By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
As usual, I read the piece titled “Kufuor Institutionalized ‘Monecracy’ … Nana Addo Liberated ‘Narcotics Queens’ – Fiifi Kwetey” (Peacefmonline.com 5/20/11) with utter contempt. And the fact that such simplistic jabs as former President John Agyekum-Kufuor having, supposedly, induced a culture in which one’s possession or ready access to money trumped all the other equally vital cultural and moral values underpinning Ghanaian national identity came from, of all public figures, an NDC Deputy Minister of Finance, made the entire piece all the more nauseating.
Even more significantly, it made perfect sense that our national economy, during the two-and-half years that the so-called National Democratic Congress has held reins of governance, has continued to steadily register a precipitous downward spiral.
Of course, nobody expects a criminal posse that rode to power on the blood of unsuspecting and totally innocent Ghanaians to remarkably appreciate the civilized rules of a market economy (where self-motivated talents are maximally encouraged), let alone the sacred and humanistic tenets of a property-owning democracy. In short, in the books of these pseudo-socialists and half-baked Marxists, the only social order that matters is the bestial Darwinian Principle of Survival-of-the-Fittest, which is all that the likes of Mr. Kwetey have achieved since being returned to power largely by default.
And as a few critics had occasion to point out not quite long ago, when key National Democratic Congress operatives like Mr. Fiifi Kwetey talk of economic development, this consists largely of having desperate socio-economically marginalized party youths and hoodlums seize public latrines and vehicles legitimately owned by their political and ideological opponents.
It is also rather laughable (and we hereby suggest that he promptly seek psychiatric examination), when the Deputy Finance Minister facilely asserts that “whereas competence could be bought, traits like truth, integrity and honesty can never be purchased.” The problem here, of course, is that none of the key operatives of the so-called National Democratic Congress, including founding pontiff Jeremiah John Rawlings and John Evans Atta-Mills, have amply demonstrated that they are jointly and severally possessed of any admirable human traits and/or qualities half-approaching such fundamental elements as “truth, integrity and honesty.”
And let no Ghanaian of age forget, for even a split-second, that when we talk of NDC movers and shakers, we are actually talking about a bloody bunch of moral reprobates who summarily abducted and assassinated Supreme Court judges and private citizens like Mafia capos and honchos and then, curiously, turned round with blood-dripping AK-47s preaching “Probity and Accountability” to an effectively cowed and clinically traumatized citizenry who were too petrified to call these common criminals to condign judicial account.
And isn’t it a crying shame that today ugly and nasty people like Fiifi Kwetey have the temerity to accuse Messrs. Kufuor and Akufo-Addo of moral decadence and turpitude, knowing fully well that had the Rawlings posse not hobbled and irreparably blighted the 1992 Ghanaian Constitution, the likes of Fiifi Kwetey would be licking their proverbial chops from behind the barbed and electrified walls of Nsawam. Instead, we have these Venezuelan cocaine-cartel pimps, disguised as “advisers,” serving in powerful cabinet portfolios and shamelessly styling themselves as “Honorable This and That.”
Now, the foregoing is a classical example of what it means to talk about a decadent society!
*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is a Governing Board Member of the Accra-based Danquah Institute (DI) and the author, most recently, of “The Obama Serenades” (Lulu.com, 2011). E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net.
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