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Opinions of Friday, 4 November 2011

Columnist: Damptey, Daniel Danquah

Doctors, endangered specie in Baba Go Slow’s administration (2)

A Doctor, like the labourer is worth his wages. The NDC Members of Parliament boycotted Parliament when one of their members was convicted and jailed by a court of competent jurisdiction. Whiles the boycott was on, their Parliamentary Leadership and other top members went to Keta to engage in a fetish ritual where women with naked breasts dragged their naked buttocks on the ground. While this was going on, the women and the NDC members rained curses and invectives on ex-President Kufuor and the Judiciary. Yes, the leadership of the then minority was there and feasted their eyes on the tantalizing naked bobby stands and the “popular fronts” of the naked women. Come and see different types of women with different statistics which might have aroused the sexual instincts of the then minority leader, Alban Bagbin who has publicly confessed to tasting the delicacies that lies between the thighs of his wife’s sister. The Oyibos, the Ngozis, the Obolos, the Atea Adonkos, the black beauties, the chocolate coloureds, the “brofonos”, the fatty-bum bums, the tikenenkens, the naakonhweas, the afurudohwedohwes, name them, they were all present.
Was the parliamentary boycott by the then opposition necessary? To them, it was, but to the rest of us, the country as a whole suffered. All the same, their MPs collected their salaries and entitlements. To the then NDC MPs, they were fighting a just cause. Meanwhile, their MPs who went on strike had sworn that they would defend and abide by the constitution of this country. Yet they went on strike! You see the contradictions and hypocrisy of these unfriendly friends of the average Ghanaian?
What the Doctors were demanding was not anything extraordinary. Put them on the Single Spine. The NDC hatchet men descended heavily on the doctors as if the latter had done the most abominable acts in the country and the NDC Government and members were the only patriotic citizens in the country!
We must keep our vows: In Numbers 30:2, The Lord says: “if a man vows unto the Lord or swears an oath to bind his soul with a bond, he shall not break his word, he shall do according to all that proceeded out of his mouth”.
President John Evans Fiifi Atta Mills, aka Fumbling and Wobbling Baba Go Slow is touted by his devotees as a very devout Christian and necromancer. Refer to Baba Jamal’s utterances on the magical display by the President who chooses to wear his juju ring instead of his wedding ring because he got some blisters on his palm after he had shook the hands of one prominent chief from the Western Region. Please do not crucify me, for I am only recounting what Nii Lante Vanderpuye told us about the President’s ring.
As a Christian, has the President kept faith with God and Ghanaians? The answer is a big no and nobody is ever going to make me change my mind on that. Does Baba Jamal know who a good or devoted Christian is? A person who encourages Ghanaians to tell blatant lies in direct antithesis against God’s commandments is obviously the wrong person to pass judgement on the Christian credentials of another person. By the way, when was the last time Baba Jamal entered a mosque or a church?
Let me state here unequivocally that Prophet Temitope Joshua who is the Spiritual Father of our President is disowned by the Christian Community in Nigeria. Pastor Christ Oyakhilome had a joint healing crusade with him in the early 90’s and came under a barrage of attacks from the Christian Community so much so that Pastor Christ has to issue a statement to dissociate himself from the Prophet.
The President had said it loud and clear: “Menuanom … just read my lips. By August this year, every government employee will migrate to the SSSS. You see, yeredi yen fie asem. Eno nti, all government employees sympathetic to the cause of the NDC will be the ones to enjoy. Anaa meboa, me nuanom?” That was the way most people understood the President’s address when they read his lips.
To paint the doctors in a very bad light in order to create public hatred for them, the NDC propaganda machinery went to bed with a State Newspaper like the Daily Graphic to concoct figures of huge salaries earned by doctors. Ee, how can a Christian allow such falsehood to be perpetrated against his fellow human beings right under his very nose? And you tell me, he is a devout Christian. And a State newspaper like the Daily Graphic allowed itself to be used for such diabolical act. Oh, Mr Editor, how could you? How could you allow yourself to be manipulated by this clueless and incompetent government to create such confusion amongst the good people of Ghana?
But as God will have it, truth will always prevail, no matter how hard you try to bury it. Like King Midas who had the ears of an Ass, the truth has finally come out and Ghanaians have come to the conclusion that this Baba Go Slow NDC government is full of incompetent, arrogant and insensitive who cannot be trusted to sleep even with one eye closed. It came out that doctors earned one third of the purported figures which deliberately published by the Daily Graphic to discredit them. Rather, the President’s twin brother, relatives, hangers on and other NDC appointees engaged in a smear campaign against the NPP Presidential Candidate are the ones earning thrice the amount earned by doctors.
