No One Who Fails To Publicly Publish His Or Her Assets ...

....Is Fit To Be President Of The Republic Of Ghana

By Kofi Thompson

Sometimes one finds it extremely difficult to understand the cognitive processes of the geniuses who call to berate one, because they disagree with something one has written. Hmm, Ghana eyeasem o - asem kesie ebaba debi ankasa.

I wrote and posted an article entitled, “Ghanaian Media: Force Presidential Candidates To Publicly Publish Assets - & Political Parties To Disclose Funding Sources” on my Ghanapolitics google-blog, yesterday.

Apparently, I have been bought by Dr. Paa Kwesi Nduom – according to the aforementioned genius who called to malign me yesterday, after reading the article mentioned above. Wonders.

To begin with, my conscience is not for sale at any price – and has never been, and will never be.

Everything I write and have written in the past has been underpinned by national interest considerations only.

I love Mother Ghana passionately – and happen to be very proud to be a Ghanaian national.

That is the ethos that underpins my journalism – which is of the ethical kind: and has always been.

I have neither ever met nor spoken to Dr. Nduom in my life before. I commended him in the blog article I posted online yesterday, simply because it just so happens that he has done something, which for the past 20 years I have suggested that members of our political class, and the parties they belong to, ought to do, in the national interest: publicly publish their assets to help fight high-level corruption in Ghana.

Dr. Paa Kwesi Nduom is the first Ghanaian politician who has publicly given a solemn undertaking to Ghanaians - in a campaign for a presidential election in which he is a candidate - that he will publicly publish his assets and filed tax-returns, as well as disclose the source of funding for the party he founded, the Progressive Peoples Party (PPP).

He deserves to be praised by every patriotic Ghanaian for so doing.

In my view, for now, it has put clear blue water between him and all the other presidential candidates for the December election.

And if they fail to do same, then they do not deserve to rule our nation.

I wish President Mahama - whose party's principled and most honest members I have some sympathy for - had done so, when some of us called on him to do so, at the beginning of his tenure.

However, much as I wish it was him who had done so instead of Dr. Nduom, for the sake of our country, one must not ignore the fact that thus far, President Mahama has failed to publicly publish his assets and those of his wife.

At this critical stage in its history, no one who fails to publicly publish his or her assets, is fit to become president of the proud African nation-state, which the selfless Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah founded.

The Republic Ghana, of today, is not the nation it was four years ago.

That is why if they want the votes of the discerning and independent-minded Ghanaians whose crucial swing-votes now decide who becomes president of the Republic of Ghana, the other presidential candidates too, must follow Dr. Paa Kwesi Nduom’s shining example. A word to the wise…

Tel: 027 745 3109.

Email: peakofi.thompson@gmail.com.