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Opinions of Wednesday, 28 May 2014

Columnist: Kwarteng, Francis

National Economic Forum And The Unborn Child 2

Her. The Unborn Child.

Louis Armstrong! Where were you? Satchmo! Where was “What A Wonderful World”?

Her future. The People’s future. In near-shambles. The Unborn Child’s.

Bob Marley! Where were you? Where was “Crazy Baldhead”?

Her bleak future. Her windswept future. The Unborn Child’s.

Peter Tosh! Where were you? Where was “You Can’t Blame the Youth”?

Her choleric today. Her melancholic future. Her Unborn Child’s.

Mutabaruka! Where were you? Where was “The People’s Court (1)”?

Her mortgaged future. Her slowly-dying future. The Unborn Child’s.

Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers! Where were you? Where was “Tomorrow People”?

A lachrymose future dead and six feet under. Six feet under the soldierly grinding-boot of today’s greed. The Unborn Child’s.

“Blood in My Eyes.” Bob Dylan! “War.” Bob Marley. “I Wonder if Heaven Got A Ghetto.” Tupac. “Self-Destruction.” KRS-1! “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” Billy Joel!

“Sweet Mother.” Prince Nico Mbarga! The Unborn Child yearns for a “Sweet Mother.” Where was Prince Nico Mbarga’s “Sweet Mother” when Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” started the fire?

In actuality, democratic cabalization morphed into “Babylon System,” a vampiric system capable of robbing the minds of The People and of their wealth in broad daylight, many years ago. Way back into the forward-looking future. The Unborn Child’s Gray Hair. Bob Marley even said so in his “Babylon System.” Before long, “Babylon System” had become the new brand of demon-crazy, The White Hair’s democracy, “demonstrating “crazy,’” which The Political Prostitute elatedly practiced on The People. The proletariat. The gullible masses.

Alas, Under Tree Classrooms were in shambles; Maternity Hospitals had become morgues and graveyards and Baby Factories, breeding centers for harvesting children; Political Office Swiss Banks and an institution for rearing thieves, murderers, and pathological liars (peudologia fantastica); Colleges and Universities “brain” cemeteries and morgues; Brain Drain the new soci0-political leprosy…Under Tree Classrooms. As a matter of moral emphasis, students went to school-cemeteries to learn shadow-thinking, in other words, to imitate the archaic psittacine-dance moves of stuttering dead Cottonian philosophers and thinkers, as well as to eat, masticate, and fight over dead bones discarded by The Cottonians in the dustbin of stone-age thinking.

Her. The Unborn Child. Critical thinking had simply ceased to be a mark of intelligence, of wisdom, of psycho-emotional maturity. Under Tree Classrooms. The Elements taught there as mortician-teachers in an age of civilizational modernity. Mortician-teachers. Frankenstein bread-makers. Under Tree Classrooms. Where the mortician-teachers, Fela Kuti’s Zombie Professors, cannibalized students’ neural networks by teaching them “Teacher Teach Me Nonsense.” Doppelganger double consciousness. Psychological confusion. Emotional disarray. Uncritical thinking. Her. The Unborn Child.

Meanwhile, The Political Prostitute, like the brain-dead students, made tons of money by simply behaving not unlike ruminant-cyborgs, chewing and regurgitating cuds of political non-commonsensical-ness, a trait uncharacteristic even of dead ghosts, even of dead goats. Had The Political Prostitute resolved into Fela Kuti’s “Mr. Follow Follow”, a political automaton? Typical of the political brothel-bailiwicks of political prostitutes. Equally true, The Unborn Child, however, firmly believed, was another concomitant fact, that shadow-thinking or chew-and-pour defined parliamentarian grandstanding and executive bookishness.

Her. The Unborn Child. Democratic cabalization. “Animal-Farm” politics. “Mr. Follow Follow” politics. “Witch-Camp” politics. “Breast-Ironing” politics. “Chew-and-Pour” politics. Of the office of political thievishness. Of the office of political megalomania. She, The Unborn Child, would have wished The Political Prostitute had re-evaluated the complex question of democratic cabalization, where, among other things, The Incumbent consigned The Opposition to The Psychiatric Ward of Leprotic Isolation. Demon-crazy. “Winner-takes-all” politics. And where the henpecked Opposition…Whined, nagged, gossiped, idled about, and cried without cause. While the curvaceous Incumbent chopped and chopped and chopped The People’s money. That was the myopic today-ness of The Unborn Child’s aggrieved future.

She, The Unborn Child, would have wished The Political Prostitute had searched for any implicit and explicit connections between political corruption, weak institutions, un-patriotism, inefficient public services, cronyism, exportation of non-value-added products, political polarization, unpredictable behavior of the international market, political ethnocentrism, graft, bureaucratic bottleneck, and nepotism, on the one hand, and the poor performance of the national economy of The No Man’s Land of Political Economy, on the other hand, rather than of reducing pressing national issues to the social anorexia of partisan politics. Of “blame-game” politics. Dereliction of political responsibilities. That was Senchi politics her. The Unborn Child.

Regrettably, those high-class concubinary prostitutes of churchly politicians were stuck in the time-warp of material today-ness, of Senchi politics. Still, The Unborn Child had other questions for the Senchi politicians. Had The Political Prostitute exhaustively considered any possibilities of dubious ligaments which might be supporting democratic capitalism (political cabalization) and the abysmal performance of the national economy of The No Man’s Land of Political Limbo? Was there not an imperative need for a third political party besides the Non-Patriotic Porcupines (NPP), un-critical votaries of ethnocracy, and the New Democratic Conmen (NDC), critical votaries of “capitalist” democratic socialism? Could the Conscientious Patriotic People (CPP) not have offered a better, or, even a more suitable, alternative of political representation on behalf of The People, given its proven track record of delivering to The People? Was democratic centralism helping The People?

