Opinions of Tuesday, 19 June 2007
Columnist: Okoampa-Ahoofe, Kwame
NDC 'Humility' Solves Ghana’s Energy Crisis
The cynical attempt by the so-called National Democratic Congress’ Minority Leader in Parliament to take a high moral ground on the raging energy crisis in the country is rather sickening. According to a Daily Dispatch article, Mr. Alban S. K. Bagbin is haughtily claiming that: “The current government [i.e. New Patriotic Party] did not listen to the opposition since 2001 [sic] when we kept raising issues that we felt were going to affect the production and management of energy in this country” (6/13/07).
First of all, just when did the so-called Provisional National Democratic Congress (P/NDC) become a patriotic and loyal opposition to the ruling New Patriotic Party in Ghana’s National Assemby? Secondly, it is insufferably hypocritical for Mr. Bagbin to be making the preceding claim, if, indeed, the MP for Nadowli West is being accurately quoted by the Daily Dispatch. Needless to say, going by his past off-tangent and priggish proclamations, we have little reason to doubt Mr. Bagbin’s capability of making such patently unproductive remarks. For not only was the P/NDC in power for two protracted decades, in fact, the longest for any postcolonial Ghanaian government, but the country also experienced at least five traumatic instances of energy crisis and power outages.
In all these years, during which the P/NDC ruled the roost, as it were, Mr. Bagbin ought to tell his audience and constituents just what long-term plan or agenda the P/NDC put in place to enable succeeding governments to focus on other equally pressing national issues, such as education, health and food production (or agriculture). But, perhaps, what is even more annoying to recall regards the fact that as late as 1998, when this writer was in the country, the P/NDC had done absolutely nothing to meliorate the country’s chronic energy crisis. Rather, the pseudo-Party was hermetically focused on its brazen and pathological need to hang onto power, that raw aspect of “energy production” which benefits none other than the select few.
Which is why it immitigably nauseates to hear the likes of Mr. Bagbin bluster about the P/NDC being a party of “Social Democrats.” Indeed, it would be quite interesting to hear Mr. Bagbin lecture his constituents and the rest of the nation on what constitutes “Social Democracy,” as well as designating oneself as a “Social Democrat,” particularly in view of his pseudo-Party’s founder’s recent seditious call for his minions to flatly disregard the civilized and fundamental principles of the democratic rule of law, by forcibly assuming the reins of governance come January 2009.
Of course, none among us expects Mr. Bagbin or any of his rag-tag posse of fellow travelers to come through on the preceding demand. Then again, perhaps the relevant question to ask oneself, dear reader, is the following: Exactly what kind of “Social Democrat” aligns him-/herself with a pathological and perennial usurper of the democratic rule of law, but a staunch adherent to the boorish principle of Social Darwinism? In sum, for the P/NDC operatives, “Social Democracy” exclusively entails the forcible acquisition of power on the invidious crest of populism, the staple fare of Mr. Rawlings. Under the preceding agenda, popular participation in governance, local or national, is purely rhetorical, with the powerful few summarily presuming themselves to immutably represent the needs, aims and aspirations of the people.
It is also quite amusing to hear Mr. Bagbin brag about his popularly ousted P/NDC having “put in place a program which would have added 110 kilowatts every year following the 1998 energy crisis and that [this] program ought to have been followed by the current [NPP] administration.”
First of all, as has become his trademark, Mr. Bagbin’s rarefied humility appears to have prevented the Nadowli-native from telling his audience exactly what the name of the aforementioned program was. And, secondly, going by the purported emplacement of the aforementioned program, the P/NDC, by the time of its ouster from office in 2001, ought to have added at least 220 kilowatts of electrical energy to the current grid or national capacity. Interestingly, in the Daily Dispatch article, Mr. Bagbin gives no such specific figures. Obviously, such cavalier posture towards his audience emanates from the vertical political culture of the P/NDC, which stipulates the unilateral dictation and flow of information from a self-assured center to a diffident, passive and gullible administrative periphery or margin. It is also rather amusing for the Minority Leader and his pseudo-Party to take unreserved credit for the construction of the West African Gas Pipeline (WAGP): “It was initiated during our era,” vaunts Mr. Bagbin; and yet, in the same breath, the NDC parliamentary capo knowingly asserts that the West African Gas Pipeline “is not going to add even one kilowatt to the quantum [of energy currently] produced [in the country].”
Maybe Mr. Bagbin ought to be called to the floor of the House, as it were, to explain to the nation at large, exactly why his Party and government would consent to plunging Ghana into a venture whose profitability, at best, the lawmaker holds suspect. Needless to say, former NPP Assembly Speaker Mr. Peter Ala Adjetey could not have been more accurate in registering his utter misgiving about the practical capability of the P/NDC to succeeding the NPP, in the highly unlikely event of the ruling Party losing its political grips come December 2008: “We know the caliber of people who would take over the reins of governance, should the NPP lose; and it would be catastrophic [on the part of the Ghanaian electorate to have] these people [i.e. charlatans?] form a government in Ghana [ever] again” (Ghanaweb.com, “Quote of the Week” 6/13/07).
It is thus not quite surprising for the NDC’s parliamentary rat-pack to be also calling for an investigation into “reports of financial irregularities in the implementation of [the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS)]. Maybe Mr. Bagbin and his omniscient P/NDC Abongo Boys ought to first tell their electors, and the nation at large, just how effective their Cash-and-Carry health policy was executed, no pun is intended herein, of course. Or, here also, is the Nadowli-native going to “humbly” claim that it was the government of the so-called Provisional National Democratic Congress (P/NDC) that initiated the current National Health Insurance Scheme?
Views expressed by the author(s) do not necessarily reflect those of GhanaHomePage.
