What Will It Take?

My out of Accra trip last week was rather traumatic. To Kumasi with Nana Konadu in the front seat, me, way back in the rear scrambling to find a comfortable space on the Starbow flight, with everyone wondering if they had overcome the unfortunate landing in Tamale the previous week.

I have long come to the conclusion that once you get on a flight, just forget it, 'cos even if you are awake to see the crash landing, not only might you not be alive to tell the tale, there is nothing you can do to avert any trouble.

So we flew Starbow on the early 8am Thursday flight and came back the next day on the last flight, only ten of us, enjoying a most pleasant atmosphere, confident that we would be in Accra in no time. On that we weren't wrong, but when they forget to get your luggage out of the craft and the 9.15 arrival time progresses to 10.30, I got back to serenity in McCarthy Hill way past 11pm, the unwelcome traffic blocked at Kwashiman, Awoshie and Santa Maria.

Broken down trucks and impatient Trotro and taxi drivers clogging the traffic light intersections and insulting you for complaining. Too tired anyway, my only option was to carry on a needless conversation with the driver, hoping to be non-committal, but he had to recognize me and so we talked politics. It is his comment that inspired the title for the week.

What will it take? What do we have to do to get this thing right?

From Kumasi to Techiman, on to Wenchi and environs, I was trapped on the back seat looking at nothing for hours.

There is virtually no business activity going on except if you want to count trading in plastic buckets and cups, second hand clothing, vulcanizers and block making side attractions, sitting, musing, hoping for a customer.

And I wondered, don't we have a Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development? What do these persons do all the weeks, months and years that go by so fast that an election year is just round the corner? What do we have to do to make them accountable for the salary they are paid all year through and end up apologizing for the lack of funds?

The President was in Kukurantumi over the weekend, asking the people of the Eastern Region to have confidence in him and vote him back and he will give them a first class 20km road. This was his message as he commissioned yet another road and cut the sod to commence work on another promise made seven years ago to improve the Eastern corridor highway.

I will organize a trip for the people there to go see what he has done with the Vakpo, Kpandu, Ho, Hohoe and Likpe roads; a showcase of incompetence and deception. Fourth grade contractors commissioned to create open drain roads that fill up with silt and destroy the bitumen that someone made over two decades ago.

What will it take to get this Government to realize that our inability to track and monitor the lies and useless promises they have made over the last six years is not credit to their ability to achieve anything special.

This Government has not initiated anything new since they took over in 2009. Nothing. The Nkrumah Circle and Kasoa development, was already in the pipeline, just as the Sofoline and Giffard roads in Kumasi and Accra. Even Kojo Bonsu in Kumasi has done the Rattray Park, albeit closed to the public on weekdays for no reason.

So on the way to Fufuo, where the village did not live up to its name as there wasn't a single fufu chop bar in the place, we went via Barekese, famous for the old British machines built in '1400 BC' to provide for one million people. I was tempted to go see where Ghana Water Company processed the bulk of its water for Kumasi residents, decided not to interfere, since they had asked for an over 100% increase in their tariff.

All the same I think they should get it. You know my water bill for last month was GH¢39.70. Our water serves a household of seven persons and I can't for the life of me understand how Ghana Water will ever be profitable if that is what they are forced to charge. It makes no sense.

So much politics in the fixing of the tariffs, we have collapsed the company, continue to starve them of operating cash and then yell foul when things get out of hand.

So what will it take to get 'EC Lotti' to understand that her only legacy, if she wants to leave a name for herself is to take a common sense approach and correct the register to everybody's satisfaction.

If she doesn't, 2016 will be a very bad year for elections in this country. There is too much tension with eyes plucked, an ailing economy and a Government that just cannot see its way through the economic maze, debt, depreciating cedi and dumsor.

You see there can't be 14 million people registered to vote. The most recent estimate of our population is 27 milllion. The Ghana Living Standards Survey (GLSS6) has it that 70% of us are below voting age. Another 5% is in the old age section, and will not make it to the polling stations. That leaves 25% of the count = 6.750million. It doesn't matter which way you play it, if you are sincere in what you are striving to achieve, you will accept the numbers and arithmetic and appreciate the enormity of the problem we face.

During the week, the group now championing the cause for a new register, Let My Vote Count Alliance (LMVCA) went to lobby JJ Rawlings and wife Konadu as well as JAK to get a few sound bites to persuade EC Lotti.

Question I want answered, after the publicity stunt. Why did they not see the problems with the register when they were in a position to correct it? What stopped them from fixing it permanently then? The solutions on the table could have been then as now. This lamenting Ghana's woes after the act, is very annoying and insincere. Every former Head of State is responsible for where we find ourselves today.

But allow me to borrow a piece from my good buddy Franklin Cudjoe on this issue of the voters' register. 'I am now fully convinced that we need a new voter’s register not that I believe it will necessarily make our elections fully sacrosanct, but simply for the obstinacy of the Electoral Commission in yielding to advice. After a year and half of recommendations for reforms, it took an electorally educated fisherman to point to the costs of institutional autocracy that has become synonymous with the EC. We lost almost $100m as a result. It has been two very long years since the Supreme Court made
recommendations to the effect of ensuring a flawless register and a year since IMANI and OccupyGhana through H K Prempeh went ahead to ask the EC to seek help to audit the register. Absolutely NOTHING was done until the LMVCA raised the temperature. It would seem now though until the temperature is raised, absolutely nothing will be done. Why is it that we allow such institutional disrespect in our lives? If you want further proof of such, just see how long it took our Power Ministry to finally accept that we owed over a $100m to gas companies. Since March 2015 and the sad part is that the ministry did NOTHING about the debt until the West Africa Gas Pipeline Company threatened to cut gas supply and then we found only $10m to settle the gargantuan debt! Seems raising the temperature gets things done, figuratively I must add'.

And this is what it has come to in the end. Everyone is saying we need a new voter's register, but the only person who cannot see the solution is the person with the authority to fix it. Let not Lotti came back and tell us she has run out of time and money to do this.

We cannot let it go. What will it take? I am ready to run a campaign for Ghanaians to raise all the money we need to pay for whatever it will cost to get a clean register. Two years after the Election petition and the Supreme Court recommendations, we are struggling again to prop up our democracy. For Ghana's sake, what will it take? What should it take?

Ghana, Aha a yε din papa. Alius atrox week advenio. Another terrible week to come!

Sydney Casely-Hayford, [email protected]