The editor of “The Insight” Kwesi Pratt Jnr. once a parliamentary aspirant for the Convention People’s Party (CPP) has expressed his utmost indignation at the decision of president J.A. Kufuor to write off part of the 70 million-dollar-debt that Western Telecom (WESTEL) owes the government of Ghana.
The president early last week offered to write off about 40 of the 70 million dollars to enable WESTEL pay only 28 million dollars for failing to fulfill its contractual obligation to the country. According to Mr. Pratt, that decision seems to suggest an unwieldy power since the debt is to Ghana and not the private property of the president alone.
To him therefore, it will be a big mistake on the part of a president or any government to do any such thing. Indeed, other opinion leaders have suggested that the president might be taking his Executive roles too far if he unilaterally embarks on such decisions, recalling the days of Kwame Nkrumah when huge sums were donated to other West African countries in the name of African unity.
Mr. Pratt’s contention is that, the suffering of majority of Ghanaians is so marked that all these debts by Telecommunications operators in the country i.e. Mobitel, WESTEL and even Ghana Telecom could be marshaled to relieve the suffering Ghanaians of their numerous burden. That “when we talk about Ghana’s debts then we should be talking about the extent to which we have been exploited by the so-called capitalists”.
The Insight editor was contributing to “Ghana’s debt problems and the way forward,” organised by the Socialist Forum in Accra. The forum was attended by academics religious leaders and politicians among them, Dr. Edward Mahama of the PNC, Professor D. Osei and Professor Atta Britwum of the University of Cape Coast (sympathizers of the former NDC regime).
But Mr. Pratt also had some hard words for American and other Western investors who troop into the country with the sole aim of “manipulating, insulting, exploiting and defrauding us of our scarce resources”, to the extent of describing as barbaric the behaviour of American envoy, W.H. Lash at the offices of the Communications Minister.
He asked well-meaning Ghanaians to monitor the activities of investors who he said have nothing good to offer this country while the president and his government do all in their power to forestall the perennial exploitation of our resources by foreigners.
However, a vox pop by the Network Herald suggested that Mr. Pratt’s concerns might be misplaced. Majority of respondents to “does the president have the mandate to waive debts?” thought that what is good for the goose must be good for the gander. They question why it should be wrong for the government to grant relief if others like China could waive our debts.
