Finally Olympic games have ended and I can get back some quality sleep at night. I have been doing the unthinkable, just to be a part of history and to mark where I was when Usain Bolt changed the world one more time, and maybe this time forever. I am not sure anyone can duplicate this “triple” crown effort any time soon or forever.
But mixed in all this nation-breaking event the NDC and NPP were doing their own vote cheating Olympics and denying that they were involved in jump-starting the gun with petty crime and illegal bribing of voters in the poverty jungle they have created. We have this unfortunate draw in Ghana that even the truth about petty officers giving away donations to influence small boys to go out there and cast for mediocre performers is denied by both parties, so one cannot fathom who is doing what in politics.
On GBC24 one late night, I watched the story unfold of the allocation of illegality, shared between the NDC (51%) and NPP (36%), who both conceded in the final analysis, that “yes, we have been doing it, but the other side do it more”.
On the back of a CDD opinion poll of voter response to gifting influence to voters, the NDC Government is incensed that a biased institution (in their view) such as the CDD should even attempt to make public a poll that they do not consider authentic.
But when have they ever? A Moodys, Reuters, Fitch, EIU or any other report that goes in another’s favour is never valid. We have tried in Ghana many a time to create a poll that can rise above the petty fray but not even the IEA or better yet IMANI have been free to cast an opinion or produce a voter survey that is hailed by both parties as a useful guide for straightening out national direction.
Seventy percent of Ghanaians, according to the CDD survey say the country is heading the wrong way. NDC says the sample itself was biased and it is not so. So we will wait to see which way the people of this country vote in December. Not too far away, we are talking three months and then “thumb print day”.
So the finance minister and his team went junketing across the West, begging cup in hand to try and raise more money to pay for previous period spending habits. We are in an election year and it is now very clear that if the NDC does not do anything at all, they will spend as much as they can, not caring about the eventual fall out and burden on the next generation. But importantly, to stay at the helm of Government they will spend as they did in 2012 and the bond cash people are now very “Ghana savvy”.
So this time round, the buyers of our bonds, wary of the tricks and huge confidence not borne out by reality, sent them packing home without a pesewa.
But there is a silver medal. JDM commissioned the TEN (Tweneboa, Enyira ,Notemme) oil fields to gush out the first of a potential 80,000 barrel a day well and tried to convince foreign investors they could look forward to a bright future if he is made president again.
Nana Addo tooo wants to be president, but he opened a different well, the well of sectionalising the Western Region. I am yet to understand the logic of this election promise, but it evades me. As we say these days, “I can’t see that far”.
But I could swear we have done this before and chopped up several regions to make political gain and it brings no benefit to the people who live there. How much development can you provide to a section of the population so small it has no chance to manage on its own and develop?
Our thinking has to be economic development all the time, every time. This political expediency has cost us too much in the past, which advice we have ignored as good compasses for the future. Where is the Northern Region now since it was carved out? And whither the Brong-Ahafo Region since Nkrmah played “cha cha” with chieftaincy issues in order that his political kingdom will be secure?
We need a very determined attack at the decentralization issue, our voting process, election of officers to Parliament and a myriad of burning issues on the table, going nowhere except the shelves of the Constitutional Review Commission. Very soon we have to get away from the simplistic view that giving the voters an opportunity to vote for just anybody will automatically create good law and oversight in Parliament.
Anyway, this time that the bond-buyers sent them packing back home empty handed, they came back to do what they do best; spin a yarn that after assessing the conditions they have decided the time is not ripe for raising money. Well, so be it, they have to tell us how they think they can get us out of the mess they have dug. We have now become economic slaves.
So I am watching the Olympics and the announcer calls the name of the athlete from Bahrain, “Emeka Ishogun”. Something like that. For a moment I was disoriented, looking for the one with the hijab, because I figured that’s what a Bahrain person might just do. But yo!, wrong expectation. It seems that Bahrain now allow some of their women, especially those who can run fast to Olympic standard to expose their bodies to the sun and they have now become so tanned, they have turned black. And that is what Bahrain is trying to convince us, that they now have Kenyan shaped heads on their team. But they are not the only ones doing it. Did you see the Canadian and British teams on the podium? The world is running black!
So what with all the cheating in the Olympic ring? Especially in the boxing arena and Ghana not even getting a sniff at any weight? Had we known there was a chance to bribe the panel of judges, we would have sent representatives from the NDC and NPP parties to go and do the needful. A missed opportunity for another four years. It has to be easier to get a gold medal that way than actually doing the hard work and training for the next Olympiad.
If we plan so the voting does not coincide with the games, we could do marvellous things in Hong Kong. But hard work must pay off better. If we avoid the short cut, bribing voters notwithstanding, we should get better at this developing country game.
Ghana, Aha a y? din papa. Alius atrox week advenio. Another terrible week to come!
Sydney Casely-Hayford, thenewghanaian@gmail.com