Ghana: The Coming Anarchy: A stitch in time saves nine

Otumfuo Osei Tutu II When in the early 1990s Robert Kaplan warned of a looming anarchy that would engulf the whole of West Africa, many thought that he was an alarmist of insane proportions. But it came to pass that few years later Liberia, Sierra Leone and later the Ivory Coast saw anarchy of unimaginable dimensions. What Kaplan saw as necessary ingredients for the anarchy were the dictatorship, the clientilist approach to governance, corruption, tribalism, indiscipline at all levels of society, and above all imprudence in economic management, that were pervasive in the governance systems of west African states at the time. We in this column have had occasions to warn of similar consequences for our nascent democracy, if we did not eschew exclusivism, partisanship, mediocrity, pettiness, and especially indiscipline from our body politic. We had said that an undisciplined society never progresses, it retrogresses at all times. The negatives that we have enumerated above did not start emerging in our society today. Unfortunately, we are fond of nurturing them for use at the appropriate times. Since the days of the so-called revolution, indiscipline has been allowed to be part of our national psyche. The rule of law has been thrown to the dogs. Instead of nurturing and growing the principles of the rule of law and of democracy, we practice how to be defiant, lawless, and unprincipled. The worse offenders have been the political leadership of this country and the media. We call on people to be so-called positively defiant and they do our bidding for pittance. As such they are ready to carry away ballot boxes or beat opponents in times of elections. They are ready to be called ‘macho-men’, or in a more polite form ‘foot soldiers’. The media, on the other hand is prepared harp on the sensational, the controversial, the most mind-boggling non-sense, the insipid lies, and many more that assist more in polarizing society than help nurture democracy and growth. In effect, we have a society so polarized, and effectively impatient, illiterate on all dimensions of nation-building, and ready to tear the nation apart in the name of politics. Partisanship has permeated all the fabric of society to the extent that very soon the air we breathe would have to be distributed through partisan lenses. Incidentally, state institutions, upon whose platforms democracy may be built have all been belted under the idiotic hypnosis of this unfortunate but unfolding drama. Anytime there is a change of government state institutions begin to behave differently. The police, for instance had to instantly act as soon as my friend, Kofi Adams, reported that someone had insulted the former Head of State, Jerry John Rawlings. I do not know the law. But I know that insulting a Head of State is unlawful. We are told that there is a law dating back to the 1970s which forbids the publication of false information designed to cause disaffection and/or to incite public unrest. That is a very good law. But where were the police when Asemfofro kept heaping insults on President Kuffour? Where were they when on 28th December a Radio station asked Ghanaians to get ready for war? Where were they when we were told that President Kufour had emptied the vaults of the Bank of Ghana of all the gold bars? Some ex-government officials are being hauled to the courts for various alleged offences. I have no quarrel with that. My beef is where were the SFOs, BNIs, CIDs etc., and all the state institutions mandated to be the gatekeepers of our country in various capacities? President Clinton was made to face the law by an Attorney General (Janet Reno), whom he had appointed to office in the first place. All this is happening in our country because of all that we said above – partisanship, indiscipline, clientilism etc. Politics is polarizing our society to frightening dimensions. In appointments to public offices, in issues of national interests, in fact, in everything, politics is the least common denominator (LCM). The most frightening of all is that politics has entered the Chieftaincy institution. Most of the tribal wars we have on our hand have been exacerbated by politics. It is nauseating to note that during the succession deliberations of who inherits Otumfuo Opoku ware II, a government delegation went to Kumasi to present drinks to the Queen Mother on behalf of a contestant. Again, after the unfortunate assassination of the Ya Na, Yakubu Andani of Dagbon, political capital was seriously made of it to the extent that a particular political party quickly made T-Shirts, bearing the party colours and the effigy of the slain Ya Na. Of late we are witnessing partisan cleansing of the public sector institutions. The ‘proceed-on-leave’ syndrome and the spectre of party faithfuls and/or ‘foot-soldiers’, hounding officials out of their offices and virtually dismissing them are a sour blot on our democracy. What this means is that we are going to have cycles of vengeance politics – a recipe for disaster. Dear Mr. President, you promised to be the ‘father of all Ghanaians’. But you recently told the journalists that if anybody did not share your ideology it would be difficult to work with such a person. This reduces you to be the father of only one party. This statement of yours may have served as a catalyst to the syndrome of macho-men, foot-soldiers hounding people out of office. This is against the rule of law! Janet Reno, whom we earlier referred to is a Republican but President Clinton appointed her and worked with her for eight years. The current Defense Secretary of the US, Gates, is equally a Republican who worked under President Bush. But Obama has retained him. The current US Ambassador to China is a Republican. The latest on our hand is the Tuobodom-Techiman feud. It is precisely because it has been politicized, it is precisely because the police are perceived to be partisan that the Asantehene is angry and bore his teeth. Now we have to rush a government delegation in to calm the waters. Quickly and ironically, the police are now prepared to investigate the kidnapping issue. Can we imagine how even the chieftaincy institution is becoming undisciplined and that the macho-men syndrome has reached our palaces? What a world! Can we build a society based on rule of law and institutional governance? We in this column have always said that democracy is a process. It is driven by the rule of law and wheeled by institutional autonomy (governance). Democracy is derailed when there is no rule of law. Democracy collapses when institutions of state are belted under the whims of an incumbent government. Such situations breeds indiscipline and anarchy is the inevitable result. Credit: Dr. V. Antwi-Danso/Ghanaian Times

NDC will lose 2012 elections - Ras Mubarak

Ras Mubarak, failed Youth Organiser of the NDC Mohammed Abdulai Mobarak alias Ras Mubarak, 31, an activist of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) who contested the position of National Youth Organiser and lost, has told The Chronicle that it will be very difficult for his party to survive the 2012 general elections, if things do not change for the better. According to him, the government's much talked-about Better Ghana agenda was gradually degenerating into a farce, and therefore stressed the urgent need to make amends before things get out of hand. "It would be too difficult to go out and ask the suffering masses to re-elect a government that has conveniently frozen scholarships; has done little about providing opportunities for the more than sixty thousand graduates annually; not brought justice to families who were emasculated under Mr. Kufuor, and has spent its first year floundering," he said. This according to him, were some of the reasons why former President Rawlings has been expressing reservations about the slow pace at which the Mills administration was handling the affairs of the country, saying, "obviously, former President Rawlings has plenty of reasons to be worried, because promises of a better Ghana are degenerating into a farce." Having campaigned in the various constituencies across the length and breadth of the country, as candidate for the position of National Youth Organiser, Mubarak said he was overwhelmed at the extent of discontentment at the grassroots level of the NDC. He believed the level of discontentment among the rank and file of the party was a verdict on the government's failures. The NDC activist said, "party members have justifiable anxieties over the direction of things in the country. "They are worried because of the lack of opportunities, poor social services, justice for families who were emasculated under Mr. Kufuor. and the gradual and soft-touch approach to fulfilling the Better Ghana agenda," he noted, adding, "the economy may be growing but any unbiased observer knows life is so difficult for the working class." Though he admits that the Mills administration has done some good work in the areas of agriculture, with GDP growth in agric soaring up to 6.2 percent last year, against a target of 5.9, whilst 5,000 youths had begun training in mobile phone repairs and assembling under the National Youth Employment Programme (NYEP) nationwide with 1,800 from the three Northern regions, he indicated, the extent of discontentment at the grassroots level of the NDC is serious. Whilst appreciating the fact that President Mills was not walking away from the challenges confronting the nation, he said "if things do not turn around soon and fast, it would produce more internal and political recriminations." Mubarak also took on the Editor-in-chief of the New Crusading Guide, The Insight and The Enquirer newspapers respectively, Messrs. Abdul Malik Kweku Baako Jnr., Kwesi Pratt Jnr, Raymond Archer, together with Alhaji Bature, a media practitioner and a known supporter of the NDC, for their continuous criticisms of Mr. Rawlings. According to him, the outpouring of grief and sympathy from all manner of persons across the country especially those who traveled long distances to show solidarity with the Rawlings family when their house was gutted by-fire over the weekend should send a clear signal to the Alhaji Natures and Kweku Baako. He accused Mr Baako of overstepping the line of civility, and resorting to what he describes as "journalism of personal vendetta against Jerry Rawlings." "What Malik, Kwesi Pratt and now Raymond Archer don't know is that the NDC is not like the main opposition party," he said, emphasissing that "under the NPP, President Kufuor's bribe-taking or source-greasing friends in the media over praised him, and he became a roadblock instead of a catalyst to positive change." At the time, he said people like Gabby Otchere-Darko, who gave constructive criticisms, were marginalised, while journalists like Malik Kweku Baako were praising Mr. Kufuor. The failed National Youth Organiser further said, "if Barack Obama were a Ghanaian and a member of the NDC, the Batures and Pratts would have used their appearances on radio and television to attack him for his courage to speak out against old politics." Years before he became president, he recalled how Obama had been critical of the Democratic Party and US politics in general, and the repeated attacks on the leadership of his party even writing in page 38 of his book - The audacity of Hope that "Democrats are, well, just confused." Mubarak stressed, "Rawlings is not the first, and would not be the last party member to express reservations over certain aspects of governance under Prof. Mills." This he said, was evident in the fact that Ghana's first President Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah did it and went as far as describing some elements in his party as traitors, without naming them. Source: The Ghanaian Chronicle

