Ken Ofori-Atta’s tiffin economic dilemma: A deception of majority caucus or Ghanaians?

Fellow Ghanaians, it was the current Vice President of our dear republic, Dr. Mahmud Bawumia who on a political campaign platform mocked the then president, and by the grace of God the next president of Ghana come January 2025, His Excellency John Dramani Mahama, that the latter has made so many promises that he has promised not to promise again.

Well, thankfully, the tables have turned today. But instead of promises the Mahama administration used to make, the Nana Addo-Bawumia government is engaged in deception and subterfuges.

When I read that the minister for parliamentary affairs (a sickening ministry indeed) who doubles as the Majority leader in parliament, Hon. Kyei Mensah Bonsu said his fellow majority MPs who insisted on the sacking of the lame-duck Finance minister prior to the reading of the 2022 budget be allowed to continue, I recalled the above statement of Dr. Bawumia.

Thus, President Akufo Addo, Dr. Bawumia, and Ken Ofori-Atta have deceived Ghanaians to the extent that they have decided to deceive themselves and their own caucus in parliament.

Was it not President Akudo Addo who promised that his disastrous cousin the Finance minister would be relieved of his post if the agitating MPs allowed him to deliver the 2022 budget after the negotiation of the IMF deal?

Who didn’t know that the IMF program was not going to be a one-day matter, and therefore the finance minister be allowed to stay or go depending on its extension or abrupt end? So, why deceive your MPs in such an audacious and brazen manner? Call it a political intermission.

In his “Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream”, former President Barack Obama emphasized clinging to hope in obvious situations of desperation. Sometimes, he observes, it is what makes the difference – clinging on to hope.

But there’s a thin line between a display of audacity of hope to achieve something and the showcase of the audacity of subterfuge and peddling falsehood in order to beguile a gullible nation in times of turmoil like we are experiencing in Ghana in recent times.

One most effective tool the Akufo Addo government has employed and deployed most effectively since their days in opposition has been deception and outright lies, to govern. And had it not been for the IMF program President Mahama initiated in 2015 which ended in 2019, the weakness of the economic fundamentals of President Akufo Addo's government would have been exposed a long time ago for all to see.

There has been an obvious lack of capacity on the part of the government since its inception, which has led to the creation of some sort of “Triffin Dilemma” in the Akufo Addo government. In particular, Ken Ofori Atta the Finance minister who neither can’t honestly nor prudently deliver the mandate entrusted him as Minister of Finance, and he has refused to let Ghana be. Instead, he continues to hold the nation by the windpipe and the esophagus, we can neither breathe nor eat.

The Triffin Dilemma was about an economic situation in which the US dollar was unable to continue to serve as a global reserve currency due to economic problems at home and abroad.

A situation that poses a serious threat to the collapse of the Breton Woods monetary and financial economic system. These intractable financial problems led to short-term economic solutions devised, such as the London Gold Pool and the Richard Nixon Shock whose failure worsened the global economy and financial system.

Moreover, the collapse of the London Gold Pool in 1961 which was set up by Britain to revamp the Breton Woods Monetary and Financial System, and the subsequent emergence of the Richard Nixon Shock ten years later in 1971, are two major factors that have led to the economic assertion by Marty Allen that, "the best time to buy anything in economics is last year".

This is because, the economic situations of nations continue to worsen by day, week, month, and even years. And anybody who claims to have seen the tail of a frog has simply been economical with the truth. That is why Ghana’s Finance Minister Hon. Ken Ofori Atta and Vice President Dr. Mahmudu Bawumia have been exposed to their delusional and extravagant economic visions.

Thus when the cedi the vice president arrested finally escaped, it was a disaster for the Ghanaian economy.

You see, it was the former Minority leader, Hon. Haruna Iddrisu who observed that “if you build a house with the moisture of your saliva, it is early morning dew that would collapse it down”. And in the land of my mothers it’s said that when you put forward a lie and dishonesty as a stepping stone in any endeavor you embark upon, you would surely come to meet it one day as a stumbling block.

The Akufo Addo administration has been caught up in their own cobwebs of lies they told Ghanaians today. According to Prophet Muhammad (S.A.W) “a leader who lies to his people can never be successful.” The flat and humongous failure of the economy managed and supervised by Dr. Bawumia and Ken Ofori Atta is apparent evidence of the quantum of lies they told Ghanaians which brought them to power.

Fellow Ghanaians, critical in this epistle today is the fact that unbeknownst to most of us, most probably, the lengthy speeches delivered by the Finance Minister, Hon. Ken Ofori Atta as budget and annual financial statements seem to be a copied assignment, a plagiarized Ph.D. thesis that has been written by someone else for him to go to parliament and deliver.

And it appears that this someone, by all intents and purposes, doesn't also really appreciate the reality of what our country’s economy entails.

So the Finance minister has been seriously goofing around in the delivery of the budget statement. Of course, it could be intended to delude Ghanaians.

In one breadth, the Finance minister would project a gloomy global economy, and specifically, Sub-Saharan African or West African sub-regions economy of which Ghana is part. Then he would go ahead to single out Ghana for better economic performance in order to tout his government's achievements.

