Freeloading Victor Smith Can Go To Hell!

Victor Smith, the career freeloader and economic parasite who was made High Commissioner to Britain by former President John Dramani Mahama, if memory serves yours truly accurately, says that he cannot forgive Chairman Jerry John Rawlings because the founding-father of the country’s main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) threw his weight behind then-Candidate Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo in the lead-up to the 2016 general election (See “I Can’t Forgive Rawlings – Victor Smith” Adomonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 5/26/17). The fired Special Assistant and Director of Public Affairs for the retired Ghanaian strongman, also says that he could not bear the sight of Chairman Rawlings “cracking jokes and laughing with our [political] opponent.”

It is quite clear from the preceding that Mr. Smith, who also once served as NDC-Member of Parliament, by default, for Akyem-Abuakwa-North Constituency, woefully lacks the sort of emotional and psychological balance and maturity that ought to come with age and political experience. It is also rather amusing that the man who is widely believed to have gotten the boot from Chairman Rawlings for backing the Vice-Presidential Candidacy of Mr. Mahama against, in retrospect, the better judgment of the infamous Butcher-of-Sogakope, somehow, believes that his former boss had absolutely no inalienable democratic right to have hedged his bet around then-Candidate Akufo-Addo in the lead-up to Election 2016.

Not that it would have made much of an epic bit of a difference because by then, the Bole-born former Rawlings Communications Minister had already more than amply demonstrated his gross administrative incompetence to turn off the average Ghanaian voter. In a quite remarkable sense, though, Mr. Smith has a point in wanting to see Mr. Rawlings back the reelection bid of Mr. Mahama because, even as some of us have remarked time and time again, Chairman Rawlings ought to bear the brunt of the blame for recruiting and grooming pathologically corrupt party operatives and politicians like Messrs. Mahama, John Evans Atta-Mills, Koku Anyidoho, Kofi Portuphy, Betty Mould-Iddrisu, Tsatsu Tsikata, Kwame Peprah and Johnson Asiedu-Nketia, among a phalanx of others.

But, of course, what has raised my hackles is this neo-slavocratic practice whereby the staff of the office of any former president is salaried on the public payroll. If this practice still exists, it ought to be promptly discontinued, as it unnecessarily exacerbates the financial burden of the State. More so, when most of our former presidents and vice-presidents presided over the criminal fiscal regime of judgment debts which continue to seriously regress the development of the country. People like Mr. Smith need to find real jobs and stop pretending as if the rest of us ordinary Ghanaian citizens and working people owe them their livelihood.

If anything at all, socioeconomic parasites like Mr. Smith need to first forgive themselves for their corrupt and mischievous ways, before they can even begin to talk about forgiving others who owe them absolutely nothing, but whom these self-righteous freeloaders, somehow, believe owe them their very life’s breath. Indeed, I vividly recall Mr. Smith skipping the NDC’s parliamentary primary in the run-up to Election 2016, and then bumping off the winner to have his name placed on the ballot as his party’s candidate for Akyem-Abuakwa-North Constituency. Is such a rascal one with adequate credibility to presume to impugn the political bona fides of Chairman Rawlings?

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