Queen of England calls for transparency in Ghana's Oil

BUT WILL THE CORRUPT NDC AND NPP POLITICIANS ALLOW GHANA TO BENEFIT?

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The Queen of England, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II has urged Ghana to benefit from the mistakes of other nations in the management of its oil revenue by putting in place enduring and transparent systems.

She said misunderstandings and riots that have characterised the social fabric of some nations as a result of injudicious and inequitable distribution of oil resources is of much concern to her.

Queen Elizabeth made these observations when she received Ghana’s High Commissioner to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Professor Kwaku Danso-Boafo at the Buckingham Palace in London.

The High Commissioner was the guest of the Monarch when he presented to her his letters of credence.

Professor Kwaku Danso-Boafo arrived in London in September 2009 to assume office as Ghana’s High Commissioner to the United Kingdom and Ireland.

For the second time in his life he was serving as an envoy to his country. Prof. Danso-Boafo from the academia took leave from his academic duties to serve as Ambassador of the Republic of Ghana to Cuba with concurrent accreditation to Jamaica, Trinidad and, Nicaragua and Panama.

In 1886 there were only six Ambassadors in London, with 37 other countries represented by Ministers. Today, there are 172 Foreign missions who are accredited to the Court of St James's in London, because St. James's Palace is still the senior palace and official residence of the sovereign.

And as the tradition soon after arriving in London, a foreign Ambassador or in this case a high commissioner has an audience with The Queen.

This is a formal ceremony in which a newly-appointed foreign Ambassador or High Commissioner presents his or her Letters of Credence or Letters of High Commission to Her Majesty. So on Tuesday the 9th of February 2010, Professor Danso-Boafo was the guest of the Monarch when he presented his letters of credentials to the Queen.

Clad in a colourful kente cloth Professor Danso-Boafo in the company of his wife and some senior officials from the mission were escorted by the Marshall of the Diplomatic Corp, Mr. David Gray from Belgrave Square to the Buckingham Palace in a procession of 1864 built carriages.

Her Majesty expressed confidence in the Ghanaian government and hoped that Ghana will continue to be a lodestar on the African continent especially in terms of its democratic governance and economic success.

She praised Professor John Evans Atta Mills for his exemplary leadership and congratulated Ghanaians for their unflinching adherence of democracy. Her Majesty was encouraged by the formidable strides the country has made in its democracy by how often the citizenry have successfully exercised their democratic right without recourse to violence.

On Ghanaians residing in the UK, the Queen singled out their law abiding nature for praise and was grateful for their contribution to the development of the UK.

She emphasised that unlike other nationals in the UK, Ghanaians have not given the authorities any cause for concern, “and that is a very good sign”.

The Head of the Commonwealth praised the High Commissioner for his effort in helping to mobilise Ghanaians around the United Kingdom for welfare and consular activities, adding that “not many missions have worked outside London”

On his part Professor Danso-Boafo, expressed the optimism that the oil revenue will be judiciously used to benefit the citizenry.

He told the Queen that a special committee to be supervised by the President will be in place to manage the oil revenue and that “prudent strategies have been put in place to help avoid the mistakes of other countries in terms of the managing and channelling of oil revenues.”

He recounted the lasting relationship between the two countries and pledged his commitment to work hard to further strengthen the bonds of cooperation.

The Queen’s delight was visible when Professor Danso-Boafo humorously said “with this vast knowledge about Ghana, I hope you will be there again soon.”

An impressive reception to congratulate the High Commissioner was later held for the Ghanaian community, some Heads of Commonwealth missions in the UK and staff of the Mission.

As Rwanda genocide docket grows in France, ministers aim to create war crimes Paris court unit

By Jamey Keaten (CP)

PARIS — France wants to speed up the way it prosecutes genocide and crimes against humanity, creating a special investigative unit in a Paris court as more suspects allegedly linked to Rwanda's genocide are turning up in the country.

Human rights advocates say the French move is welcome, though overdue in a country long criticized for harbouring foreign despots and for cushy relations with strongmen in its former African colonies.

Justice Minister Michele Alliot-Marie and Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner announced plans Wednesday to create a special judicial investigative service for crimes against humanity and genocide committed abroad.

The "judicial centre" would handle such crimes that involve anyone - French or not - who lives in or travels to France, Justice Ministry spokesman Guillaume Didier said.

"The homeland of human rights, France will never be a sanctuary for those behind genocide, war crimes, or crimes against humanity," the ministers wrote in a column in the daily Le Monde newspaper.

They are planning to establish the service as part of a legal reform bill to be presented in parliament in the first half of the year.

The ministers wrote that the goal is to speed up judicial treatment of war crimes and genocide cases, which can drag on for years. The unit - a sort of judicial task force - would pool resources and create a one-stop-shop for genocide claims that are currently filed in courts across France.

French investigators of genocide or claims of war crimes abroad face problems because information often is scattered geographically, the ministers said. Many cases are complex and require technical expertise.

The ministers said the proposed investigative section would not seek to compete with the "universal" jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, but would rely on national jurisdictions authorized as part of the 1998 Rome Treaty that created that court, Didier said.

Alain Gautier, president of the Collective of Civil Parties for Rwanda legal action group, said French judges are now examining 16 separate lawsuits linked to the Rwanda genocide.

In one recent case, the group in November accused Charles Twagira - now a doctor and pastor based in the northeastern city of Rouen - of crimes against humanity and genocide.

"The rising number of pending cases, notably involving more than 15 Rwandans awaiting trial, is prompting us to act quickly," the ministers wrote in the newspaper.

Separately, Rwanda has maintained that French soldiers there bore responsibility for the slaughter of minority Tutsis by Hutu extremists. The Justice Ministry says the new judicial investigative unit would respond to any claims of genocide - whether from inside France or from abroad.

Some other countries have similar structures to the one France has planned, but only a few have won convictions. Denmark and the Netherlands have had special prosecutor's offices that focus on war crimes since 2002; Sweden and Norway have special police units devoted to war crimes.

Spanish courts operate on a doctrine of universal jurisdiction, allowing for particularly grave crimes to be prosecuted in Spain even if the suspected atrocities were allegedly committed elsewhere. The government cut back that court power in October amid complaints from some countries investigated, like China and Israel. Now, such probes require a clear link to Spain.

Famed Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon used the law to have former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet arrested in London in 1998, trying - in vain - to put him on trial in Spain on terrorism, torture and other charges.

For France, which had a vast colonial empire across Africa and retains tight - and at times, controversial - ties to many countries there, the debate over genocide has particular resonance.