Where the economic doom is obvious for Ghana, however, he attempts to point out other countries that are also faced with similar challenges. In several cases he tries to dabble in this game of economic hide-and-seek to deceive Ghanaians, those other countries would be far better in performance than Ghana.

For instance, in paragraph 26 of the 2023 budget itself, the Finance minister quotes what the IMF purported to have projected with regard to the global economy, “As the IMF puts it, the finance minister said, “…. the worst is yet to come, and for many people 2023 will feel like a recession”…said the IMF.

Again, in the mid-year review in paragraph 140 under Chapter Four which discusses the global economic outlook in which the entire Sub-Saharan economy was projected and predicted by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to be in a state of stagflation, the Finance minister has somewhat managed, in paragraph 5 through 9 of the same budget review, to rescue Ghana from Sub-Saharan Africa in order to give Ghana a different outlook with a deceptive economic facelift.

Meanwhile, the factors which have led to these realities are still ongoing and other countries continue to be affected badly. By some miracle, the Finance minister maintains that Ghana is still with these other countries but we are able to turn the economy around.

What kindergarten-like deception is that? And this is despite the economic reality on the ground which Ghanaians are languishing Fuel prices continue to gallop, prices of foodstuff keep skyrocketing, and prices of goods and services, in general, are still pegged at cutthroat levels; there's still no winner in the Ukraine war yet because it's still ongoing; COVID-19 is still blamed for the economic disaster, meanwhile the finance minister wants to paint a different picture of an economic milestone the government has achieved. How?

Let the Finance minister take one stance at a time; Ghana can't be Sub-Saharan Africa and with the economic doom and gloom still ongoing, the economy is witnessing a turnaround.

Is the Finance minister suggesting that it's the IMF bailout of 600 million dollars out of 3 billion dollars within six months that is all of a sudden doing all the magic in the Ghanaian economy? How about the freebies of 2 billion dollars the IMF dished out to Ghana between 2020 and 2021? Why didn't that money make any impact?

With the over 30 billion COVID-19 funds raised domestically, why didn't that money make any transformation in the economy? And is it because the IMF now monitors and literally supervises the Ghanaian economy that is making all the difference or there's something else Ken Ofori Atta does apart from the flowery and flamboyant lengthy speeches he delivers at the House of Parliament?

Does it not amount to incompetence, if only 600 million dollars that is pumped into the Ghanaian economy is making a difference under the watch of the IMF, why didn’t 2 billion dollars plus more than 30 billion cedis domestic funds could not impact us? And what does the finance minister seek to achieve for throwing this quantum of dust in the eyes of Ghanaians as a clearly "expired" and depose-worthy minister?

At New Hampshire in the United States in 1944, the Breton Woods Conference was organized and attended by 44 countries that came together to create a new global financial system and economic development path that would rebuild the world – Europe and Japan in particular – after the 2nd World War.

This was what led to the creation of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) also known as World Bank today.

As stated from the beginning the United States dollar was selected as a global reserve currency to be fixed to gold at $35 an ounce of gold. Then the rest of other currencies were to be fixed to the dollar. But the US dollar got entangled in the Triffin dilemma of having the challenge to lead as the leader of all other currencies of the world fixed to gold due to economic challenges the US started to battle with at home, and largely when Japan and Europe that initially relied upon the USA economy and exports in particular to build their war-torn countries, began to also export and now less import from the USA.

This led to the dwindling of the US dollar which necessitated countries like Japan and Europe to demand physical delivery of gold from the US treasury than keeping the fumbling and wobbling US dollar as a reserve currency.

Thus, the USA could no longer serve as the world's "reserve bank" and they were never ready to let go as the leader of the 1944 Breton Woods Financial Conference and one of the winners of World War Two superpowers.

So, in August 1971, President Richard Nixon with the advice of an economic advisory committee, closed down the gold window by literally cutting the link between the dollar and gold. Money was never backed by anything again after this event, rendering all money a fiat currency.

George Griffins defined a fiat currency as money backed by nothing but political decrees by politicians. Thus, politicians would choose to call a certain piece of paper say, a 200 cedis bill. He argues that the 2008 global financial crisis was triggered by the activities of the 1971 change of the global financial system by President Richard Nixon.

Till date, he argues, nations’ economies would continue to struggle and the values of their money would continue to depreciate in a condescending fashion. Especially, economies that employ fraudulent expansionary fiscal policies like Ghana for stealing purposes.

With the above reality, no country is actually capable of making any dramatic positive changes in their economy because money itself has continued to devalue due to its emptiness (it is backed by nothing and has become a currency. Note that money is different from currency).

It is therefore not true that our economy is making a turnaround when the Minister for Finance, again, in paragraph 28 of the 2023 budget said that economic growth in emerging markets is to slow down at 3.7%, is all of a sudden turning around if it is expected to take a nosedive.

Perhaps, it is making the turnaround in the pockets of this bunch of corrupt government officials. And like President Akufo Addo and his Finance minister deceived the majority caucus into allowing the latter to continue with his job as Finance minister even with nothing impactful to show for it but gargantuan debt, Ghanaians have been deceived.

The turnaround shall only happen when a new government comes and retrieve all our stolen money back into the economy.

In Sha Allah, President Mahama shall return to the presidency come January 2025.