Can we entrust our collective destiny into the hands of such people? No! It’s high time we kicked them out of power.
Is the President a Medical Doctor? Was the Minister of Health, Dr Yire Chireh indeed sick? It reminds us of Portia’s address to Brutus, her husband regarding his strange behavIour. She asked rhetorically, if Brutus was sick.
Did the Minister submit any excuse duty or sick leave note to the President before he was granted his sick leave? Or the man just walked into the President’s office to tell him he was sick and tired of the whole damn administration and wanted to get out of it? What exactly did he tell the President? Why did the President qualify “his leave” with the adjective “sick”? Is the President a medical doctor to look at the physical appearance of a person and diagnose him as one who is in dire need of medical attention or rest? Latter events were to prove that the man was indeed hundred percent medically fit. The Presidency owes Ghanaians a public apology for lying to us about the state of health of the Minister.
You see, the President and the Minister’s act is the most reckless and unpatriotic ever to be perpetrated against the good people of Ghana by any Government from colonial times to the present. How can a Minister go on leave when his Ministry on fire?
Does this man love the country? Does the President also love the country? How could the President lie to the nation that the man was not well and had gone for medical treatment whiles in actual fact the man was fighting a personal battle at his home front. There was fire at both fronts, the Ministry where he holds sway as the Capo and his Constituency seat which had come under threat by one “small man”.
Between his personal ambition and that of the common good, Dr Yireh Chireh chose the former. Which of both actions is criminal in nature – the strike action by the doctors or the desertion of post by the Minister? What about the President’s action of lying to the whole nation that the Minister was sick? What about the President paying his brothers so much from the public funds? Do the brothers have appointment letters? When the President submitted a list of appointees in his office (which did not include the name of Stan Dogbe) did it also include the names of his brothers?
What any reasonable and caring Government would have done under such a circumstance was to have engaged the doctors in fruitful discussion before the two weeks ultimatum expired. But it was not so with this uncaring, unfriendly undisciplined and visionless Baba Go Slow’s regime which rewarded their Founder by grounding his plane at the tarmac of Kotoka International Airport, thus preventing him from attending the inauguration of Lucky Ebele Jonathan as President of Nigeria. The New Patriotic Party denied ex President Rawlings the use of VIP lounge during his travels abroad but we never for once prevented him from travelling. The NDC deliberately frustrated ex President Rawlings, thereby prevented him from travelling. Which is worse?
It was a similar frustration and unfriendly approach Baba Go Slow instructed his devotees to adopt in their dealing with the doctors. The strike started and it took the Presidency almost two weeks before it waded into the dispute. Meanwhile he said he had postponed his trip to the Commonwealth Summit. But why did he have to wait for such a long time before intervening? Even then, his intervention and that of the Council of State, whose Chairman’s avowed hatred for a particular tribe in the country is well documented in his infamous book tried in vain without success. Obviously, they had gone the same way as their pupils and students had – lies, threats, insults, blackmail and nefarious tactics.
It will interest readers that it was only when Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo flag-bearer of the New Patriotic Party, the Nipa Pa Party, Ameyo Tuwo Party intervened that the doctors rescinded their decision and went back to work. A man who has been accused by the Government as being an anarchist and a war monger has been able to use bread and butter, to calm frayed nerves and made the doctors to go back to work. Meanwhile, the President who has been elevated next to God was unable to resolve the industrial dispute.
Surely, a Daniel has come to judgement. That Daniel is Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo. You may not like him for his uprightness, forthrightness, optimism and pragmatic approach to issues, but that is Nana for you. He says: “I know the problem and I will fix it. Give me the mandate and see what I will do”. Unlike Mills, Nana will not indulge in any blame game. A vote for him is the emancipation of the Ghanaian from the clutches of poverty which will eventually result in the attainment of the commanding heights of the economy. Reject him at your own peril. This is my message for you. I am done.

Daniel Danquah Damptey (damptey_daniel@yahoo.com) 0243715297