France and Rwanda restored diplomatic ties in November, three years after relations were severed when a Paris judge accused Rwandan President Paul Kagame of ordering his predecessor's assassination. The genocide broke out after the previous president, Juvenal Habyarimana, died in a plane crash.

The case still has not been resolved. France insists its justice system is completely independent and the case did not figure in the negotiations leading to restored ties. France grants immunity to serving heads of state like Kagame.

Kouchner leaves Thursday for a three-day African trip starting in Rwanda, his first since the bilateral diplomatic ties were restored.

William Bourdon, a French lawyer specializing in human rights and terrorism cases, said some legal defence teams have been seeking a genocide task force for three years.

He is among critics who say President Nicolas Sarkozy's call in 2006 - before he was elected - for a new era in relations between France and its former African colonies hasn't materialized.

In October, a French court ruled out further investigation into three African heads of state for money laundering linked to their assets in France, saying there was not enough evidence of wrongdoing.

A preliminary probe centring on Gabon's late leader Omar Bongo, the Republic of Congo's President Denis Sassou-Nguesso, and President Teodoro Obiang of Equatorial Guinea and their families found luxury cars and other signs of wealth - some paid for in cash.

In France, all genocide cases have been brought by non-governmental groups or individual claimants - never by state prosecutors themselves, said Bourdon.

"There have always been ulterior motives politically," Bourdon said. "There has to be greater transparency, and (those motives) need to disappear."

‘Africa South of the Sahara’ is a derogatory phrase that makes me sick

By Lord Aikins Adusei

The monumental failures on the part of African leaders have given birth to the phrase 'Africa South of the Sahara' and the leaders seem to be happy with that phrase. 'Africa South of the Sahara' and her sister 'Sub Sahara Africa' are derogatory phrases that make me sick but Black African leaders have accepted the them with all the negative connotations they carry without reacting to challenge them.

The phrases in their proper sense refer to a part of Africa which does not count in global politics; a toddler in everything important in the world, a backward part of the continent that continues to stand still while the rest of humanity is moving forward both technologically and scientifically.

Africa where leaders are morally bankrupt to criticise one another and where leaders have great ideas about how to rig and win elections, kill journalists, stifle press freedom, freedom of speech and association but have not the slightest idea on how to fight chronic poverty and end decades of wars that continue to devastate communities, towns and cities.. Africa whose leaders prefer to steal from their countries and bank their loot in foreign countries instead of using the money to build roads, hospitals, railway tracks, irrigation facilities, schools, electricity, housing and other social and economic infrastructures for the development and benefit of their own people. It symbolizes Africa where natural resources are a curse rather than a blessing.

It implies Africa where an illiterate soldier with a gun in hand can easily become a president of a country tomorrow. Examples are Yahyah Jammeh of Gambia, Moussa Camara of Guinea, Gaddafi of Libya, Joseph Kabila of DRC, Mamadou Tandja of Niger, Museveni of Uganda,Mohamed Ould Abdelaziz of Mauritania, Al Bashir of Sudan, François Bozize of Central African Republic, Jerry Rawlings of Ghana, Valentine Strasser of Sierra Leone, Sergeant Doe of Liberia, and Kolingba and Jean-Bedel Bokasa of Central African Republic.

It means Africa whose people live in darkness despite 365 days of sunshine and availability of solar technology to convert the sunshine into solar energy.

Africa that has not learnt anything from its colonial experience and whose leaders continue to dance to the tune of Western and Chinese rhythms at the expense of their own development.

The meaning of the phrase refers to a part of Africa which can be and is being recolonised by China and its rival competitors in Europe andNorth America through their multinational corporations. (Have you heard of Africom, a project of the US aimed at establishing military bases across the continent to pave the way for total recolonisation of Africa?

Africa whose leaders can be bought by multinational corporations with some few thousand dollars and allow multinational corporations to plunder their resources without any accountability. Have you heard how Mabey and Johnson bribed Ghanaian officials and built bridges that led to nowhere?

It denotes Africa which is so poor in economic, social and political sense despite being rich in natural resources and hard working people: an Africa which is so poorly governed, whose leaders are corrupt and lack the capacity to plan and to initiate any programme of development on their own without being told to do so or helped by outsiders.

It signifies Africa where infrastructure decay is the norm, where rural life is nothing but a condemnation to abject poverty, hopelessness, misery and frustration.

It refers to Africa where ethnicity and tribalism are exploited by corrupt dictators and opportunists bringing a wave of negative tendencies of cronyism, nepotism, corruption and conflicts in its trail. It implies Africa where politicians are happy to exploit the ignorance and illiteracy that have enslaved and prevented its people from taking their rightful place in the world community of continents.

The phrase also indicates Africa which is both economically and politically fragmented, have no common foreign policy, and no economic, immigration and agricultural policies and are without a mouth in world affairs and whose leaders see no wisdom in unity. It means Africawhich is so militarily weak and technologically paralysed to defend itself against external forces, their ideologies, philosophies and cultural pollution.

Egypt a purely desert country and a member of 'Africa north of the Sahara' recently sent food aid to Uganda, a country rich in minerals, soil, natural lakes, rivers but whose leaders see no wisdom in employing irrigation technology that could be used to increase food production to reduce hunger.

The phrase also signifies Africa which continues to beg for and depend on foreign aid despite sitting on huge natural wealth. It means Africa which in spite of its cash trapped economy its leaders continue to siphon at least $148bn annually into their safe haven accounts in foreign countries notably Switzerland, Monaco. Instead of money flowing from rich countries in the global north into poor one in the global south including Africa, it is the rather the other way round, an act that defies any economic wisdom.

It stands for a continent which continues to depend heavily on natural resource exploitation as the main economic activity and which sees diversification as unimportant despite the dangers of depending on raw material export.

It represents Africa where women are treated as second class citizens, denied political representation and are coerced and used as sex objects and commodities by those in power. Africa where child bearing is a matter of life and death, where pregnant mothers die of preventable causes of deaths; where so many children die before they reach the age of five; where child labour and child poverty are the norm, and where both rural and urban children grow without proper education, healthcare, food, shelter, clothing and without future or hope.

It also means Africa where economic hardship put people on death roll and cut short young bright lives. Africa where there is no mortgage, safety net for the poor and the aged and where owning a house or a car can be as daunting as climbing Everest. That is the true meaning of 'Africa South of the Sahara' which the leaders have accepted without a fight, and without doing anything to change the situation by tackling the problems that have given birth to the phrase.

These phrases are being applied to Africa and its people because of the sabotage activities of the leaders, their poor human right records, their economic failures, their corrupt life, their lack of commitment to fighting poverty, and improving the overall living conditions of the people. It is therefore time for the people of Africa to rise up to challenge that derogatory phrase by getting organised and standing up to the leaders, by demanding accountability and probity, and ensuring that the dictators who have spent decades in power doing nothing are shown the door now.

African Leaders are saboteurs and enemies of progress

By Lord Aikins Adusei

It is a waste of time to argue that there is anything remarkable or worth emulating about the brand of leadership that is seen in Africa. Throughout Africa not a single country has been able to deliver its people from poverty, malnutrition and diseases. Almost all countries in Africa South of the Sahara are facing deep poverty and that includes resource rich counties like Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea, Senegal, Gabon, Cameroon, Ghana, and even South Africa.
Everywhere in the world whenever the word Africa is mentioned four words come to mind: poverty, hunger, wars and diseases. Apart from Botswana where the leaders have relatively been able to use their resources to advance the development of their people, the rest of Africa is nothing but misery. Misery in sense that the average African is hardly able to live one-third of the comfort that a citizen of the global north (US, Canada and Europe) is able to enjoy in his/her lifetime. Apart from the corrupt politicians, dictators and their cronies who live in luxury, the rest of the population have to survive the harsh realities of the African economy on less than two dollars a day.