Conversely, could establishing parallel financial institutions such as BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) and MINT (Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Turkey) not serve as powerful institutional counterweight to the financial hegemony of the IMF/World Bank? Why did The No Man’s Land of Political Limbo consistently go to the IMF/World Bank for financial bailout when, on each occasion, she, The Unborn Child, had been subjected to financial sadomasochism, economic gang-rape, and socio-political castration? Yet, one important economic niche the national government of The No Man’s Land of Political Limbo may probably have ignored to her detriment, was primarily a question of political economy, that of promotional investment in the movie and music industries, a strategic decision that contributed to Africa’s Tiger, Nigeria, displacing South Africa as Africa’s largest economy upon re-basing her GDP.

Yet, human beings, The Unborn Child’s immediate and extended families, did not eat GDP and English grammar. Interestingly, one Cottonian professor referred to GDP as the “Gross Domestic Problem” rather than as “Gross Domestic Product” (See Dr. Lorenzo Fioramonti’s “How Numbers Rule The World: The Use and Abuse of Statistics in Global Politics” and “Gross Domestic Problem: The Politics Behind the World’s Most Powerful Number”). But GDP sounded more like Greedy & Dunce-like Politicians or Greedy & Deadly Politicians! In fact, The Unborn Child referred to The Political Prostitute as such! What is more, GDP had not successfully palliated the bruised egos of America’s homeless, poor, unemployed, and minimum-wage earners.

Her. The Unborn Child knew it was all Machiavellian politics. As usual. GDP made The No Man’s Land of Political Limbo’s Middle Income Economy status a pathological liar. More importantly, the Machiavellian politics of GDP was no different from the same social problems which obtained in The No Man’s Land of Political Limb. That notwithstanding, had government statisticians, bankers, and economists in The No Man’s Land of Political Limbo seriously looked at the close relationship between unemployment and inflation, in accordance with Phillips Curve, since, The Cedi, her gravity-friendly national currency, began falling along the path followed by the Newtonian apple?

Or, possibly, the internal mechanics of the national economy of The No Man’s Land of Political Limbo had not reached the econometric sophistication of the Phillips Curve? In that case The Royal Senchi’s NEF had a lot of questions to answer. Educational reform. Rampant political corruption. Un-patriotism. Weak political and judicial institutions. Culture of impunity. Rigorous mathematicization, scientization, and technologization of education and of society. Industrialization of the national economy of The No Man’s Land of Political Limbo. Enhancing The No Man’s Land of Political Limbo’s democratic credentials via quality mass education and via livable employment?with efficient social networks in place to absorb the poor.

Building and maintaining relevant infrastructure for national development and growth. Building profitable alliances with other powerful economies. Expanding and enhancing the quality of public services. Tapping into the vast scientific and technological reservoir of citizens of The No Man’s Land of Political Limbo abroad. Paralyzing criminal syndicates siphoning taxes away from the coffers of the national government. Patronizing locally manufactured goods and services. Improving national security. Encouraging public hygiene. Encouraging citizens to redirect foreign remittances into productive local ventures. Instituting commonsensical and progressive tax incentives in the body politic to court foreign investment. Encouraging local entrepreneurial initiative. Erecting an efficient edifice of supply chain and technology distribution systems. Increasing the volume of intra-African trade.

Reclaiming the natural resources of The No Man’s Land of Political Limbo from the prehensile grip of foreign ownership. Promoting innovativeness and responsible journalism. Reconsidering democratic centralization vis-à-vis democratic de-centralization. Reducing the size of government expenditure. Introducing fiscal austerity measures in the body politic. Reining in national borrowing tendencies?external and internal. Cleansing national registries and rosters of ghost names. Courting the entrepreneurial friendship of the private sector in providing jobs and enhancing productivity. Curtailing excessive foreignization of The No Man’s Land of Political Limbo, such as the political taming of The Dollar in the body politic, while simultaneously permitting vigorous promotional domestication of The Cedi. Etc. Etc. Etc.

In the end, The Unborn Child would have wished The Royal Senchi’s NEF had exhaustively addressed the panoply economic crises via a rhythmic interplay of political economy, economic sociology, and Afrocentric theory?where broader questions, such as those she perennially harbored, should have enjoyed discoursive primacy! Three Days were just not enough! Jesus Christ spent less than Three Days to save his followers. Jonah spent Three Days in the privacy of a whale to have a radical change of mind. The problems of The No Man’s Land of Political Limbo were too many, too heavy for the flimsy neck of Three Days to bear. And what did The Royal Senchi’s NEF politicians have in mind in respect of putting a roof over The Unborn Child’s Under Tree Classroom, putting beds in the bedless maternity hospitals…?

Where was that future of the Non-Ethnocentric Future, the material today-ness of The Unborn Child’s non-material future? Where was Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers’ “Tomorrow People,” The Unborn Child? Why did Senchi politicians replace Ziggy Marley’s “Conscious Party” with their hedonistic and sybaritic politics, Ofori Amponsah’s “Otoolege”? Death to political cannibals and social vampires! Where was Bob Marley’s “Soul Rebel”? Where was that future of Rebel! Rebel! Rebel!

In turned out, quite surprisingly, that non-material future, that future of childish gullibility, was that sheepish today-ness of The Womb, the presential today-ness of political prostitution. Uncritical thinking. Under Tree Classrooms. Dead brains. Her. The Unborn Child. Pity on her!

We shall return…