The Ghana @ 50 Saga – Can NPP profit from NDC’s goof?

When I was young, the rites of passage of most churches included baptism followed by another ceremony called confirmation. At the time of baptism, one was given a new name which was referred to as a Christian name. Later in life, as one matures in the Christian faith, the same person goes through the confirmation rite during which he/she takes on an additional name. I don’t know whether this happened in the urban centres too, but it was very much the norm in the rural community in which I grew up. Until our president got confirmed recently in a political synagogue as Professor Do Little, I had thought the second rite had died a natural death following the proliferation of Pentecostal churches which don’t believe in the practice of confirmation.

I invite Ghanaians of all faiths to join me pray for the president’s recent confirmation to be the last stage of such rites, because if there should be another stage, we run the risk of seeing the professor progress from Do Little to Professor Do Nothing. What is not clear is whether the short man who led the elephant into the bush will sit down and allow Ghana to be taken down this path. I have heard people say time and again that the law is an ass. It is however difficult sometimes to stop wondering if it is the law which is really an ass or it is the framers of the law who are the asses or whether the ass does not actually lie in the application of the law rather than in the law itself. Do you remember the time when the first suspects in the Yaa Na murder case were taken to court under the NPP regime? The then opposition NDC vilified the Attorney General Nana Akuffo-Addo for having knowingly preferred wrong charges against the suspected murderers to pave the way for them to be freed by the courts. I heard Efo Richard, the propaganda secretary of the NDC repeat this same charge against Nana recently on a radio station. If we want to weigh the NDC on its own scale, it will be easy to speculate that Professor Do Little also intentionally established a presidential commission to deal with the Ghana @ 50 matters so as to constitutionally foreclose the possible prosecution of the principal actors. Fair speculation, isn’t it? What goes around surely does come around.

I heard Ursula Owusu make declarations on radio to the effect that the discharge of Kwadwo Mpiani and Charlie Brobbs by the high court confirms her conviction that both men were clean. The court, in its ruling, has not made even a passive reference to the substantive charge against the accused to form even a remote basis for drawing any conclusion on their guilt or otherwise. I really do admire Ursula for her political courage and her eloquence but her partisan overzealousness sometimes makes her sound more as a propagandist. She capped her submissions with another boastful conclusion that the ruling also confirms NPP as a party of men and women with pedigrees beyond the match of the NDC. She may be right but it is also true that for some ordinary voters, this ruling does not in any way constitute an enviable reference point. It is one too many of a kind for the NPP.

Adverse findings were made against Hon Dr. Anane by CHRAJ and he went to court to get these findings quashed on the grounds that CHRAJ had no locus standi to investigate the case let alone make any pronouncement on it. The apologists of the NPP claimed victory and the then President Kufuor re-instated him to his ministerial position. Now the captains of Ghana @ 50 have been discharged because the court says the matter shouldn’t have been brought there at all as it had already been the subject of a presidential commission investigation. In both cases, the innocence of the accused was not the basis of their discharge. The common thread is an error in the judicial or investigative process, which is always spotted by the eagle eyes of the “brilliant” NPP lawyers. The other side of the coin which Ursula has not considered is the fact that the learned judge may have by his ruling, confirmed the belief held by many that the NPP has the men and women who have mastered the art of playing games with the tax payers’ money and using criminal friendly provisions in the constitution to get themselves freed. The NPP therefore needs to tread carefully lest it falls on the dagger of its “brilliant” lawyers who may succeed in keeping their perceived corrupt officials out of prison. This could however turn out to be a pyrrhic victory that may just unwittingly extend the 2008 sentence the elephant is currently serving in the bush. You see, the majority of voters do not know the law, but they have common sense and that is what they use. It is either something makes sense to them or it doesn’t. It is not about legal righteousness.

I am also getting amazed at how easy it is for opposition politicians to recognize corruption in public service but how difficult it becomes for the same politicians to see it when they get into power. The NPP won the 2000 elections on the altar of a campaign anchored on corruption charges against the Rawlings led NDC1 government. After winning power, the NPP mysteriously lost its sense of recognition for corruption, only for it to be regained by the NDC which transformed itself into a satellite dish for picking corruption signals. Then the NPP took its turn to fall on the dagger of perceived corruption in 2008 and guess what; their sense of recognition has been restored. Do you remember former president Kufuor’s recent comment on corruption? If you are an ordinary mortal like me, you can only smile at comments such as those.

I wish to entreat all of us never to reduce the matter of corruption to an NPP – NDC affair. Let us unite and fight it head-on irrespective of the political colours of the suspected perpetrators. It shouldn’t matter whether the corruption engine is powered by Mabey & Johnson, Ghacem/Scancem, Muntaka’s Ministry of Sports or Ghana @ 50, the fight should be the same!

Mathias Dorfe mdorfe@hotmail.com