Why is black Africa so different? Any time the question of poverty is raised black African leaders are quick to point to colonialism and slavery. But it is a fact that the era in which everything is blamed on colonialism and slavery is past and gone. India, South Korea, Malaysia, Hong Kong were all colonised yet they have been able to shake themselves of what Damisa Moyo terms the 'four apocalypse of hunger, disease, war and poverty'.

A visit to rural parts of Ghana shows that very little has changed economically since independence more than 50 years ago. In spite of the availability of tractors and other advanced farming technologies that can be employed to increase productivity, farmers in Ghana still cultivate and harvest their crops with cutlasses and hoes, tools their forefathers used before they were colonised. The situation in Niger, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Togo and Benin is not different from that of Ghana. The extreme poverty and deprivation in countries in the Horn of Africa region and Ethiopia in particular continue to baffle economists and development thinkers after so much aid money has been poured into that region to no avail as politicians divert aid money into their own private bank accounts.

Any major study about why Africa is so different from the rest of the world points to the kind of leadership that exist in Africa. The leaders in Africa love power and will do anything to get it: rigging elections, organizing thugs to cause mayhem and violence, refusing to step down when their term of office end. The likes are Mwai Kibaki of Kenya, Mamadou Tandja of Niger and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe who employed violence and intimidation against members of opposition parties after loosing elections.

The leaders love to be worshipped and served as kings even though they claim to be servants of the people. They love to live in fine palaces, drive in convoys, attend state functions, deliver long speeches yet do not raise a finger to fight poverty and deprivation that are so common in their countries especially in rural areas.

African politicians and traditional leaders and those in control of economic and political affairs are always interested in titles and the financial rewards that go with their office not the responsibilities attached to the office. Ghana's current President is a Law Professor but he seems to have no clue on how to move his country forward. He is surrounded by others with academic titles similar to his but the ministries, departments and the sectors they head have not changed since they took office earlier this year.

Malawi's president holds a doctorate degree but his country is no different from that of Togo, DRC or Gabon which are all being governed poorly by children of former dictators and thieves who took decades to mismanage their countries' economies and resources. Nigeria's current president has been titled "the first graduate president of Nigeria" but Nigeria with all its oil revenue and human resource is still steep in poverty, sometimes not even finding enough petrol to feed her economy despite being the biggest oil producer in Africa.

This contrasts the president of Brazil, Lula Da Silva who used to be a shoe shine boy and street vendor but is increasingly turning his country into economic power house thereby steering his country into economic independence and freedom. Where did Yar' Dua leave his thinking cap when he became president or what did he graduated from? I want to know because I still wonder why they are not applying what they learnt in school to free their countries from the international disgrace and weakness that have come to be associated with the continent. A poor Cuban seeking to leave her communist country said she "would be prepared to go anywhere except Africa". When asked why she said "how can I jump out of a frying pan into fire?" Meaning she cannot leave a bad situation in Cuba and get into a worse one in Africa.

In a conversation with a female Professor in Stockholm, Sweden about the poverty situation in Africa she asked angrily "well the leadership in Gabon claim to have used the huge oil revenue for infrastructure investment but is that the reality on the ground?" She continued, "Democratic Republic of Congo is a mess, Angola, Congo and Equatorial Guinea are an eyesore and as for Nigeria well I reserve my comment".

Most of these leaders make annual pilgrimage to London, Washington, Tokyo, Berlin, Beijing and see the infrastructures and the living standards of the people in these countries yet nothing pricks them to help their countries to do the same. When they are sick they are quick to take the next available plane to America, Europe or North Africa for treatment but forget to build the same hospitals and other institutions and infrastructures for the good of their countries. After blaming their monumental failures on colonialism and slavery they have now found a new scapegoat: climate change and with it they can continue with their decades of inaction without having to lose anything.

Yoweri Museveni seems to be okay living in his palace enjoying almost three decades of his loot of Ugandan resources with his family and cronies. Obiang Nguema and his circle of friends live in their mansions surrounded by bodyguards yet the only 600, 000 people in his oil rich country live in 18th century conditions and likewise Sassou Nguesso of Congo-Brazzaville and Dos Santos of Angola.

The black African leader will accept bribe from companies and interest groups to stop implementing policies, programmes and projects that could help alleviate poverty in his country. The failure of Omar Bongo of Gabon to make his country the Switzerland of Africa can largely be linked to the hundreds of millions of dollars he received as bribe from Elf which allowed the company to loot Gabon's oil proceeds.

It is sad despite being the continent's biggest oil exporter Nigeria does not have a well developed petrochemical industry and has to import most of her oil products abroad. How come Cameroon is so poor when the country exports oil every day? How come Equatorial Guinea is so poor when it is the third biggest oil exporting nation in Africa?

How come Angola is caught up in deep poverty when oil revenues bring the country billions of dollars annually?
How come Nigerians live in 18th century environment when oil proceeds flow into the country every day? The answer is the leaders. They are corrupt, power hungry, arrogant, ignorant, illiterate and visionless buffoons, who can neither think out of the box or understand what it means to be president, prime minister, senator, MP, councillor, Assemblyman, or a chief and who prey on the ignorance and powerlessness of their people to stay in power while amassing wealth at the expense of their countries. Chief among them is Yahyah Jammeh a murderer, blood sucker, sometimes a president, sometimes HIV/AIDS healer who makes a mockery of himself and the seat of the presidency in The Gambia and who like the rest of his colleagues in Guinea, Guinea Bissau, CAR, Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, Niger, Mauritania and Ivory Coast cannot devise plans to steer their countries out of economic predicament.

Yar’Dua of Nigeria has decided to buy for presidential jets even though many schools in his corruption ridden country do not have computers, books and vehicles.

These leaders are what Ghanaians call 'Konongo kaya' which literally means saboteurs who will not raise a finger to do anything to help their countries and yet will not allow others to do it. Saboteurs whose continuous stay in power is the cause of Africa's woes and underdevelopment. Saboteurs and enemies of progress and development who are interested in accumulating power while doing nothing to help their countries. Enemies of progress who prefer stealing from their poor countries and bank their ill-gotten wealth in Western countries to using the money to invest in infrastructures and projects that will benefit the poor.

This is a comment posted by one Dipo Darams on www.thisdayonline .com on Nov. 27, 2009 about the situation in Nigeria.

“Hummh Humh, I don’t know what to say but all the same, I wish the president a good health recovery. We Nigerians abroad are not happy about the situation of our country, and if we come home to fix the problem, they may Kill us, or not let us do so. But I believe that a day is coming where WE THE YOUTH will take over and change Nigeria for Good. God bless Nigeria”.

If you happen to be in economic or business class and economic or development regions is discussed you will be surprised to know how Africa is bypassed several times even though it is strategically located at the centre of the globe. The discussion moves from North America to Europe to South East Asia then back to Latin America and to the Middle East without the mention of Africa. All these leaders do not seem to worry about it. They are not bothered because they no know they are the cause, the saboteurs and enemies of Africa's development.

Black African leaders must put on their thinking caps. It is very disheartening to see women, and children die of starvation in many parts of Africa. At least we know these leaders don't care but at least they should give the people the chance they need to initiate their own development. I hope that some of the advice I have offered will be adhered to by the leaders so that Africa can also take her rightful position in the world community of nations.

The monumental failures on the part of African leaders have given birth to the phrase 'Africa South of the Sahara' and the leaders seem to be happy with that phrase. Black African leaders have accepted the phrase with all the negative connotations it carries without reacting to challenge it. The phrase in its proper sense refers to a part of Africa which does not count in global politics; a toddler in everything important in the world, a backward part of the continent that continues to stand still while the rest of humanity is moving forward both technologically and scientifically. Africa whose people live in darkness despite 365 days of sunshine and availability of solar technology to convert the sunshine into solar energy.

It means Africa which is so poor in economic, social and political sense despite being rich in natural resources and hard working people: an Africa which is so poorly governed, whose leaders are corrupt and lack the capacity to plan and to initiate any programme of development on their own without being told to do so or helped by outsiders.

