No Witch-Hunt, President assures

Ghanaian President, John Agyekum Kufuor has declared that there is no witch-hunting in Ghana. He made this declaration when he addressed the "Homecoming Summit" yesterday at the Accra International Conference Centre. In a speech full of humour, punctuated by applause from his audience the president said, "there has been talk of witch-hunting. I want to give you my personal pledge. There's none. There will be no victimisation under this government. Our preoccupation is to normalise things so that citizens can come and go as they please."

The president was no doubt allaying the fears of Ghanaians in the Diaspora who may be taken in by the NDC leader's "fears" and threats of coups.

The Homecoming Summit is a three-day meeting between Ghanaians living abroad and their compatriots living at home on how to move the nation forward. The summit itself had been in an 18-month gestation, having been originally mooted by the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre during the last administration. The NPP government, learning from the mistakes of the past, did not abandon it on its assumption of office, but adopted it and modified it to suit the new "Golden Age of Business".

The president's keynote speech was targeted at both Ghanaians at home and those abroad, but the thrust was more for those living outside Ghana. The Accra Mail captured the full text and for record purposes and the benefit of local and Internet readers in the Diaspora, presents it below:

The story is told of a Ghanaian who went into a shop in London's Oxford Street and was being attended to by a smart young lady. In the course of the transactions, the young lady asked the shopper, "l hope you don't mind my asking, but are you from Ghana?"

"Yes," the shopper said enthusiastically, proud that such an obviously self confident and smart young lady was his compatriot. The young lady then went on, "Ah, you are from the same place as my parents then, they also come from Ghana."

Needless to say, the shopper's enthusiasm was instantly deflated as he came face to face with what can best be described as a "disconnected Ghanaian".

I am proud this morning to look into the faces of such a high powered group of people who have made their homes abroad and have comfortable jobs and are still proud to call themselves Ghanaians.

Those of you who have not been back home for a long time will find the country changed somewhat from the one you left. I know that modern communications mean that many of you are able to follow even the traffic jams in Accra on the Internet, but you will soon discover, that nothing can replace being on the spot yourself.

One of the first tasks my government set itself on assuming office was to lower the tensions in our body politic. I believe that Ghanaians need to be at peace with each other to be able to tackle the many problems that we have.

Some of you left home due to political instability, some of you left because you were being persecuted, some of you left to go and study and never came back, but most of you left simply to try and make a better life for yourselves economically. Whatever your individual reasons are for leaving home, most of you have had to go through difficult periods of adjusting to new environments and making new lives for yourselves.

The most difficult challenge is that of being a stranger in your new homes and being made to feel like one at all times. For some of you, it meant having to make do with menial jobs when you have expensively acquired skills.

All of you Ghanaians, living abroad, members of the Diaspora, for want of a better term, constitute the single most important development partner of the nation. Currently, remittances from Ghanaians living abroad make up the third biggest foreign exchange inflow.

This is money that you send home to your families and friends for their upkeep and for things to be done for you. This is money that has no conditionalities attached to it, and back in the 80s, in particular, this was the money that made the difference between the country going down completely and keeping afloat.

On the national level, this is a crucial component of our revenue, and on the individual level, there are many Ghanaian homes today, that rely to some substantial extent for their upkeep on these remittances. For many, this makes the difference between a reasonable standard of living and a life of deprivation.

This means you deserve to be heard. But perhaps more important, are the skills and new attitudes you have acquired. It is these skills that are required if we are to make a success of transforming our economy.

As you go around, you will be forcibly confronted with the reality of the deprived conditions in which the majority of our people live. We all say we are a proud people, and so indeed we are, but for how long can we continue to repeat this mantra when the majority of our people live in such deplorable conditions?

There are poor people all over the world and in the developed countries where most of you live, they have their own poor. Being poor in those countries however, does not mean being denied access to the basic needs of human beings; potable water, basic shelter, food, basic education and living in hygienic surroundings.

This is not the situation in Ghana at present. This is why my government has as its cornerstone of policy, the creation of wealth to satisfy the basic needs of all our people.

We can only do this when we turn our economy around and when our economy grows. And I believe, that can only happen when we have the right atmosphere in the country.

Investors will come with their money when they are assured there is political stability and there is rule of law. In other words, the laws and the rules and regulations will not be changed at the whim of the president.

Investors also need to be assured that they have the protection of the courts when disputes arise. We should always remember that investors have a choice where they put their money; and indeed many of you here also have that choice.

In my inaugural address, l extended an invitation to Ghanaians living abroad to come home and join in the exciting challenges that we face and I also said something that I wish to reiterate here. I do not want one set of Ghanaians to come back home only to replace another set of Ghanaians going out into exile.