In search of a new Majority Leader

Good day Hon. Alban Bagbin. What are those nauseating comments I hear from some of you majority- side MPs? Anyway, I think it's about time you gave up as Majority Leader and give way to a new and I am sorry, a more reflective Majority Leader! You know why? Whilst you and a number of majority-side MPs are accusing the Presidency of lacking the sense of urgency, you appear to be no different!

If you really possess a sense of urgency, then how come that several weeks after the President some of you have been accusing of being too slow on all fronts had nominated one of your own colleague MPs to be vetted for the position of deputy minister of health, your good self who obviously has a great sense of urgency has not used your good office “to cause” the Parliament of Ghana to vet Dr. Nii Okley Kumah, MP for Krowor and Deputy Minister-designate for the Health Ministry?

Is it not hypocritical then that some people in high places including majority MPs should turn around and accuse the President of lacking a sense of urgency? Is there no work at the Ministry of Health (MOH) to be done? Is it the President's doing that the MOH still does not have a deputy minister several weeks after he had nominated one?

What should the President do in this case to prove that he is not that slow? Use a presidential fiat to cause the nominee to assume duty as deputy minister without going through the vetting process? Would it be fair to accuse the Parliament of Ghana as having no sense of urgency just as the Presidency has been accused on several occasions too? Please Mr. Bagbin, don't tell me I have no idea how the Parliament of Ghana works.

Don't tell me, also, that there are several processes that the nominee must go through before finally appearing before the Appointments Committee of the Parliament! Furthermore, don't tell me you need to conduct background checks and also invite public memos on the nominee before he goes through the process! The reason is simple.

These excuses which you are most likely to give as having accounted for the delay in organizing a twenty-minute vetting for the nominee won't wash! They would be immaterial, as immaterial as the President's plea for more time to execute his policies? Of course, there are few times that the Parliament appears to act with a great sense of urgency.

Those are times when the MPs are pushing through things like ex gratia, ROPAB, among other things that are in “their own interest”. Fair comment? Unparliamentary comment?

The other day, whiles his Excellency the President was in far away Trinidad and Tobago, you were on an Accra-based FM Station claiming to be advising him to look at the character of those around him to ensure that their character reflect his own! Good advice! But what a crude channel through which a Majority Leader should communicate to his President?

Mr. Bagbin, did the President hear your advice? Tell me. Through what means? Was the President listening to JOY FM at the time? But what about your own character? What is your own character like? I sincerely believe that it is one of double-talk. Do you remember that when you were in opposition, as Minority Leader, you led the then minority-side in parliament to antagonize, or is it to oppose the passage of the National Health Insurance Bill into Law claiming that the government of the day needed to do some more work before the bill was passed? In other words you were asking the then government to slow down, for good reasons too! At least it has now emerged the NHIS in its current form is fraught with serious challenges. So were you asking the then government to slow down or to act with dispatch? So what has changed that all of a sudden, you have all fallen for that baseless and opposition-originated chorus (or is it Rawlings-originated?) that the government is too slow? How come that today you and your colleagues no longer think that it is necessary for government policies to be carefully planned before they are put on the ground? Why are you rushing the President? Do you realize that if the NPP had taken a bit of time to think through its National Youth Employment Programme (NYEP), it would have been a very solid legacy?

As it stands now the NYEP, like many of the so-called Kufuor legacies, needs a complete overhaul and reengineering. How on earth can a government create an employment programme without first working out how people engaged under the programme were going to be paid on a sustainable basis? Why did the government not ensure that there was a reliable source of revenue to pay employees of the programme? Certainly, I know that the Communication Service Tax (CST) came later. But the truth is that the CST was not originally and wholly meant to cater for the employees' allowances. We are told the CST itself has problems.

We are told government does not have the capacity to determine how much exactly the telecom companies rake in as profit at the end of every month so that government has no choice but to accept “whatever” these companies bring to her as CST! So we can understand why even the CST cannot be relied upon to pay the NYEP employees for now! But of course I can understand many of the so-called Kufuor legacies were created under pressure, to satisfy the ego of a few people --- party foot soldiers? I daresay that this same pressure is being brought to bear on the current President too and he has started treading the same path that the NPP government trod with respect to job creation. Have you heard of something called “Research Assistants for MPs”? Great idea. But what are we hearing about that? Even though the programme has already taken off, it is being alleged there is no exact job description for these Research Assistants!

