By Dr. Michael J.K. Bokor

Folks, the NPP people are really scared that their house of cards is collapsing on them. By their daily utterances and public posturing, they make it abundantly clear that they are desperate. And they continue to confirm my poor opinion of them and why it is difficult for them to outdo the NDC at general elections. They seem not to know that they are streets behind the NDC when it comes to facing reality.
One such reality is the scourge of the judgement debt payments that has taken the centre-stage in public discourse on national affairs. When the lid was blown on what Alfred Agbesi Woyome gained, the NPP did much politics with it, creating the impression that it was all because the NDC government (under the late Mills) was either incompetent or had orchestrated a grand scheme to loot the national coffers.
They went to town with all manner of claims and exhausted energy painting the NDC black and gearing up to reap the electoral capital at Election 2012. The big bang hit them hard. Well dodged!!
Now, they have begun fighting with the reality regarding investigations into the judgement debt scourge.
President Mahama’s decision to appoint Justice Apau as the Sole Judgement Debt Commissioner to look into the circumstances surrounding the payment of judgement debts was not informed by any political bias or plot against so-called political opponents. It was a pragmatic step to unravel the “mystery” surrounding those payments, especially those that might be hidden from the public.
I was one of those who rashly dismissed the Sole Judgement Debt Commission as inconsequential; but having assessed its work so far and the issues unfolding therefrom, I quickly revised my notes and agreed with President Mahama that the Commission could help shed light on the judgement debt problem.
The NPP people initially found nothing wrong with this Commission. Now, they have been exposed for their part in the judgement debt payment scandals and are gradually being shepherded to the slaughter house and they are crying foul?
To the extent that the UK branch of the NPP will suggest that no NPP functionary should appear before the Commission, one needs go any further to know how the wearers of the shoe are now feeling its pinch!
Indeed, my opinions have been confirmed, especially from the manner in which the Commission has gone about its duties so far. But for its work, how would we ever have come to know anything about the sale of the GNPC’s drill ship (Discoverer 511) by the Kufuor administration? How would we have known the “chaskele” that KT Hammond and the brains behind that stinking deal played with Ghana’s conscience?
How would we have known that the French company was paid a whopping 19.5 million Dollars (and there is no document to confirm the payment) or that the remaining 3.5 million Dollars simply vanished into thin air even though Chris Kpodo admitted before the Commission that he was given a bankers’ draft covering it and that he deposited same in a new account opened for that transaction?
Would we even have known the deep involvement of Akufo-Addo in the deal as the one who gave the power of attorney to KT Hammond to enable the sale of the drill ship?
Clearly, the NPP front least expected the proceedings of the Commission to throw them off balance. They had all along been portraying the Woyome aspect of the judgement debt payments as evidence of rot in the NDC administration and fed that impression into their politics of hatred. They portrayed the Woyome case as if it was the only one worth anybody’s attention.
Unfortunately for them, the searchlight has been turned on them now; and PRONTO, they’ve begun seeing what they’ve least anticipated: that the circumstance surrounding the sale of the drill ship are too damning for comfort. Public interest in the matter is high, which is what is frightening them.
What else to do but to begin undermining the Commission and turning its work into the kind of dirty politics that they are quick to do anytime they are pushed to the wall by their own miscalculations?
To these NPP people, I have only one more comment: What they fear to hear or see will be beamed large on the screen for them. That is the reality that will always dim their political light. Unless they face that reality, they will continue to miss the mark and not know why despite the shortcomings of the NDC administration, it still can win the general elections no matter the extent to which its political opponents go with their politics of calumny.
That is why this statement from one of them, Ken Kuranchie (Editor of the Daily Searchlight newspaper, who is also a member of the NPP) doesn’t need any mental exertion for its import to be known. He is reported to have said that the setting up of a Judgement Debt Commission “is an excuse by the sitting administration which has been responsible for the judgement debts to buy time.”
According to him, Ghanaians are aware of the causes of judgment debt and therefore the country does not “need a Commission”.
(Source: http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=294513)
What an ignorant mischief maker? Ghanaians know that the payment of judgement debts wasn’t limited to the Mills or Mahama era alone. They know that judgement debts had been paid since the early 1990s (under Rawlings) and were sustained by the Kufuor administration.
But for the investigation being done by the Commission, the most wily of all such judgement debt payments by the Kufuor administration (hidden from the public for over 10 years) wouldn’t have been exposed, especially the fact that the deal was catalyzed by a criminal conspiracy among the cabal led by Kufuor and involving Akufo-Addo, Kan Dapaah, KT Hammond and their internal collaborators in Societe Generale and all other shady characters who participated in the surreptitious deal.
The Judgement Debt Commission is no façade. If Kuranchie wants to know how a façade works in Ghanaian politics, he needn’t go any further than the Committee that Kufuor established to investigate the Accra Sports Stadium disaster of May 9, 2001, and how the money meant for victims vanished under Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey’s watch.
Kuranchie should just turn to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission established by Kufuor that even couldn’t accomplish the task of nailing Rawlings (the sole target). Many more façades can be traced.
You see, folks, when ignorant people like Kuranchie step into the enormous poop of the elephant that they adore, they lose their bearings and end up ridiculing themselves. Or they find it difficult to free themselves from the elephantine poop. Amazing new Blue Omo!!
I shall return…
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