A Caricature of Integrity

That memory is still fresh. A young law lecturer agitated before students at the Commonwealth Hall Observatory cheerleading how 'the boys are winning but it is tough.' That was June 4, 1979. Later in the early 1980s, I heard and read in the West Africa magazine that he was the chairman of the citizen vetting committee (CVC).  Definitely not a good Akatakyie rep for us of Amanfoɔ among whom senior is senior and junior is senior.

Many times over, I have chided the congress confraternity as corrupt, cheating, adufudepɛ greedy, knowing no shame, feeling no remorse and terribly cold at heart.

This man is the typical congressperson. After all he had a direct hand in writing the sham laws he interpreted to dispatch people to their early grave, pauperise them by taking away from them hard earned property and destroying families, often leaving children without care.

He must have had a hand in someone executed for borrowing fifty thousand cedis (fifty Ghana cedis) for a roof over his and his wife and children's heads.

And he cannot dissociate himself from picking keys from a first lady to haul three innocent judges and a civilian former military officer from their homes to go and murder in cold blood, setting their bodies on fire.

It is confraternity that is merciless in enforcing punishment, even in situations of no wrong done.

How the man can overlook his hypocrisy in riding phoney integrity, accountability and probity into the comfort, or maybe, discomfort of some professorship, only he can answer. The wonder is, he not feeling enough motherland gratitude and the magnanimity of my compatriots in still allowing him to operate in freedom of which he has deprived many using very harsh means. We may not be experiencing a double salary (interpreted as being paid twice from the consolidated fund for a similar job) for the first time. Some of us have inadvertently (not consciously treating it as 'top-up') gotten caught in it.

Maybe we were not even honest enough like corruption demolition man Amidu or he who can be and has been minority and majority disclosing by returning one of the paid salaries which becomes stolen when not returned.

The current double salary investigation requires far more attention and because these are people who have power to assign pay. They occupied positions which required the highest level of integrity given that as a motherland people, our taxes make them as comfortable as we can afford. That other serious thing is that the double salary is only a small part of their abuse of the system.

As ministers, they cheated working only part time (for the full time salaries they took) because they needed time to study. As if that was not enough, we had to spend money buying air ticket for at least one of them for trips to overseas to study.

He had been appointed to a position he had no knowledge to function effectively in so we had to pay for him to be travelling back and forth to study for content knowledge to be functional in that position.

The talk, credible talk, was that the trips were over successful weekends at times. The motherland hardly got much from all that time and money expenses because finally, his performance as deputy and substantive minister was poor.

These are facts known to the Akatakyie man. Why in spite of all that he still mustered the impudence to write to the motherland republic pilot to jettison the double salary investigation is only of a congress mindset.

(I bet he dared not write such a letter to his fake revolutionary gyato boss).

It is congresspeople's belief that: 'We are all Ghanaians subject to kangaroo congress justice. But when you are a congressperson, you do no wrong. Even when you are seen as having done wrong as a congressperson, it would be interpreted as far less wrong than when someone else does the same wrong.'

Fortunately, he the sworn protector of the public purse from double salary drawing and is always on the lookout for value for money, is resolute that if you steal one salary in addition to an earned one, you should, both literally and as a criminal, pay for that. And there is the solid Amidu factor back-up.

No doubt the President of the motherland Republic knows people are following the double salary matter with very keen interest.

Indeed, they are following all the reported rot (the creation, looting and sharing that occurred 2009-2016 by an ampɛbrɛ regime) and how monies stolen are recovered and the public money-stealers punished.

Methinks, though, that the letter written belittling the double-salary probing must be ditched and allow the investigation to proceed to its logical end. It is a caricature of integrity written letter.

By Kwasi Ansu-Kyeremeh