President Mills must slow down for a better Ghana! The road to a great nation is painfully slow. It is a not a road in a hurry. Of course, former President Kufuor knew this when he one day, during the later days of his presidency, said he had wished a presidential term was 5 years. He knew that more time was needed to put on the ground solid policies and programmes that can stand the test of time. That is to say former President Kufuor knew that the road to a great and prosperous nation was painfully slow.

Former President Kufuor knew that as president of his nation, it was incumbent upon him to create jobs for his people, not necessarily because he had promised them on his campaign trails. It was a matter of moral responsibility to create the jobs. But Mr. Kufuor knew, too, that good and solid policies took time to materialize. However, having been put under the same pressure that President Mills is being subjected to now to create jobs, what did he do? Aware of the fact that the people were bound to accuse him of not living up to expectation – not creating the jobs he had promised – he bowed to pressure and created what I prefer to call soulless, wishy-washy jobs and programmes. But surprisingly, these are the jobs and programmes that some learned men and women of our society refer to as great Kufuor legacies. Take the NYEP for example. What kind of a legacy can a soulless and wishy-washy programme, at that, be?

A programme that is unable to pay employees for months on end? A job that we are told if you are engaged in it you have to exit (or is it graduate?) after two or so years? What is that exit plan meant for? The fact, which most NPP supporters are refusing to accept, is that most of the Kufuor legacies are artificial, superficial, ad hoc and unsustainable. They are legacies that can easily be collapsed by the least storm. What I mean is that the growth rate of 7.3% that we have been constantly reminded of now appears to be artificial, as it has now emerged. I believe in the Deputy Finance Minister's rendition of the facts supporting the claim that the so-called growth rate is artificial. If growing a nation at a faster pace occurs by simply engaging in a spree as was done in the last few years, then every government has the capacity to do that – engage in a spree and create an artificial unsustainable growth rate! But that is not how to proceed. What we need is to tread a sustainable path of development. People who have their heads properly screwed on would definitely prefer growing at a “sustainable growth rate of say 5%” to growing at an “unsustainable growth rate of 10%”.

They would prefer 50 000 sustainable jobs to 300 000 unsustainable jobs. Of course, if you ask me, I will tell you that many of the Kufuor legacies appear not to have any impact on the people. The policies, most of which were hurriedly created to satisfy the ego of a few people, especially the foot soldiers, rather seemed to have led many of the beneficiaries on the path of pain, agony and dissatisfaction. I know a number of NYEP beneficiaries who voted against the NPP in December 2008, not necessarily because they were not party supporters. Despite the fact that before the NYEP programme these fellows were unemployed people and so should have shown appreciation to the NPP for giving them “jobs” by voting for the NPP in the elections, they voted against it because they felt and lived like unemployed people under a so-called employment programme.

So where are the legacies of Mr. Kufuor? Apart from the dyed-in-the-wool NPP supporters, no other group of independent observers will agree to those so-called legacies as great achievements. At least, there have been two great verdicts on the Kufuor regime by independent people: the loss of the 2008 elections and the failure of Mr. Kufuor to win the much-publicized Mo Ibrahim Award were a direct verdict on the democratic and economic governance of the Kufuor regime. There was no reason to withhold the Award if Mr. Kufuor or any other candidate being considered for the Award really deserved it! I also disagree with the suggestion that any of the “failed candidates” could win the award in future. That must be a bloody lie. Why?

This is not an SSSCE/WASSCE that if a candidate failed, he could be given a second chance to resit. Right? If the failed candidates did not meet the criteria for the Mo Ibrahim Award today, then they cannot meet it tomorrow unless they are given the chance to go back and govern their respective countries again so that they can improve upon their records! Or better still they can only bounce back to become winners if the criteria now in place is significantly lowered. But I believe either way is not possible.

Then whiles it is true that there are many factors that electorates consider in an election, it is also true that the economy is the overriding factor. No debate about that. I am aware Mr. Kufuor has been recognized internationally for contributing his efforts towards entrenching democracy in Africa (?). But I am not sure that Mr. Kufuor would ever get the same recognition for contributing substantially to the economic development of Ghana. The reason is simple. His so-called legacies are not solid enough to pass the test as programmes that have been well-placed to serve the development needs of our people. The programmes need a complete overhaul and reengineering. These are achievements that cannot be a standard for anybody to live up to! That's why comparing the pace at which the Mills Administration is moving to the pace at which the Kufuor administration moved would be wrong. Obviously, Mr. Kufuor's “fast pace” (even this is disputable because many of the so-called Kufuor legacies came in his second term) has not achieved the desired results.

