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Opinions of Wednesday, 16 November 2011

Columnist: Fiagbeto, Yao

Ghana’s 2012 Election Require A President That Can

.....Create JOBS and Wealth in the Constituencies/ Districts

Concern Citizens Democratic Alliance of Ghana -CCDAG also known as The Peoples Government of Ghana is readyto tackle the genesis of poverty and deliver a sustainable economic growth platform in Ghana’s 2012 Election. CCDAG belong to allGhanaians from different political and ethnic persuasions and backgrounds. Our views took into account the basis of Ghana’s independence under UGCC, CPP, June 4th and 31st December revolutions.

The reason why we value and incorporated their views in our strategy was that, their first and foremost goal was to give rural communities the edge to develop their local skills and potentials. Secondly, to create educational system that will allow students and future leaders to study and familiarized themselves with local resources, especially how to process those resources for rural and national consumption. This arrangement will allow diverse economic activities to exist thereby enabling graduates, students and artisans to work on their innovative ideas in extracting and processing those local raw materials into finished products. The focus was to support economic activities that create jobs from cultivating the land in food production, processing, warehousing, and distribution.

This understanding principle was the hallmark of creating economic opportunities that attract and retain graduates and well qualified artisans in the rural areas, who intend develop their potentials and upgrade existing finish products to a more affluent, tastier and acceptable high revenue earner for rural and national growth.

These fundamental notion were the strategic guiding principles underpinning operations of the founding fathers and the revolutionary groups, a carbon copy of western development road map. This road map was to be a perfect blue print for Ghana to attain her equal leverage and partnership credential in the eyes of Africa and the world. This road map for a moment took off gallantly, yielded results on the ground which placed Ghana in a position revered as the beacon or the black star of Africa. That window of fame occurred only because decisions and implementation of workable solutions within the road map were allowed to rest solely with community citizenry.

The rural areas were responsible for creating wealth, education, social and political policies with little interference from the Head of National Government.

The government in those periods gave every citizen in Ghana a sense of responsibility in finding unique antidote to economic development failures in their rural communities. But after fifty years, the reverse had occurred where Ghana has produced leaders who took pride in begging the Western economies for handouts, loans, and donations to develop Ghana’s potentials. All these mishaps or missteps in Ghana over our fifty years of independence must be laid at the door steps of some of our English speaking educated elite “wanto ntsini” advisors and ministers of states.

Because as soon as certain segment of Ghanaian lawyers, professors, well English spoken citizens were invited to take the center stage in helping to steer the affairs of government, in other to meet the demands of the diplomatic community, they immediately reversed all the gains of our Vernacular (Ewe, Fante, Asante, Dagbani, Ga, Grussi, nzema just to mention a few) / English speaking educated elite either intentional or unintentional.

As soon as they took over the movements and the government with their three piece suite, well polished queen and American English grammar and vocabulary, the movements and governments that used to be hot became cold; a movement that was based on the black star, Ghana/Africa do for self agenda now becomes British/America agenda.

Policies and agenda which have no iota of solving the enormous economic woes of the Ghanaian populace became the yardstick of our governments. Policies and agenda that reward greed, intellectual cronyism of government officials living a luxurious lifestyle, cruising in latest cars and amassing personal wealth through loans, donations and handouts all in the name of doing peoples business and good governance becomes the order of the day.

Most of the intellectuals who participated and continues to rule Ghana have adulterated honest western policies and procedures to the detriment of our rural and urban communities either by deliberate actions or they are just plain ignorant. For example, policies like district assemblies, and constituent representations were direct replica from the western political play book. These policies and procedures are perfect formation and beneficial to western realities but not for Ghana’s democratic dispensation. There are vital cues from the western political playbook we can emulate which can be effectively translated into our Ghanaian realities. The end result of our political and economic road map is that we are alienating our vital rural components of education and economic development and survival; our chiefs who are the custodian of our lands are becoming less and less revered and respected in our communities, rural constituencies are experiencing reduction in population due to migration, increase crime and economic prostitution in urban centers. These are signs of abject poverty and neglect of ordinary Ghanaians, but member’s of government who preaches good governance, parliamentarians, district chief executives and ministers’ blossom in luxury.

Fellow Ghanaians another action which is from the western political play book which need to be revisited is political maneuvers that allows political parties to impose candidates on the constituencies whether the individual is knowledgeable with the constituency or not.

The chiefs are on the side line always at the mercy of the parliamentarian, they have been reduced to chiefs who fenced for themselves and receive handouts from MP and chief executives of their communities. Ministers are appointed based on their closeness to party leadership, the executive branch, or as a reward for financial undertaking in the election campaign.

Fellow Ghanaians, for Ghana to attain the status of an independent state for the world to take us seriously the following must be adhered to and implemented watch out for our next publication……

Yao Fiagbeto-President

ccdaghana@yahoo.com, hedevodu@yahoo.com, gbenufia@yahoo.com

P. O. Box 222 Jonesboro, Ga. 30237