Siding with our President

I am back. They wanted to keep me in a hospital bed for a long time, pushed me to ease up on the workload and stay away from the President. All very bad advice. But I have enjoyed a bit of rest but feel particularly lost with all the stories under the bridge. And I have been busy with OccupyGhana in spite of all the good advice from close friends, who thought I was tired and stressed out too much with Ghana. I am back, with more venom in my fingers.

But how can you not be? This is week five of my water dearth. Ghana Water Company has lost its head after taking an increase of over 50% of the taxpayer’s money and they are punishing us on McCarthy Hill with no water through our pipes.

Yet the NDC Government claims the water sector is their most invested tenure and they have increased capacity with so much water available to us, we still do not understand that water is in abundance.

But it runneth not to my home and I am buying tanker water to stay clean and healthy. A Better Ghana, now a “cash in your pocket” Ghana. See 2017 around the corner ooo, and take note of how you will be blessed once you make another vote in the proper direction.

And Papa J wants you to vote correctly. You might not be able to vote for Zanetor, because she has somehow muddled herself in the law courts by not registering to vote in Ghana, she must have forgotten while she was decoupling Mr. Mensah from the two children they birthed she also had to fire up her political registration.

But not to get into her business too much, I wonder why she wants to be a politician? Has she peaked in her medical profession already? I would hope that a true patriot would, at least, make some significant contribution in a profession and then take off after that on a political flight, as her father taught her to fly light airplanes and as he demonstrated to her by his specialty in coup-making.

His contribution to the military will hopefully show us how to get the timing right for taking over a country and ruling it by force. She is lucky he is still alive to part some knowledge of disruption and chaos mongering, but good to see she is not letting him down.

A white charger into the murky world of NDC foot soldiers. Those brigands will have her for desert with the Mahama branded chocolates, which has made CPC think twice.

Can you get it? In a country where you have more cocoa than everybody in the world except your neighbor. A country where your cocoa is so sought after that people pay a premium for the flavor and the anti-oxidant properties, a brand that is so healthy you can make the crappiest chocolate and we all still buy.

Yet, we cannot continue to keep our factory working. Countries as far away as Switzerland, where they cannot even grow a single cocoa tree, make and run chocolate products and we, who Tetteh Quarshie stole and brought cocoa to us and unknowingly created our mainstay export product, cannot move cocoa from Brong-Ahafo to Tema, a distance that can be covered in five hours, in order that we can compete with the rest of the world and beat them. Looks like the cost of shipping to Europe is cheaper than the extortion costs of the roadblocks and police barriers from west to east Ghana.

I wonder how much they take these days after the useless petrol taxes and levies?

Ghana has become an expensive country. Gone are the days when family would come from UK, US, Germany and bring wealth in $, £ and Euros. Now do you hear them? They are complaining more than us. Pure water is at 30 pesewas a sachet. Who would ever have thought that the once critical thirst redeemer of five pesewas would now trundle in a head pan from the unemployed, who we cannot count because we do not even have a births and deaths proper count.

I was so traumatized this week. We were at a panelist discussion on National ID cards and we heard that over 30% of births are never registered in Ghana. Similarly, deaths miss out close to 40%. Yet we see nothing wrong with the voter register.

By now you would have read that OccupyGhana has sued the Attorney General and many others about the bus branding deal. It is the first in a salvo this year, an election year and we are looking forward to major unfolding events.

. There are now so many cases against Government and I don’t feel sorry for them one bit. Citizen activity created a good corruption perception for Ghana on the index and Government tried to crow about it.

We are in the full-blown era of citizen engagement, and I can proudly say with the support of many CSO’s each looking from different angles, we are making a dent in bad governance in Ghana.

Forget that the Parliamentarians think ACP Kofi Boakye has no right to threaten to arrest an MP. He too, I wonder why he didn’t go ahead and just arrest the man. Inciting people to violence then yelling I am an MP is not acceptable.

Same way that trespassing the rights of farmers by Fulani herdsmen has to be legislated and remedied, same way we need to ensure that a proper policy on livestock and developing a good policy on how we handle dairy and meat availability in the country is resolved.

When South Africa, Uganda, Kenya and others have done all these a long time ago, where is the Minister of Agriculture? Before he could do anything and be held accountable for what he did not do, he was moved to another lame duck position.

In Ghana you are better off as a Minister not making decisions. Stay quietly where you are, the President will see fit to move you where another is efficiently messing up.

Please give me a Government who cares about its Ghana and the citizens and this deteriorating stature. We were blessed with resources and then taken off the list for great leaders. We have been denied the brainpower to use the resources, which have become a noose around our thinning necks. A friend of mine says; brains develop a nation not resources. True dat.

But I agree wholeheartedly with our President when he claims that just like Kwame Nkrumah who spent all our money building infrastructure and investing in useless edifices and factories, which we had to leave to rot because he did not see that the source of raw material input needed to be developed in tandem with infrastructure and couldn’t see that private enterprise in the end trumps central control and resource manipulation, failed with a bankrupt Ghana and a ruined economy.

By the time the Osagyefo was escorted off the scene, Ghana’s reserves were totally decimated and we were yelling for sardines, corned beef and ice cream. Few were those who were rich with huge edifices; cronies and family had much to boast of and the rest who believed in Freedom and Justice, were jailed and harassed out of the country.

Which is why I am on record saying the CPP is done and will never rise again. Nkrumah never understood private sector development. He never understood how to make an economy work, believing that if the State was CPP and CPP was the State, then all things would be added and the Black Man had become capable of managing his own affairs.

Same for our President. He cannot see it and does not understand how to plan an efficient economic ecosystem that enables private sector and supports essential growth sectors to fuel the ingredients of development.

I agree with him. Just as Nkrumah left this country bankrupt, so also has John Mahama pushed us into bankruptcy and won’t get us out by the time we vote in November. Dream on and look forward to cash in your pocket come 2017. Obinim will bring it to you in a snakeskin wallet.

Ghana, Aha a y? din papa. Alius atrox week advenio. Another terrible week to come!