Africa where infrastructure decay is the norm, where rural life is nothing but a condemnation to abject poverty, hopelessness, misery and frustration.

Africa where ethnicity and tribalism are exploited by corrupt dictators and opportunists bringing a wave of negative tendencies of cronyism, nepotism, corruption and conflicts in its trail. Africa where politicians are happy to exploit the ignorance and illiteracy that have enslaved and prevented its people from taking their rightful place in the world community of continents.

Africa that has not learnt anything from its colonial experience and whose leaders continue to dance to the tune of Western and Chinese rhythms at the expense of their own development.
The meaning of the phrase refers to a part of Africa which can be and is being recolonised by China and its rival competitors in Europe and North America through their multinational corporations. (Have you heard of Africom, a project of the US aimed at establishing military bases across the continent to pave the way for total recolonisation of Africa?

Africa whose leaders can be bought by multinational corporations with some few thousand dollars and allow multinational corporations to plunder their resources without any accountability. Have you heard how Mabey and Johnson bribed Ghanaian officials and built bridges that led to nowhere?

The phrase also indicates Africa which is both economically and politically fragmented, have no common foreign policy, and no economic, immigration and agricultural policies and are without a mouth in world affairs and whose leaders see no wisdom in unity. It means Africa which is so militarily weak and technologically paralysed to defend itself against external forces, their ideologies, philosophies and cultural pollution.

Africa whose leadership are morally bankrupt to criticise one another Africa whose leaders have great ideas about how to rig and win elections, kill journalists, stifle press freedom, freedom of speech and association but have not the slightest idea on how to fight chronic poverty and end decades of wars that continue to devastate communities, towns and cities.. Africa whose leaders prefer to steal from their countries and bank their loot in foreign countries instead of using the money to build roads, hospitals, railway tracks, irrigation facilities, schools, electricity, housing and other social and economic infrastructures for the development and benefit of their own people. It symbolizes Africa where natural resources are a curse rather than a blessing.

It implies Africa where an illiterate soldier with a gun in hand can easily become a president of a country tomorrow. Examples are Yahyah Jammeh of Gambia, Moussa Camara of Guinea, Gaddafi of Libya, Joseph Kabila of DRC, Mamadou Tandja of Niger, Museveni of Uganda, Mohamed Ould Abdelaziz of Mauritania, Al Bashir of Sudan, François Bozize of Central African Republic, Jerry Rawlings of Ghana, Valentine Strasser of Sierra Leone, Sergeant Doe of Liberia, and Kolingba and Jean-Bedel Bokasa of Central African Republic.

Egypt a purely desert country and a member of 'Africa north of the Sahara' recently sent food aid to Uganda, a country rich in minerals, soil, natural lakes, rivers but whose leaders see no wisdom in employing irrigation technology that could be used to increase food production to reduce hunger.

The phrase also signifies Africa which continues to beg for and depend on foreign aid despite sitting on huge natural wealth. It means Africa which in spite of its cash trapped economy its leaders continue to siphon at least $148bn annually into their safe haven accounts in foreign countries notably Switzerland, Monaco. Instead of money flowing from rich countries in the global north into poor one in the global south including Africa, it is the rather the other way round, an act that defies any economic wisdom.

It stands for a continent which continues to depend heavily on natural resource exploitation as the main economic activity and which sees diversification as unimportant despite the dangers of depending on raw material export.

It represents Africa where women are treated as second class citizens, denied political representation and are coerced and used as sex objects and commodities by those in power. Africa where child bearing is a matter of life and death, where pregnant mothers die of preventable causes of deaths; where so many children die before they reach the age of five; where child labour and child poverty are the norm, and where both rural and urban children grow without proper education, healthcare, food, shelter, clothing and without future or hope.
It also means Africa where economic hardship put people on death roll and cut short young bright lives. Africa where there is no mortgage, safety net for the poor and the aged and where owning a house or a car can be as daunting as climbing Everest. That is the true meaning of 'Africa South of the Sahara' which the leaders have accepted without a fight.

These phrases are being applied to Africa and its people because of the sabotage activities of the leaders, because of their failures, corrupt life, their lack of commitment to fighting poverty, and improving the overall living conditions of the people.

World's starving south is financing its rich north

First Published 2009-11-11, Last Updated 2009-11-10 22:05:02


www.theendofpoverty.com

Film shows how system maintains richness of north via keeping dying south in poverty.

NEW YORK - In his first speech before the United Nations General Assembly this September, President Obama optimistically pledged that the United States would not only support the Millennium Development Goals but would, quote, “set our sights on the eradication of extreme poverty in our time.”

Earlier this year, the IMF and the World Bank warned the financial crisis posed a serious challenge to reducing poverty. The World Bank predicted the economic crisis could push another 53 million people in the global South into poverty. According to the latest numbers from the UN, we’re now up to 2.7 billion people around the world who survive on less than two dollars a day, one billion of whom live on less than a dollar a day.

Given the dire statistics and the widening gap between rich and poor, how can we see the eradication of poverty? That’s the central question of a new documentary, The End of Poverty? It’s narrated by actor and activist Martin Sheen. The film has been described as An Inconvenient Truth for global economics. It premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, opens in New York this Friday.

This is an excerpt that features political scientist Susan George discussing how debt repayment fuels poverty in the global South:

SUSAN GEORGE: Let me give you just one statistic, which I worked out in minutes, because otherwise it’s incomprehensible. Sub-Saharan Africa, which is the poorest part of the world, is paying $25,000 every minute to Northern creditors. Well, you could build a lot of schools, a lot of hospitals, a lot of job—you could make a lot of job creation, if you were using $25,000 a minute differently from debt repayment. So there’s this drain.

And I think people don’t understand that it is actually the South that is financing the North. If you look at the flows of money from North to South and then from South to North, what you find is that the South is financing the North to the tune of about $200 billion every year.

AMY GOODMAN: Philippe Diaz is the award-winning director of the film. Is the end of poverty possible? Why did you do this film?

PHILIPPE DIAZ: Well, you know, I think it was for two reasons. The first one was to explain that we are in a very dramatic situation today, I think much more dramatic even than global warming, because, you know, if, as an expert says in the film, we are consuming today 30 percent more than what the planet can regenerate, we are in a very dramatic situation, because world population increases every year. And it simply means that we will have—for us, in the countries of the North, to be able to maintain these great lifestyles we have, we will have to plunge more and more people below the poverty line in the countries of the South, unless, as the same expert says, we can find six more planets with the same resources, you know, because if everybody in the world was living like we live in America, we would need six planets to have everybody, you know, happy and have the same lifestyle.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, to give a sense of the severity of the situation, every 3.6 seconds, another person dies of starvation in the world?

PHILIPPE DIAZ: Yes, absolutely. And that’s what we want to show, is that, you know, I think that—you know, as Miloon Kothari, also another expert, says in the film, you know, the economic system that we chose leads to the sacrifice of some people. So, how many people will we accept to let die or to—you know, to annihilate, until we wake up and want to change the situation, because it’s where we are?

You know, until we thought that the resources of the planet were unlimited, you know, we could understand, you know, the other theories about global economics. But today we know they are limited, and we know that we are consuming more than we can regenerate. So what do we do?

AMY GOODMAN: Philippe Diaz, give us a brief history lesson. Go back centuries to 1492.

PHILIPPE DIAZ: Well, yeah. We decided, you know, after doing a lot, a lot of research, I thought that we cannot—you know, the most important for me was the actual time, meaning the present, and someone like John Perkins that you will see later explain clearly, you know, in the film—and he is, for me, the keynote speaker of the film—you know, how we do that actually, meaning how we create this fake debt for third world countries or we force countries to privatize, etc., etc.

