I never spent my ink on them because I knew it will come to this. I knew they were cheap hirelings who were paid to make the government seem bad in the face of the good people of this dear country of ours, and they will cease to exist when their mission was not accomplished. Many of them were rubble-rousers who wanted to make a living through cheap and easy ways.
Politicians who hire them are equally as senseless as they are, because apples don’t fall far from the tree. Call it two of a kind, and you will not be far from right. This is just the beginning. Come 2024, and you will see many more of such criminals trying to make money from politicians by forming such irresponsible groups to bamboozle Ghanaians. And there will be many gullible Ghanaians who will follow them blindly. Mark my words!
Now that the ‘Economic Freedom Fighters’ are no more ‘fighting’, it stands to reason that the economic battle has been won or lost. But is it the reality? The truth is that economic wars have never been fought to the end, because new realities crop up day in and day out. Just when economies of many countries were picking up, Putin’s war came knocking on our doors.
As a result of embargoes slapped on the face of Russia, oil and gas prices have skyrocketed, thereby, destroying the gains of many economies around the world. What is the ‘Economic Freedom Fighters’ telling Ghanaians about this calamity that has befallen the world? Is Ghana different from other countries in the world which are facing similar problems?
By now the good people of Ghana have realised that there are desperate politicians who want to come to power by hook or crook. To them, if things go bad economically in this country, it will be to their advantage on Election Day, so they pray fervently and unceasingly for things to go bad for Ghana for the sake of grabbing power.
The suffering of Ghanaians is secondary to their inordinate ambition. How crude. Luckily, Ghanaians are now wide awake, and can easily distinguish between the wheat and the chaff. When people started following these ‘Economic Freedom Fighters’ crooks, the group thought they had caught them in the net and could use them to convince their paymasters.
Before they could blink an eye, their followers became wised up and abandoned the project. Today, you don’t hear anything about these rubble-rousers. Their paymasters are licking their wounds, swindled by smarter guys. That is why the sages say cheapest is dearest. You don’t gather fools to speak for the wise!
And there was this similar tricksters called “Fix The Country” group, which shook the foundation of the country with their cacophonous noises. They foolishly thought fixing a country is like fixing a broken down bicycle. They did not know that it is easy to destroy than to build. They were so shortsighted that they never sat down to think of the number of years taken to destroy the economy.
They thought putting a gun on the head of the leadership of the current government could lead to the country being fixed overnight. Their paymasters are the heirs of those who ruled this country for more than a decade with iron fist, and did not brood any opposition. There was no parliament to check them, and they cowed down everybody and misruled this country with impunity, leaving behind a battered economy.
Where were the ‘Fix The Country’ advocates when the Culture of Silence was introduced by the bloody PNDC regime? In fact, where were they when the Criminal Libel Law was in operation? Even when pressure was brought to bear on the (P)NDC by the civilised world to tow the line of democratic dispensation, they shed their military uniforms and ruled as half-baked military regime and half-baked civilian regime with the 64 Battalion (Commandoes) armed to the teeth, and lurking behind and bullying Ghanaians.
If these guys were born too late to know all these, let me tell them that their paymasters once strutted this land of our birth with their hands soaked with the blood of innocent Ghanaians who dared to challenge them when they were destroying the economy. They sold more than three hundred factories in this country to themselves and their cronies, and never built a single one.
They killed the Ghana Railways and Black Star Line, and destroyed all the State Hotels and Catering Rest Houses in all the regions. They came to destroy, and today, they are talking of fixing what they destroyed. I have decided to take on these two groups of charlatans because they wasted our time when we could have been thinking of how to salvage the economy which was facing difficulties as the results of what was happening across the globe.
Today, every reasonable person knows very well that as a result of the Ukraine war and its several ramifications, wheat has become scarce in the world market. Russia and Ukraine are the largest producers of wheat, the raw material of bread, and so the price of bread will automatically go up. In addition, Ghana is yet to recover from the shock of COVID-19.
In no time you will hear these nation wreckers making noises about the prices of bread when they surely know the reasons why. These are the same people who want to come back to power to continue with the loot. What is more serious about the supply of wheat is that the third world producer of wheat, India has decided to ban the exportation of wheat to the world.
By now the paymasters of these groups are planning something new with a new name to disturb our minds. They better go for crash helmets because the going will not be easy for them this time around.
Some of us will prove to them that the pen is mightier than the sword. Let them strike the rock again, and feel the might of boulders that will be dislodged and crush them.
It is in Ghana that I don’t see poor guys puffing cigar. In Cuba where I sojourned, anyone can walk into a cigar shop, grab a stick of his favourite cigar, light up and puff away. So here I go again, puffing away with professorial bombast, like the way I used to do when I was in Fidel Castro’s Cuba. Aluta Continua!!!
Ericbawah2024@gmail.com
From Eric Bawah