Who Are the Real Victims Here?

I wasn’t going to rejoin the following article, but for the fact that it has helped to convince me to make a good sense of why many Ghanaian media websites like Ghanaweb.com, officially the oldest of its kind, have stopped publishing my columns. I am not producing the sort of trashy and poorly argued and composed and edited guff most appealing to their readers and audiences. The article that I am talking about is captioned “Double Salary Saga: Victims Must Be Forgiven by President Akufo-Addo.” It is signed by one Mr. Iddrisu Abdul Hakeem (See Ghanaweb.com 5/19/18).

The logic behind the contents of the afore-referenced article is encapsulated by what Americans call “Blaming the Victim.” Essentially, what the author tells his audience is that the Members of Parliament who were recently found to have criminally caused themselves to be paid double salaries, which they clearly did not deserve, for also serving as substantive cabinet appointees and deputy cabinet appointees, because the Constitution does not allow such payments, except for extra allowances called “Top-Ups,” are actually the victims of the importunate demands of their constituents.

In other words, according to Mr. Hakeem, it was the demands of the constituents of these thievish politicians that caused the latter to rob the Ghanaian taxpayer. Left to these white-collar thieves alone, that is, bereft of any importunate demands from their constituents, such as the payments of the school fees of the children and wards of their constituents, these National Democratic Congress’ MPs would not have been literally caught with their pants and undies down. The first primary logical flaw with this sort of argument is the rather facile and fatuous presumption that Members of Parliament who also doubled as cabinet appointees during the tenure of President John Agyekum-Kufuor’s New Patriotic Party (NPP) did not have to deal with any such importunate demands as their National Democratic Congress’ political opponents or parliamentary counterparts.

No such logic could be more preposterous. It is inexcusably absurd because in reality, the NPP-MPs who also doubled as cabinet appointees faced exactly the same importunate demands under the Agyekum-Kufuor tenure. But none of these former ministerial appointees have officially ever been brought up on criminal charges of double-dipping. And so it is clear from the available evidence that the thefts of which these NDC-MPs stand either legally charged with or accused of could not have been motivated by any attempt at generosity. These NDC politicians are simply common kleptocrats, or common thieves who would have stolen anyway, whether they had been importuned by many of their constituents or not.

Indeed, from the publicly presented testimony of Mr. Inusah Fuseini, the former Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, who also doubled as NDC-MP for Tamale-Central, the Northern Regional Capital, no pun is intended here, by the way, a similar situation occurred under the tenure of the late President John Evans Atta-Mills. There is, of course, an implicit suggestion here that in this purported instance of double-dipping, the culprits were former Agyekum-Kufuor appointees. Mr. Fuseini has publicly alleged that President Atta-Mills handled this case very constructively without any public fanfare and/or intervention from personnel of the Criminal Investigations Division (CID) of the Ghana Police Service (GPS).

What Mr. Fuseini probably means here is that President Mills facilely condoned this clearly felonious act of extortion of our national treasury of the highest order. It does not make the former University of Ghana’s tax-law professor any more of a responsible leader but actually an equally criminally complicit extortion collaborator. And, of course, there is incontrovertible evidence pointing towards the collusive or collaborative criminality of the late President. And on the latter score, of course, must be underscored the public false witness that the then-newly elected President Atta-Mills willfully bore in favor of the infamous National Democratic Congress’ financier, when the visibly ailing President Mills stood beside Mr. Alfred Agbesi Woyome, and in front of a sea of media microphones and cameras and emphatically and apologetically told the nation, and the rest of the global community, that Mr. Woyome owed the Ghanaian taxpayer absolutely zilch!

Of course, later uncovered forensic evidence would tell a totally different story altogether. But what is quite amusing here, were it not epically scandalous, is that although the likes of Mr. Fuseini and Mr. Iddrisu Abdul Hakeem, the writer whose Ghanaweb.com column is being discussed here, claim that some New Patriotic Party (NPP) MPs who also served as cabinet appointees had also been caught in a strikingly similar racket, to-date these “equalization” accusers have yet to provide any concrete or forensically sustainable evidence to shore up their claim. We have also learned that, in fact, this criminal act of double-dipping pervaded the entire executive echelons of the Mahama/Amissah-Arthur regime, and not just at the ministerial level.

What this means is that the Special Independent Public Prosecutor, Mr. Martin Amidu, and his recently appointed deputy, Ms. Cynthia Lamptey, have their work cut out for them, in mainstream American parlance.

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