But I think if we don’t—I thought that if we don’t go back in the past, we don’t understand, you know, how this thing happened. It’s not that one day we woke up and said, “Oh, we’ll go take the resource of the South and to create a great lifestyle.” You know? It started a long time ago, when, you know, Europe decided brutally to expand. And, you know, it was the Conquistador time in South America; after, it was the French and the British and the Dutch, of course, who went to Indonesia and to Africa. And we took all the resources from these countries.

The first resource that we took was the land. And you take land away from people, it clears that you create a slave, because if the person can’t, you know, grow his own food, it means that he has to sell his workforce to survive. And that’s the number one resource we take. After, we take all the other resources—water, timber, mineral, everything.

And clearly, we built a system—you know, it’s very funny, like if you think about it, how do these small countries, like Great Britain or France or, even worse, Holland and Belgium, become these huge empires? They were very small countries with almost no resources whatsoever, and they became the greatest empires. How? Well, by taking by force, of course, all the resources from the South, creating therefore a huge workforce, you know, that—of course, the slaves that we use with—you know, more and more, bringing even slaves from Africa.

And after, of course, we created this system where—you know, today if the countries of the South say, “OK, we will stop to give you our resources and our workforce,” the economies of the North collapse immediately—the US, Europe, Japan, Korea, etc. We cannot function without the resources of the South, and unpaid almost. We pay maybe, whatever, ten percent of the value of these resources. And it’s why, if you want, because we are consuming more than what the planet can regenerate, it means that to maintain our lifestyle in the North, we will have to create more poverty in the South. And that’s what we do every single year. There’s no other way.

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go to an excerpt of your film that deals with sugarcane workers in Brazil. It features Jaime de Amorim of the Coordinating Landless People Movement and begins with Maria Luisa Mendonça, president of the human rights group Rede Social.

MARIA LUISA MENDONÇA: São Paulo is the largest state that produces ethanol in Brazil and, at the same time, is the richest state. And just to give you an example, last year seventeen workers died in the space where they work. They died of exhaustion. Another 419 workers have died in consequence of their work, in addition to several cases of slave labor in the sugarcane workers that the Ministry of Labor has been registered.

JAIME DE AMORIM: [translated] The grower sees the worker as a slave. They haven’t rebelled, so today growers have a much easier way to accumulate wealth than during slavery. Back then, the boss was the slave’s owner. He had to take care of the slave’s health and food. He had to take care of shelter, even if it was the slave’s quarters. Today the boss has no such concerns. He just has to drive the truck to the outskirts of the city. The truck loads up. He takes them back. No more worries.

AMY GOODMAN: How does that concept fit into your film, Philippe Diaz?

PHILIPPE DIAZ: Well, it’s the same if you want—what I try to show is that from the beginning, we continue the same system up to today. Just the tools change. You know, like slavery never stopped, and the pressure put on Southern country never stopped. Now we use other kind of tools, like John Perkins explained very well in the film, the tool of the economic hit men. We create fake debt. You know, we force people to privatize.

And, by the way, just as a little example, you know, if I gave—you know, if I chose the title, The End of Poverty? with a question mark, it’s to answer one of the eminent experts, you know, in America, which is Mr. Poverty in America, Jeffrey Sachs, you know, run around the world, [inaudible] the ministers and this and that, to explain that the way to end poverty is by giving mosquito nets and fertilizers. You know, in his book—you know, and he’s credited, for example, in Bolivia for having ruined the economy of Bolivia by forcing massive privatization when he was an adviser to the then government.

You know, and if you look at—if you look at what’s going on, in his—the most important part is that in his book called The End of Poverty, he goes back to the Bolivian experience and says, “Well, after all this time, you know, I can go back to the Bolivian experience and see what was really wrong.” And I thought, “Oh, maybe he’ll acknowledge that was a mistake. They should never have privatized, etc.” He said, “No, no. The real problem with Bolivia is altitude. The country is too high in altitude, is why they are in poverty.” So, you can imagine that if you have these kind of experts who are ready to say these kind of things, you know, we are in very serious trouble, because not only we have created this system, you know, for 500 years, where we have been taking all the resources from countries and transforming their people in slave, but on top of that we are continuing to broadcast these kind of absolutely absurd ideas that by, you know, bringing mosquito net and fertilizer we’ll end poverty.

And, of course, as we know, this system has been built forever, and just the tool change. Now we are not taking the land and the resources by way of the gun; we are taking the resources by way of debt, privatization and other economic hit men who go there, you know, and buy, bribe or have the president killed, as John explained very clearly, you know, in order to continue the same policy.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you hope to accomplish with this film?

PHILIPPE DIAZ: I think to show people that we are in a situation more dramatic than global warming today, because, of course, global warming, as we all know, is extremely dramatic, and in the next ten years or twenty years people will start to die massively because of global warming, but today people are dying every day. You know the movie should be almost dedicated to the children of the world. It’s why I put children all over the place, because they are the innocent victim of that in the movie and with this little child begging in the street. You know, today you have 20,000 children who die every day, you know, because of the poverty issue. And they only die—they only die because they are poor, and they are poor only because we are rich.

The movie brings a lot of solutions, you know, from political solution, like agrarian reform, ending the monopoly over natural resources, changing the tax system. There should never be tax on consumption or labor. You know, there should be tax on property ownership. You know, and to the major—one of the major—one of the key experts at the end of the film said the solution is called “de-growth.”

De-growth, from the North, of course, because there is no other way. Either we accept that millions of people will die so we can continue to grow or even stay stable, or we will have to de-grow. De-grow doesn’t mean necessarily drive more, eat less or etc. It means like—as he says, it means work less. What about if we work five hours a day and consume less, but consume better? You know, that’s all the movement which is starting in the world. And there is no other way.

Again, it’s a mathematical problem; it’s not even a political problem. It’s a mathematical problem. We have—today, because of the system we created, we cannot feed billions of people, clearly, when the resources of the planet are well sufficient to feed all these people. But because of our system, this inequality we created by way of the gun, you know, these people will die, you know, million by million.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to go to a clip of the film, where our next guest interviews the vice president of Bolivia. John Perkins, the bestselling author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. He is back with a new book. It’s called Hoodwinked: An Economic Hit Man Reveals Why the World Financial Markets Imploded—and What We Need to Do to Remake Them. We go now to John Perkins, in this clip from The End of Poverty?, interviewing Bolivia’s vice president, Alvaro Garcia Linera, for the film The End of Poverty?

JOHN PERKINS: [translated] Bolivia is a country with so many natural resources. Why does a country like this have so many poor people?

VICE PRESIDENT ALVARO GARCIA LINERA: [translated] I think this has to do with what we call the colonial condition of our societies. Countries that have a collection of natural resources, renewable or nonrenewable, seem to be condemned to be poor countries. It’s paradoxical, isn’t it? Unfortunately, colonialism is always a part of the development of capitalism. There is an emancipation process that happens through the implementation of a different global economic order than the current one. That’s why a total, simple and definite break with colonialism allows us to imagine a world economic order, globalized in a different way than that which is driven by the accumulation of capital.

JOHN PERKINS: [translated] What things can Bolivia do, or should they do, to bring about necessary change?

VICE PRESIDENT ALVARO GARCIA LINERA: [translated] This is a country of nine million inhabitants, where 62 percent of the population is indigenous, both in the cities and the farmlands. Bolivia is a country with mestizos, Aymaras, Quechas, Guaranis, Mojenio, Trinitarios, Irionos, thirty-two indigenous groups and nations. But, unfortunately, in the 181 years of the republic’s political life, the indigenous people were never recognized as citizens with collective rights. Never. This continent is waking up. I like the idea of “a continent in movement” as a synthesis of what’s been happening during the past five to six years in Latin America. There’s a movement developing of world citizenship and planetary responsibility. There is something beautiful happening in these countries which makes them get involved in the situations of countries like Bolivia, a country that wants to live a better life, where 58 percent of the people live on less than $2 a day.

(www.DemocracyNow.com)

Do we have to die for NDC and NPP?

