Still in the doldrums

And it came to pass that electricity-starved Ghanaians were assured that the energy crisis responsible for the anomaly was going to be fixed soon. President Mahama’s confidence was almost overwhelming when he said this to his compatriots.

While some took it with a pinch of salt, a few thought he should be given a chance to prove his mettle.

The realities on the ground today have vindicated those who doubted the president’s word, their position informed by verifiable empirical evidence. When signs of load shedding became evident a few weeks ago and people pointed that out, they were shouted down with the explanation that some challenges were responsible for the power outages. Government minders abhor the word dumsor and would prefer challenges.

Dumsor is triggered by challenges so what are they telling us? Blimey!

Today the cat has finally been let out of the bag: the timetable for the load shedding regime would soon be made public. Propaganda, synonymous with lies, is unsustainable.

Government has applied so much propaganda on the energy crisis, including useless efforts at shifting the blame for the situation on previous administrations.

We cannot continue on this pedestal and expect positive changes in the manner we manage this country. For how long will Ghanaians live in the dark, not knowing what exactly is responsible for the sorry state of affairs they have been plunged into?

We have been told that the president hates the word ‘incompetence’ and would rather it were not used to describe his performance at the controls of state.

Perhaps, he should not have raised the hopes of his compatriots when he announced that dumsor, which has bedevilled the country for many years now, would soon be a thing of the past – his unusual cognitive abilities going to do the trick.

The fact that a timetable for the load shedding exercise is almost out suggests that it is not true that dumsor has been subdued. The prescriptions applied so far, including the karpower segment, are all but near useless interventions.

When a government is no longer believed by the people, it must wake up and do something to reverse the situation otherwise those taking over from them would have to do extra work to win the confidence of the citizenry. No wonder some think politics is all about tricks and lies.

Perhaps Ghanaians are not being told the truth about the energy situation, the subject remaining a restricted one, its details not to be divulged to the people.

Related to the subject under review is the president’s July 1 promise to assuage the pain of electricity consumers. The countdown began among some sections of Ghanaians soon after the president had hinted the country about it. Enter the subsidy intervention and people began to wonder why the president shifted the goal post.

Ghanaians would want to see the removal of the shark-rating taxes because they are responsible for the killer electricity tariffs. As for the so-called subsidy, it is only a cover difficult to verify.