Truth be told, thanks to the action and inactions of the ruling NDC government,
it seems as if it is sharing power with the opposition NPP.
Why else would the opposition party, at every turn, seem to be the one calling
the shots? They act and the party in government reacts. How did the NDC come to
be complaining that the judiciary is parked with NPP apologists? Why won’t
officials of the former NPP government then poke their fingers in the
government’s eyes and dare them to take them to court if they really think they
have looted state coffers?
It is not only the judiciary that is parked with NPP activists; the Ghana
Football Association, the Ghana Olympic Committee, the Civil and Public
services, the Electoral Commission, Ministries and State-Owned Enterprises,
from Ghana Water Company through the Electricity Company, BOST and Parliament
right down to Millennium Development Authority among others are full of NPP
apparatchiks who are working actively for the NPP, either stealing and passing
sensitive documents to their party or adopting ‘go-slow’ attitude to government
work to slow down government machinery and makes it impossible for it to deliver
on time. Their Public Relations Officers are worse; they finance their party,
the NPP, by advertising in only pro-NPP newspapers.
The worse is MiDA. The management finances the NPP by advertising in only
pro-NPP newspapers. No pro-NDC newspaper ever gets adverts from them. The Daily
Post managed to get a half-page black and white advert from them some time in
June last year. More than a year on, they have refused to pay for that advert!
In pro-NPP newspapers, they place three to four pages adverts at least twice a
week and pay soon after.
Really, sometimes, it seemed as if the NDC is rather in opposition. NPP
supporters are getting employed in state-owned institutions while NDC members
are turned away.
Contracts are being handed over to NPP businesses while the NDC ones are
neglected.
In the media landscape, the NPP dominate because they have learned to put
resources in their media. In any battle between the NDC and the NPP therefore,
the NPP holds sway and eventually wins because they have a media that is ready
to go any length for them.
The NDC is not prepared to finance its own media believing. They claim the
pro-NDC newspapers do not have a wide coverage. What they forget is that some of
the pro-NPP newspapers who are doing well today, just before the NPP came to
power in 2001, could not even print 200copies; that the NPP, after coming to
power, invested in them and made them what they are.
The NDC wants to harvest where it has not sown. They want a vibrant pro-NDC
press but do not want to invest in them under the guise that they are private
businesses.
The pro-NDC press, without any help, has held their own against their NPP
counterparts. They survived the machinations of the vicious Kufuor government.
They will survive the NDC too if the party does not play its cards well and ends
up in opposition again. Then the story will be told of how the NDC, (back in
opposition), has no newspaper to tell its story. Who would want to continue
risking his or her life for a political party that does not value it; kola nut
lasts long in the mouth of those who value it.
So, when a party in power has minority in the judiciary, business community, in
the media and in state-owned enterprises, the only conclusion is that it is
sharing power with the opposition.
If the NDC government would not sit up and start behaving like a political party
in power and instead, behave like it is sharing power with the opposition, so be
it.