NPP and NDC are fooling Ghanaians, our economy and the lives of our future leaders? Finally the NPP's Dr. Kofi Asare has been declared winner of the Akwatia Parliamentary election, but does someone have to die? Do we have to fight, destroy lives and property in order to vote for a candidate? Why should the entire residents of Akwatia have to suffer curfew because of NDC and NPP? Why should Salifu Maikankan has to die for NPP and why should Danny Ofori Atta has to die for NDC? It still beats my imagination that someone will die for politicians who have kept them poor, uneducated and unskilled and who do nothing to help them. You may be mad about NDC or NPP and will go heaven and earth to defend them but do you think these parties care about the plights of Ghanaians? NDC ruled Ghana for 8 years and NPP has also done the same but did any of them help to make Ghana a developed country? Did any of them solve the unemployment problem in Ghana? How about electricity, education and health? Look at the poor nature of roads in Ghana. Do we deserve that? Can Ghanaians recall anything extraordinary that the NDC did before it was replaced by the NPP in 2000? Or anything remarkable that the NPP did before it was replaced by the NDC in 2008? And since taking office 7 months ago has the NDC done anything tangible to alleviate the suffering of Ghanaians? Any person who has been to Europe, Asia or America can say for sure that both major parties have not done much for Ghanaians. Look at the state of Ghana's manufacturing sector. What do we produce? Close to nothing. What do we do with the cocoa that we produce? Don't we export the raw beans for peanuts? How about the gold and the diamond and the many minerals we mine? Aren't they exported to Switzerland and Dubai before Ghanaians go there to buy the wedding rings and bracelets to sell to us? Computers, cars, mobile phones, fridges are made in Europe, Japan and the US and they are affordable there but Ghanaians cannot buy common chocolate even though the vital raw material which is cocoa is produced here. And the same is true about gold and diamond. We cannot buy products made from them even though they are mined right here. Look around yourself and see if any of the goods you see are made in Ghana. I mean the mobile phones, computers, televisions, cars and all the flashy things that Ghanaians are crazing for. It is sad to note that almost all the raw materials needed to build these phones, cars, plasma TVs, camcoders, satellite dishes are obtained from Ghana and other African countries. Has the NDC or the NPP helped us to build any of these things? No. The reason why we are unable to convert these rich natural resources into finish goods to benefit ourselves is the poor manner in which the NPP and NDC have managed our country. Don't forget it is government that must take the initiative, provide the necessary environment and policy direction and resources for a strong manufacturing sector to take root. Look at the policies of both major parties and see if they can even put Ghana on the level of Korea, Taiwan or Hong Kong in the next 20 years. Ghanaian business men and women are frequenting Dubai and China importing every good you can think of. Investigate to find out how the Chinese and the Koreans did it and whether any of the parties can help Ghana do the same. Didn't the NPP throw the NDC Vision 2020 Document that was supposed to make Ghana a middle income country into a dust bin? And do you think the NDC is going to implement Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy II (GPRS II) prepared by the NPP? This is the politics that has brought us no development but unemployment, poverty, hunger, misery and hopelessness and divisions. So do they care, I mean NPP and NDC? Look at the state of Ghana's infrastructure: energy, roads, harbours, telecommunication, health, education, rail system, market and airport. What are the records of the two major parties on infrastructure? Have they been able to add anything to what Dr. Nkrumah built? Haven't they even neglected the few that Nkrumah built to decay? If you think I am not making any point just look at the state of our railway sector. Most of the tracks have been left to rot to the extent that there are no train services in many parts of the country which once relied on that vital important means of transport. For decades that sector received no investments and no modernisation to the extent that it now takes about 10 hours to travel by train from Kumasi to Accra, a mere 200km. Compare that with a train service in Japan where it takes one hour to cover more than 270km. Despite having the advantage of being cost effective, cheap, reliable and business friendly 11 years of PNDC rule plus 8 years of NDC and another 8 years of NPP did not help the rail sector and our country except turning former poor soldiers and politicians into billionaires at the expense of our nation. After 52 years of independence and more than 27 years of (P)NDC and NPP rule our trains still run on engines that are 50 years old. NDC and NPP have neglected Ghana's infrastructure needs for years, yet we have forgotten that no nation can develop without investing in infrastructure and technology. That is why Democratic Republic of Congo has every mineral you can think of yet it is one of the poorest in the world. That is why Malaysia, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong have developed and that is why President Obama is talking about building US infrastructures because they are the engines that run the economy. You cannot export if you do not have harbours and airports to support it. You cannot attract tourists if you do not have airport, hotels, well developed roads and other infrastructures that support it. You cannot move goods from centres of production to centres of consumption if you do not have roads, rail lines and inland water infrastructures to deliver it. You cannot supply the industries with doctors, architects, bankers, lawyers, planners, engineers, teachers, nurses if you do not have the educational infrastructure to deliver it. And you cannot run an efficient and vibrant economy if you do not have the energy and telecommunication infrastructures in place. Look at the state of Akosombo dam. Ghana is shut off anytime it refuses to rain yet we have had parties and their political leaders who have promised us so much yet have delivered so little. Ghana has been experiencing serious disruptions in the energy sector for years and no political party has seen any wisdom to solve it. As a result factories are folding up and are laying off workers and we are waiting for nature to help fill Akosombo Dam before we rectify the problem. Will this do nothing approach to problem solving help our nation? What are we doing with the abundance of sunshine in the country? We have not taken advantage of it, have we? We have sunshine 365 days and we have not tap into solar energy which is cheap and more reliable than hydro. In a situation that mimic problem facing the entire African region, the Finnish president on a visit to Nigeria in March 2009 asked, “Nigerian people have so much sun and wind, why don’t they use it for the generation of light for cooking and every other thing”? She queried, and added that “we do it in Finland for our renewable energy”. Source: www.dailytrust.com, 12 March 2009. The sad story is that Finland and most of the nations in Europe are locked up for most of the year by cold winter but take advantage of the short summer to convert the little sunshine they receive into solar energy while here in Ghana we have sunshine most of the year but do nothing with it. Dwindling rainfall has limited the ability of Akosombo dam to produce the needed energy to support the economy. It is another indication of the useless institutions that we have and lip service paid by the various political parties and their leaders to Ghana's development. Look at the state of the agricultural sector. How many of our farmers have their own tractors and farming equipments to produce beyond the level of subsistence? Virtually all the important equipments needed to make the agric sector viable and productive have to be imported and how many of our farmers have their own resources to buy even the basic machinery to expand their farms? Today after 52 years of independence our farmers still depend on nature for water for their economic activities despite the availability of irrigation technology and what has the NDC and NPP done so far to help them? Aren't they still using cutlasses and hoes to plant and harvest their crops, technology our forefathers were used before they were colonised. Aren't they still relying on nature to plant their crops in this 21st Century? Aren't we still importing rice from India and China after 52 years of self governance? We cannot even feed ourselves after 16 years of NDC and NPP rule. Where are the food sufficiency policies of the two major parties then? What are the many directors at the ministry of Agriculture who enjoy fat salaries and bonuses doing? Although we are in the 21st Century yet our farming practices indicate that we have still not moved beyond the 19th century. Fishermen are always faced with the constant shortage of premix fuel despite the pledge by both parties to help them. This is the more reason why we continue to hunger even though rich soils abound in Ghana. We under utilise our land for lack of political commitment. It is common to hear Ghanaians say that 'Malaysians got their palm fruit seed from Ghana'. Well Malaysians use the oil they get from the palm fruit as fuel for a number of engines including cars, something they accomplished through research and we what do we use the oil for? It is sad to say that Malaysia got independence about the same time as Ghana but they have made great strides economically, while we have been marking time curtesy NDC and NPP. While the rest of the world is moving forward scientifically and technologically we are still marking time because of corruption, poor leadership, poor governance, bogus agricultural and economic policies, politicisation of every national issue, tribalism, ethnicity and military incursions into our social, economic and political life. If Agriculture which provides us about 35% of our GDP is bad, then can our educational sector upon which the development of the nation rest be any better? Aren't the NDC and NPP