Please don't get me wrong. I am not condemning Mr. Kufuor. He had good intentions for this country. But he did not have “the space” to put on the ground solid policies. He was rushed to put in place wishy-washy policies. But Great nations, including the Asian Tigers, have not gotten to where they are by putting in place ad hoc measures and programmes. They are where they are because they have always tried to put in place only solid and sustainable programmes. The NPP needed to prove to Ghanaians that their 8-year rule was going to be better than the 19-year rule of the PNDC/NDC. Sure. Great ambition.

So what happened? They rushed almost all their major policies through – the NHIS, NYEP, ROPAB, CNTCI Loan, Ex gratia ( which is still a subject of controversy), and surprisingly, we were told during the later part of 2008, they were even rushing a certain bill through the Parliament to sell part of VALCO, something which backfired anyway. Do you remember the then Minority led by Hon. Alban Bagbin boycotting deliberations on the NHIS in the Parliament as they attempted to caution the NPP to slow down on the NHIS so that it can be properly designed? That is why I am even baffled that some of these same MPs now on the majority-side are accusing their own government of being slow. So you see, the path to a great nation is not the one in a hurry. Time is required to think through policies, if only those policies are to be sustainable and far-reaching.

I know that President Mills knows that the road to sustainable development is a painfully slow one. He has the track record. The only reason he may fail is when we rush him. Let's give him the time he has been asking for, lest he creates the same wishy-washy policies like the NYEP that characterized the Kufuor regime. When this happens, then another four or eight years would have been wasted again, and we would be the worse for it – we will never get to that status of an emerging or a developed nation, because the way to go is not to rush to put on the ground improperly-planned policies like the NYEP.

A BETTER GHANA surely lies ahead of us if only we can exercise a bit of patience for solid and properly-planned programmes to be rolled out with time. Certainly, 50 000 sustainable jobs will be far-reaching and thus fetch more votes than will do 300 000 unsustainable jobs because the dependants of the 50 000 would have seen reason to retain the government of the day in power when they go to the polls again. Perhaps this should be the reason why all the so-called Kufuor legacies could not do the trick for the NPP in the last elections! They did not have the needed impact! I'm quite sure if you ask former President Kufuor today how he feels about his legacies, he may tell you that he would have been happier if they had taken a bit of time to plan them properly because that is the only sure way to becoming a developed nation.

Lest I forget, it is alleged the Hon. Alban Bagbin has been threatening that the Parliament could “sack” some Ministers of State. I hear the Hon. Dr. Kwabena Duffour is on that hit list! The reason? He has failed to release some funds approved by the House of Parliament for some agencies. But Mr. Bagbin, are you aware that Dr. Duffour works with civil servants who are by the bureaucratic nature of their work painfully slow? Are you aware of what happened to the Hon. Muntaka when he tried to rush things through in a manner which the civil servants, at least as we have been told, were not happy about? Did you speak to Dr. Duffour to know why the delay in releasing the said approved funds? Are you a team player? Or why would Dr. Duffour deliberately “sit” on the funds? Do you see yourself as not part of the governance team simply because you have not been made a minister of state? I ask this question because it baffles me to hear that you claim you don't have access to critical information even though you are reported to be sitting in cabinet meetings.

As for the Hon. Nyaunu, the least said about him the better. Did he really say that all NPP sympathizers should have been replaced by NDC supporters by now? Is that what is meant by job creation? Is Hon Nyaunu development oriented? For how long should the remove the opponent and replace with the supporter culture continue? And what about the Hon. Alfred Agbesi? Is it true that he lied through his teeth when he accused the President of reneging on a certain promise to MPs? What about Messrs Jerry Rawlings and Spio-Garbrah?

Finally, is there a Majority Chief Whip who should whip these “straying MPs” into line? In fact I am not against criticisms. But I am for constructive criticisms only, and not criticisms that are not supported by the facts!

Indeed, to my mind, there is the need for a new leadership that should reflect the character of the President. There is certainly the need for a new majority leader! But if the Hon. Alban Bagbin can prove to us that he has a sense of urgency by simply using his high office to ensure the Parliament cut corners to quickly vet the deputy minister-designate for the MOH, then that would be wonderful. Not so? But the fact is that our state institutions are generally too bureaucratic. That is where the problem is. Therefore, the blame, from where I stand, cannot be put at the doorstep of the President just like that. We should all rather be calling for institutional reforms, public sector reforms, so we can get going again! Of course, the President must lead this crusade, and the MPs too must play a part towards reaching that goal.

God bless our Motherland, God bless His Excellency the President, and God bless the people of Ghana.

Credit: Israel Deladem Agorsor
E-mail: isradelagorsh@yahoo.com

   Comments0