Hysterical Propaganda And How To Combat It

I have written somewhere else that “politics is not a game for amateurs”. I don't think many of the NPP Ministers read that article. If they did, then I am sorry to tell them that they learnt nothing from it.

If they had learnt something from it, we wouldn't have had two heavyweight officials of our Parliament – the Speaker and the Minority leader – both inviting one Minister to come and talk to MPs about the same subject – whether the Ministry of Communications had awarded, or allowed the National Communications Commission to award, a contract, to a private company, for monitoring calls made through mobile phone companies operating in Ghana.

Given the controversial history surrounding the award of contracts (especially single-sourced contracts, for God knows what reason!) and with some former NCA officials on trial as result of a contract award; some SSNIT officials also on trial re a contract award; and another contract award (Ameri) having had to be followed all the way to Dubai and back, who would have thought that any Minister or CEO would be so lacking in awareness as to leave even a comma contestable with regard to anything that had to do with a contract in which they were involved? I mean – what do they think they are playing at?

But hardly had the phlegms spat out regarding the NCA contract dried in the air than the National Identity Cards contract also surfaced. $1.2 billion was the figure that first emerged. Where did it come from? Even if it was leaked, it must have been based on a draft document of some sort? I mean, people don't just wake up and put a figure of $1.2 billion on a contract for fun? Why did the officials wait and wait and wait, until the airwaves had been saturated with talk of a $1.2 billion contract for a project that kept being nagged with start-off difficulties, before coming out with a “final” figure that's less than a tenth of $1.2 billion?

The impression given by these signs of dysfunction at the centre of events having something to do with contracts is that people in office are anxious to grab some public money for themselves very quickly indeed. Otherwise, why would they make so many mistakes? Did they learn nothing from the Ministry which stated in its budget that it was going to pay hundreds of thousands of cedis to someone to design its website and other minor presentational efforts, and then changed the figure when it was pointed out that what was being charged was ridiculous for the operation envisaged? Do some of these Ministers and officials know the meaning of the word “humiliation”?

Unfortunately, the only person everyone blames for these mishaps in government is the only one whoshouldn't be blamed – namely, the President of the Republic.

He's blamed because it was he who appointed the Ministers to the positions that enabled them to appoint CEOs who are not up to the job. What can the President do? He wants to give people he has appointed enough time – and the opportunity – to demonstrate that they can deliver. And being a fair-minded person, he's willing to give people a second chance, even if they bomb publicly.

But that's where the President ought to be protected from himself.

Lack of performance does not occur out of the blue; if a person is not up to the task, he/she won't be up to it even you give him/her the whole presidential term of four years to demonstrate that he/she can perform. So,within the presidency, a mechanism must be installed to plot the vulnerability of Ministers and CEOs to “banana skins” of one form or another.

As the Americas would say, “Two strikes – and you're out!” No-one can be indulged in such a way as to sully the name of the entire Akufo-Addo Government. But unless the banana skins stop popping up from within the footwear of the Ministers and CEOs themselves, Akufo-Addo will be the one to have to stoop to collect the garbage they foul the air with.

I mean, what is someone who sees the challenges facing Ghana in terms of sanitation as work suitable only for a “Minister for Bola”, going to be able to achieve with regard to the presidential objective of making Accra “the cleanest city in Africa”? How can Accra be clean without a “bola revolution”? And how can you have a bola revolution without a “Minister for Bola”? It's the psychological gravamen of the issue, isn't it? And the thing is, unless someone like that insensitive Minister is made an example of, the others will go about their jobs with lackadaisical smugness, thanking their stars that they've got such ahumanePresident who forgives them their trespasses.

Now, even without a strident opposition in the wings waiting to make a “federal case” out of every little hiccup that comes the Government's way, the Government would have to watch its step. For it's a cardinal principle of our culture that “disgrace” must never be allowed to “sit well” with the well-born person! With the type of opposition politics that the NDC has decided to delver, which relies on a “GO ALL OUT AND BASH 'EM!” strategy, the Government's first concern must be to give them nothing a all whatsoever to work with.

The NDC can invent issues, of course, if they want to. But invented issues often become stones that are dropped on the feet of those who pick them up, for the simple reason that such stones can become too heavy to hold up in the air! Brazen ineptitude, or lack of foresight, on the other hand, are a gift that even the most inefficient political “ambulance-chasers” can commandeer or appropriate for their own good use.

I have seen a poorly-written “strategic plan” which the NDC is alleged to have devised (with the advice of foreign public relations firms) to harry the NPP Government with. As I say, the paper is too poorly-written to be take seriously, but the ideais not difficult to embark upon: for Cambridge Analytica is – alas – not the only organisation in the world that can be paid to utilise people's own vulnerabilities to take political advantage of them.

Fortunately such operations, if detected early, can be short-circuited. But it is truth, plus competentperformance, that – undeniably – constitute the unbeatable combination that will floor facile propaganda each and every every time.

So let them shout. But for God's sake don't give them true, uncomfortable factsto shout with against you! That's giving your opponents a chance to take pot-shots at you! And that cannot be allowed in politics – especially pot-shots from

close quarters!