STICKING TO THE ESSENTIALS - JUNE 4TH

EDITORIAL OF LEGON OBSERVER Vol. XI No. 11 27th July -10th Aug, 1979

Published by The Legon Society on National Affairs. EJ Thompson (Chairman), PAV Ansah (Ag. Editor.) Ivan Addae-Mensah (Secretary),and SA Nkrumah (Treasurer).

On taking power, the AFRC set itself the major objective of removing from our public life persons and practices which had brought the country on the verge of collapse. This house-cleaning exercise started with the very top people in government, state corporations, and institutions and businessmen controlling very large enterprises.

The exercise has taken the form of investigating how people acquired their assets by means of trials and other measures. State property in private hands and cars purchased with public funds but being used by individuals are being retrieved.

All these steps are meant to ensure that there shall be no private enjoyment at the expense of the state, that, the ordinary citizen.

Following the initial investigation, the scope of the exercise has been broadened to go much lower down to senior civil servants, bank managers, corporation officials and others in the private sector.

One immediate result of the exercise is that the people have become more circumspect and the lesson has been brought home clearly that nobody is immune from investigation into how he has acquired assets.

The ultimate objective of the exercise is that STANDARDS OF PROPER BEHAVIOUR in public life will be evolved which will be to the betterment of the country. The AFRC deserves the fullest support of Ghanaians in carrying out this long overdue cleansing operation.

But the AFRC has also set itself another itself task, namely that of bringing down the intolerably high cost of living which had made life almost meaningless for the vast majority of honest people.

It has instructed that rents be reduced because rents have been absurdly high in recent times. It has also issued directives to business houses and traders to sell at "control" price.

For commodities which had no fixed prices, the AFRC itself fixed prices which appeared to them to be reasonable, and in fact there can hardly be any quarrel about some price fixing.

As far as imported goods are concerned, the system appears to have worked well, and this has brought considerable relief to the people.

But it must be admitted that taking the price control exercise as a whole, the results have been rather disappointingly mixed. The basically produced foods are still expensive and have become very scarce. Initially, certain rough and high-handed methods by the soldiers to force the prices down created panic among food producers and sellers and accounted for the scarcity.

Things seem to have settled down now and the rough methods seem to have been abandoned, but the food is still not appearing in the markets. One may well ask, what is the explanation for this state of affairs?.

It must have become quite clear to anyone who has reflected on the problem that the whole food question is a very complex one. It involves a whole network of persons and agencies. The foodsellers blame the drivers for charging high prices for transport; the drivers in turn explain their high fares by referring to the poor condition of the roads, the cost of spare parts (or more often their unavailability) and the charges by fitters; the fitters in turn put the blame on the spare parts dealers and the wholesalers.

In trying therefore to solve the food problem, Flt Lt Rawlings has had within the last few weeks talk successively to transport owners, mechanics, spare parts dealers, etc admonishing them to reduce their charges.

What this means is that as one probes the question deeper, one discovers that the problem is very complex and that the chain cannot easily be broken. It is not really a question of every link in the chain simply trying to pass the buck, each link does in fact have genuine difficulties.

It all boils down to the fact that our economy is in shambles and that the normal economic laws related to scarcity are in operation. It also means that admonitions or good will are just not enough. What we need is very careful planning that looks at each sector and how it is related to the other. Just tinkering with such a complex situation cannot produce any results.

The LEGON OBSERVER therefore takes the position that the AFRC is trying to tackle too many problemss at the same time. We have absolutely NO DOUBT about the GOOD INTENTIONS of the Council to bring relief to the ordinary Ghanaian who has endured so much needless SUFFERING FOR SO LONG.

But we would like to to advise the AFRC that what is WORTH DOING IS WORTH DOING WELL. Now, given the time at the disposal of the Council and the complexity of the whole distributive system, we doubt whether they can make any appreciable impact in this area. As long as we face the fundamental problems of inadequate supplies of food, so much more difficult will it be to try to control distribution and prices, and all indication are that the supply situation is not going to improve within the short period left to the AFRC.

Our advice therefore, as we have said elsewhere in this issue, is that the AFRC should direct energies towards carefully selected objectives, such as INVESTIGATION OF INDIVIDUALS AND COMPANIES and even there without casting the net so wide as to make their enquiries PERFUNCTORY.

This particular service they can certainly render the country within the time at their disposal. If they achieved only this, they would have rendered invaluable service to GHANA.

The AFRC has shown so that it is a government of action which really mean business, and their ACTIONS IN CUTTING PEOPLE DOWN TO SIZE ARE APPRECIATED BY THE VAST MAJORITY. Where previous governments only exhorted people and threatened without having the clear CONSCIENCE, MORAL COURAGE OR THE WILL TO ACT, the AFRC has backed its words with DEEDS. This is a refreshing departure from the past, and it is therefore important that the AFRC should not take more than they can handle effectively.

A crop of failures even in matters of marginal concern will tend to detract from their overall success and blunt the impact of what they are trying to do. If by the time they leave the scene, the AFRC could leave a society committed to PROBITY AND ACCOUNTABILITY in public life, that alone will have earned them a LASTING PLACE IN THE HISTORY of this country.

[Source: Legon Observer, Vol XI No 11, pp 241 -242]