Ghana Is In A Collision Course With The Military….

Feature Article of Sunday, 7 April 2013

Columnist: Sarpong, Justice

…….as grumblings from the general public with the blatant looting going on in Ghana by our Politicians might force the Military to step in and stop Mahama and his government from bankcrupting the country to HIPC status.

The loopholes in the constitution that allows the Executive and the legislative branches of government to cheat their way to riches will be the final straw that will break the camel’s back and allow the Military to step in and remove these thieves. The loopholes in this constitution is too many and corrupted.

Let me give you an example. It was not the Parliamentarians who actually awarded themselves this amount but it was done by a committee set up by the President as the constitution stipulates who recommended this amount and for the President to sign on to it.

Now here is the kicker about how corrupt this constitution is. The same constitution stipulates that, the President and his Cabinet ex gratia should be determined by Parliament. Now that the President and his committee have rewarded the Parliamentarians handsomely, what do you think these Parliamentarians who have been given this “bribe” by the President and his committee will do? They will also recommend humongous amount of money for the President ex gratis as a payback for given them $155,000 each. It is called you wash my back and I will wash yours. In my AKAN proverb, we say “BENKUM DWARE NIFA, NA NIFA ADWARE BENKUM”

The Politicians drew this constitution to amass wealth.

This is what Mr Kwesi Pratt, the Editor of Insight Newspaper said about the scenerio I have described above;

He condemned the system where Parliament approves the salary of the President while the President approves the salary of Parliament. He called it “scratch my back and I will scratch yours even heavier”. “Lets look at the situation if we had a system which said the teachers should approve the salaries of nurses and that nurses in turn should also approve the salaries of teachers. Can u imagine what would happen? And yet that is what we are doing. This system of scratch my back cannot be supported…”

Not a single member of Parliament has come out to condemn this daylight robbery by their colleagues and our constitution which seems to have been drawn by people enacting laws to amass and protect their wealth.

WHAT A SAD STATE OF AFFAIRS IN GHANA. The country has no money to do anything except when it is going to the pocket of our thieving Politicians. If we add the retired Mills Cabinet Ministers numbering almost hundred to this list of 230 former MP’s, that means Ghana will end up coughing almost forty million dollars going to about 300 people alone for just ex-gratia. First, what is the meaning of ex-gratia?

Ex-gratia is defined as a favour given gratuitously where no legal obligation exists. So in essence, ex-gratia is just like bonus we receive from our jobs if at the end of the year, the companies we work for are profitable. Even in most cases, the companies we work for might make huge profits at the end of the year, no bonuses are given to workers because we are not entitled to it or it is not obligatory on companies to give bonuses.

Why then should these Politicians be peeved because they have not been given a favour they are not entitled to after running a deficit of 25 billion dollars? If Ghana was a company, it would have gone out of business so why should we reward these morons for bankcrupting the country? Does it make any sense? Ghana does not owe these thieves any money and if they insist, all Ghanaian workers working for the government should stop going to work, from Doctors down to watchmen at the Ministries. ENOUGH OF THIS CRASS STUPIDITY.

Ghanaians have made it clear they will rather live in the worst democratic rule than to live under the best Military administration and I am one of these proponents and that is why I have always said that, the only Military coup in Ghana that was warranted was the first Military coup that toppled the oppressive rule of Dr Kwame Nkrumah, our first President who did much for the country and became a Dictator after becoming drunk with power.

Why did I say it was the only Military coup that was warranted or legitimate? Dr Kwame Nkrumah became President through the ballot box but when he took that right and freedom from Ghanaians by making Ghana a one Party state with CPP the only party to have the right to exist and banned all other parties and making himself a ‘King’ by declaring himself President for life, the only avenue that was left for Ghanaians to remove him if they didn’t like the way he was ruling was through the barrel of the gun and he was legitimately removed by the patriotic and gallant men of the Military led by Kwesi Kotoka and Katakyie Kwasi Amankwah Afrifa.

Ghana has enjoyed democratic rule since Rawlings returned this country to civilian administration after his quixotic and ‘desporadic’ rule from 1982 to 1992 as a dumb hothead who killed his precedessors for stealing and ended up being the worst kleptomaniac ruler in our country’s history. I thought the era of Military rule in Ghana was over but recent behaviour of our Politicians have shown that, they did not learn anything from Rawlings ‘armed robbery’ he clothed in revolutionary garments.

I will rather Ghanaians continue on this path of democracy that has been the envy of many countries in Africa and continue to change our leaders through the ballot box but if this clueless Mahama and his NDC Party and political elites in Ghana are not stopped for the plundering of our country assets and appropriating it to themselves, we will not have a country worth fighting for in 2016 if this nonsense is not stopped immediately.

How can a country that has seen good social interventions like NHIS, NYEP, NADMO, GETFUND and others to go broke without any money to even help the poor flooded people in Tamale, Yendi, Gushiegu and Walewale but we can come up with one hundred thousand dollars ($100,000) each to be given to each member of the 230 members of Parliament from 2009 to 2012. Ghana at the moment has no money to resource many important projects or address workers who are agrieved one way or the other about their salaries and other benefits but we can come up with twenty three million dollars to to people who hardly did anything to impact the live of Ghanaians? The only time this government seems to have money is when it is to be given to the Politicians. After increasing their salaries more than hundred percent and making it retroactive one year before, then doubling their housing allowance, now this nonsense of one hundred thousand ex-gratia to each of the 2012 class of the members of Parliament is too much for poor Ghanaian workers to take anymore and I will welcome a Military men to remove this Mahama administration since our civilian population seems to be too timid to embark on a mass demonstration and march to the Flagstaff house and chase Mahama and his scoundrels from that building.

I wish we could wait till 2016 to try our luck on the ballot box but we might not have Ghana as we know it if we continue to run the country as it has been ran for the last eight months since Mahama became the substantive President after the death of President Mills. I will also appeal to other governments that support our budget shortfall to stop doing that and allow Ghana to live within its means since most of the money they dole out to help the country ends up in individual accounts somewhere in the Cayman Islands.

How can we continue on this path of using almost 75% of our revenue just to pay government workers with the top one percent of the populace mostly the Politicians and their cronies consuming seventy percent of the GDP?

Before Mahama showed what he is made of, I said we have another Limann like administration looming and I will now apologise to President Limann and his family for even comparing him to this President we have now. Limann like Mahama was clueless like this Mahama but he was a noble man who has never been tainted with any corrupt scandal unlike this man at the helm of affairs at the moment. Military coup will be a welcome relief to Ghanaians to stop this plain pen armed robbery and finish the Rawlings unfinished business that started in 1982. These Politicians are tone deaf it might be the right thing to do to stop the looting going on and send them to “ASAMANDO” to go and spend the blood money they are sucking from the veins of the poor Ghanaian citizens.

ENOUGH OF THIS NONSENSE, I AM TIRED OF BEING TIRED WITH OUR POLITICIANS STUPIDITY. THE MASSES CANNOT TAKE THIS ANYMORE AND LET THE SECOND GHANA REVOLUTION BEGIN BY STOPPING THESE VERMINS AND LEECHES MASQUERADING AS POLITICIANS.

Justice Sarpong

(CARDINAL of TRUTH)