserting the pre-eminence of the court while in the same breath declining to exercise that prerogative in that matter. And more recently, Lee Kuan Yew and Nelson Mandela of Singapore and South Africa respectively declined, in spite of the popular clamour for additional terms, to take the bait.

Lee Kuan Yew asserts, that one of his most effective weapons when combating corruption was to set up the independent Corrupt Practices Investigations Bureau to investigate every public officer and every minister found living beyond their means. And the first casualty was a cabinet minister, no less. In the more distant past, in Rome, Publius Aelius Hadrainus (AD 117), aka Hadrain, installed an advocatus fisci, or “defender of the treasury” over all government departments to detect corruption or deceit. Suffice to say that Hadrian's reign is adjudged the best governed and most beneficient during Rome's golden age.

Equally, a Freedom of Information law is a sine qua non in any democracy and especially in an emerging one such as ours. We need the light of information to illuminate the activities of our public officials. It allows civil society to question and hold public institutions and officers to account. FOI laws are one proven way of breaking through the veils of opacity woven by officialdom.

The need to curb corruption cannot be overstated. By some estimates 40-70% of the GDP of most sub-saharan countries is lost to public sector corruption. Ghana's position in the Corruption Perception Index of Transparency International remains at the bottom. According to Transparency International, persistently high corruption in low-income countries amounts to an “ongoing humanitarian disaster”. In my book the issue of corruption is the single most important issue in deciding for a political party. The more reason why it was a pity there wasn't much to differentiate the NDC from the NPP. Corruption enriches a few; its effects ensnare a nation.

Abraham Agbozo [[email protected]]