toying and playing politics with our secondary school system. The SSS (now SHS) was a three year programme when it first started. When the NPP replaced the NDC in 2001 they changed it to four years and now the NDC is considering reversing it to three years. Who are they fooling? Is it not Ghanaians, our economy and the lives of our future leaders? Is the entire educational system anything to be proud of? Just look at the world ranking of Universities and see where the first university falls. Of the about 9,760 Accredited universities in the World, Ghana's prominent universities including University of Ghana and Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology only managed to place 5,702 and 6,703 positions respectively in the World University Ranking. Even in Africa, our own backyard they only managed to secure 43rd and 63rd positions respectively. (Source: topuniversities.com/2008) Can we afford to develop the nation with ill-prepared graduates not to mention the millions of illiterates and semi-literates who roam around the cities and countryside? Dr. Ave Kludze, the top Ghanaian born NASA Scientist in a rebuke of our leaders and our education system said in an interview with the CNN "no empire has ever achieved greatness without technology and the earlier the leaders realise this the better". He later told BBC that, "But where African schools have a problem, is that they focus heavily on theory, whereas [universities in the west] focus on the practical - solving real world problems.” Source:bbc.co.uk, Thursady, 12 February 2009. It is abundantly clear that our education system is not producing the architects, engineers, planners, bankers, lawyers, doctors, teachers, social workers, nurses and the scientists that we need in the 21st Century. That is why every major architectural and engineering activity in Ghana is undertaken by foreigners and foreign companies especially from USA, Japan, China, India and the European Union. The Universities lack well trained lecturers. They lack modern facilities such as state of the art libraries, laboratory simulation facilities, studios, computers, and books. They lack them because we cannot build them; we cannot build them because the curricula have not prepared our students to build them. As a result we have to import the equipments and books from countries that have done their home work well and have invested heavily in education notably in science and technology. In many of our universities, Polytechnics and secondary schools lecturers/teachers are still teaching students the same way the 19th century academic institutions taught forgetting that we are in the 21st century. The same notes given a final year student four years ago are still being given to first year students with no addition or subtraction. Lecturers cannot write books for students because they do not have the resources to carry out research that form the basis of any academic material. Whereas students in advanced countries get their hands on books immediately they are released those in Ghana have to wait 4 years or even more to get the same books. What is more the academic facilities including libraries are in a state too appalling to describe. Not a single of our universities can boast of a million volumes of books in their libraries. Even the few text books that they have are so old that information contained in them are useless. Very few books have been published by Ghanaians. Due to this most students have to rely on the notes that lecturers give them. This is state of our universities and the little I say about our Polytechnics and secondary schools the better. The streets of Accra, Kumasi and other major cities in the country are swarmed with children selling ice water, bread, chewing gums and anything that can be hawked. Children head potters are visible every where in Kumasi, Accra, Tema and Koforidua, a clear manifestation of the misery and hopelessness that the NDC and NPP have brought to Ghanaians. These are the children who are supposed to be in the classroom and be trained as future leaders but have to abandon the classroom and scavenge for food because the NPP and NDC do not care about them. When they drive in their expensive tax-payers' Land Cruisers do the NPP and NDC MPs, ministers, Vice Presidents, the Presidents and their advisors see the children who live, sell, and are taught by the street in Accra, Kumasi, Tema, Takoradi and Koforidua? Do you know why NDC and NPP keep toying with Ghana's education? Because they want to keep the people in darkness like poorly cooked rice, so no one will rise up to challenge their corrupt and useless administrations. Ask your President or his vice or their ministers where their children are schooling now and you will understand why they don't give a damn about SHS, Poly or University education. Their children are schooling in expensive universities in Europe and North America. And as to how they pay for those expensive fees your guess will be as good as mine. When their children finish their education overseas they stay there and work. They only return to Ghana when there are big contracts where they would make millions of dollars for staying away and doing nothing for the nation, and what do the poor Ghanaians who could not travel to study outside and had to pass through God knows what get? Nothing - no contract, no retirement packages, just poverty. Our research institutions have achieved very little because they are underfunded and the researchers do not have the expertise and the facilities to carry out any meaningful research. A case in point is Cocoa Research Institute of Ghana (CRIG) located at New Tafo in the Eastern Region. Despite decades of its existence we still export raw cocoa beans for peanuts. No value has been added to the cocoa. CRIG has not been able to come up with other ways in which to use the beans to benefit Ghanaians despite the mounting evidence that the beans have several potential uses. Have you visited Korle Bu or Komfo Anokye or any of our hospitals lately? Didn't you see patients lying on the floor even though they are sick and are suppose to be receiving care? If Korle Bu and Komfo Anokye hospitals are crying for resources then you can imagine the situation at Donkokrom. And where is the NDC and NPP that you want to die for or support so blindly? Where in Ghana are mosquitoes not widespread? Are we not still dying from mosquito bites and other minor and preventable diseases? Despite NDC and NPP pledges, our hospitals are without the basic essentials needed to run a hospital not to mention the advanced technologies that save millions of lives in Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Europe, Japan and America. And NDC and NPP what are they doing? According to peacefmonline "888 out of every 100,000 pregnant women in Ghana who visit the hospital, end up dying. Another expert, whose statistics were even more frightening said, out of every 1,000 pregnant women about 451 die". Source: peacefmonline.com, Thursday, 23 July 2009. How about the state of the housing infrastructure? A visit to any village or town gives the same picture of poor housing and poor quality of public service. People are living in mud/thatched houses with bamboo/raffia leafs as roofing sheet with no electricity, potable water and clinics. They live in a subsistence environment without social security, health insurance and are condemned to poverty, desperation and hopelessness. Those living in urban areas are without jobs, without mortgage, and face high utility bills with poor public services. They face constant barrage of water and energy disruptions everyday. In every region the situation is not different. Go to Nima, Agbogloshie, New Town, James Town, Sodom & Gomorrah and see the kind of living conditions and environment in which fellow Ghanaians are living in this 21st Century. People are living in squalid conditions not even fit for animals yet we have NDC and NPP always promising to build us castles, swimming pools and what have you. Majority of the people in Teshie and Nungua have no access to toilet facilities and have to use the coast as places of convenience and even in those places where there are few toilet facilities you could hardly stand the stench. Please you can verify this by going to where Dutch Hotel is situated at Nungua and witness how people troop to the coast in the morning to attend nature's call. On the other hand our MPs, ministers, vice president, the president, their cronies and families live in total luxury with mansions, sport utility vehicles, bodyguards, fat salaries, fat bonuses, house servants and they have all the resources of the state at their disposal. When they leave office they propose special emolument packages for themselves yet they claim to be serving the poor. How can it be? I can continue all day but it is a fact that both the NDC and NPP are a bunch of hungry politicians with no concrete economic and social agenda to move Ghana beyond the level of importing used computers, used cars, used televisions, used underwear and any used thing you can think of. What are all these telling you about Ghana, the NPP, and the NDC? Do we have any option not to vote for them? Why should Ghanaians continue to die and suffer for such people who only think about their stomach? These leaders and their parties always play on the ignorance of the people promising them heaven but failing to even provide them earth. Until we have leaders who have vision like Dr. Nkrumah and are committed to industrialise Ghana beyond agro raw material production and export, Ghana will continue to be classified as a developing and poor country and even though we will continue to vote we will continue to wallow in abject poverty as we have always done. I want to urge every Ghanaian to seek education and knowledge which I believe will help us to question our leaders and demand accountability from them. I also want to challenge the various TV and radio stations to devote money and resources to embark on documentaries on what it really means to live in poverty in Ghana under the NPP and NDC, documentaries and programmes that will show Ghanaians the living conditions of the people in rural areas and expose the lies of the NDC and NPP. And to the parasitic NDC and NPP I say 52 years is enough for us to see real development in the country. Credit: Lord Aikins Adusei (Email: politicalthinker1@yahoo.com