US Ambassador Snubs Neocolonialist NDC on PDS

It was predictable right from the beginning that luridly immature and cognitively incoherent and politically, grossly incompetent and morally cynical opposition leaders like Messrs. Haruna Iddrisu and Samuel Okudzeto-Ablakwa would giddily scamper towards the office of United States’ Ambassador Stephanie S. Sullivan, in the wake of the very savvy decision by President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to suspend the contractual agreement between the government-owned Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) and the Philippines-headquartered privately owned Power Distribution Services (PDS). Nana Akufo-Addo made his characteristically savvy and opportune decision based on the discovery of “some material breaches” in the contract initialed as far back as 2014, when the John Dramani Mahama-led regime of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) was at the helm of the country’s affairs.

And scamper like some first graders denied their lunch by their teacher to the principal’s office, Messrs. Iddrisu and Ablakwa did; but only to be soberly and smartly informed by Ambassador Plenipotentiary and Extraordinary of the United States, Mrs. Stephanie Sullivan that, in fact, it was Ghana’s President Akufo-Addo who had the requisite skill, talent, experience and common sense and credibility to promptly and constructively tackle any breaches and/or bottlenecks that may have cropped up during the course of the contractual protocol struck between the ECG and the PDS, with the substantive fiscal support of the American government, in the form of the hitherto unprecedented $498 Million aid voted by the United States’ Congress, I believe at the request of then President Barack H. Obama, to ensure the smooth and efficient distribution of energy in the country, and thus ensure the steady and rapid industrial development of Ghana.

You see, it is rather ironically scandalous to see the leaders of the blowhard and rude-talking Left-leaning pro-Red NDC apparatchiks jogging towards the official residence of Ambassador Sullivan, rather towards the official residence of either the Russian or the Cuban Ambassador, to seek redress for their patently vacuous grievances against Nana Akufo-Addo vis-à-vis the ECG-PDS controversy (See “PDS Saga: US Embassy Rejects Minority Call for Probe” AbcNewsGh.com / Ghanaweb.com 8/16/19).

You see, Dear Reader, a rabidly cynical NDC opposition leadership had craved the politically unhealthy and unsavory indulgence of Mrs. Sullivan to do some neocolonialist second-guessing and external interference in the emulative and yeomanly work of the inimitably and unprecedently visionary and progressive Akufo-Addo Administration, by having the Americans establish a parallel investigative enquiry into the ECG-PDS contractual snag.

“Thanks but no thanks,” came the terse and peremptory response from Ambassador Sullivan, who further critically observed that the United States’ government had the fullest confidence in the administrative competence and judgment of Ghana’s President Akufo-Addo and the latter’s ability to carry out an impartial and independent forensic enquiry into any “material breaches” that may have occurred in the contractual compact struck between the ECG and the PDS, as far back as the scandal-prone and scandal-wracked tenure of former President John Dramani Mahama.

In the main, the ECG-PDS contractual breaches entail some insurance or reinsurance guarantees that, we are told, ought to have been promptly and seamlessly put in place by the PDS’ managerial board but appears to have been either improperly executed or totally neglected altogether. And on the latter count, it goes without saying that there are some real and hard lessons to be learned here by Ghanaian citizens and eligible voters heading towards the 2020 general election.

And it is the inescapable fact that, by and large, the political hoodlum pack that constitutes the movers-and-shakers of the country’s largest opposition political party, to wit, the National Democratic Congress, woefully and scandalously lacks the requisite emotional and intellectual maturity to competently manage the affairs of the august and sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana anytime soon. Clearly, definitely not either in the year 2021 or even 2025. Ghanaian voters should take a serious note!

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
August 16, 2019
E-mail: [email protected]