...Of the Vice President’s Armajaro involvement and ....

the Jig-Saw Puzzle of International Diplomacy.

According to a November 11, 2010 Article on Ghanaweb.com by the Daily Guide regarding the Armajaro Cocoa Smuggling case, the Vice President, John Mahama, might have taken a bribe from certain British Political dignitaries to direct the reinstatement of the miscreant Company with our COCOBOD.

I would veer from such a conclusion in the absence of substantial evidence justifying it. It would be too long a draw to assume the Vice President was paid any monies to intervene on Armajaro's behalf. He didn’t have to take anything at all to do the bidding of the British. I would contend that if he heeded to the prodding of the British to use his influence to change the situation in their favor, the sheer diplomatic thrust of these heavy weights of British Political machinery could have been enough for the VP to do so. This brings me to the crux of this piece as following.

Again and again, we see how elements of our "Big Brothers of the Western Democracy and Capitalism" would not let us alone to get our Laws work as they should but would rather like to manipulate us to dance to their song at our own peril.

From Oil to Telecommunications to Cocoa, we still remain the weak vulnerable, easily manipulated figs in the Global Market of Resources.

For ages, we had the Cocoa Cartels dictating how much they would pay us for our Cocoa, not allowing the free market factors to decide how much the produce really deserved. The Cartels and other similar agencies under the influence of their respective home Governments have maintained a strong grip on our fate by forcing us to act in some Political or Economic direction to suit their convenience, while we stagnate in a quagmire of underdevelopment.

Our Politicians have all shown no backbone in repelling these forces of Economic lopsided predation. Yet, our Country is often the object of ridicule for corruption and ineptitude by the same foreign entities and their Media.

Paradoxically, when our Administration intends to clamp down on such deals that reflect the irreverent patronizing that is killing our Nationhood Economically, the same Media and associated agencies of these Big Brother Nations threaten us with discouragement of foreign investors to do business with us. So, we have their Moodys and Standard and Poors and Fortune Magazines breathing hard on our neck with such dubiously derived degraded attribution of "Poor Business Environment" to force our hands to back off from such measures that would save us a bit. How then are we supposed to make progress?

Bribery and indecent influence in kind of Government Officials are on the books of these great Capitalist Nations as legally and ethically objectionable likely to lead to prosecution. Yet, for most instances of such breach of business practices, it has been the agents or businesses of these Nations that would initiate the process and still get away with it.
The Mabrey and Johnson scandal that took a heavy toll on the current NDC Administration and abruptly interrupted the Political career of certain individuals in Ghana is a case in point. What was more concerning is the injudicious sparing of the British end of the fraudulent process, leaving those British perpetrators legally, financially and socially unscathed, while the same British system unmercifully grilled the Ghanaians involved. Besides the individual Ghanaian victims in the case, our Nation incurred yet another blemish of earning a higher grade in corruption. This tainted National reputation aggravates our Nation’s attraction for business and credit.

As the trend keeps soaring in our Economic interactions with the West, playing with the same set of rules does not seem to mean having those rules equally applied to us as would be to entities of those Countries. Where then is the moral justification of the West for pinning the broche of incompetence and endless corruptibility on our chest? Would we be wrong, then, to believe the fears our earlier leaders associated with these Western Nations and warned us against and termed as Neo-Colonialism? I hoped these “-isms” were only an exaggerated pack of propaganda meant to set us up against the West. But for all practical purposes, the recurring evidence of this blatant double victimization of our Nation leaves us little choice to believe otherwise.

I do admit that the very fundamental moral desiccation among our National leaders that renders them so easily susceptible to corruption ought to be confronted by us, here at home. But don’t the Western Nations bear any responsibility to desist from pushing us off the edge of the Cliff? Not even morally? Or, all we need to expect from them is their verbal and superficial sympathies for whatever sordid state we find ourselves in but not any remorse for their complicity in our despicable wretchedness? Well, it is up to us to seriously begin to prove we have the wisdom to survive any machinations by any adversarial entity to keep us down. Our leaders owe us the obligation to protect and lead us from any such Economic subjugation as we are now being subjected to. Our Parliament, in spite of its different Political components, ought to seek consensus in devising a strategy to pull us out of this vulnerability, if we are to remain in the global Capitalist Market and survive it.

We have to be able to keep up our eligibility in the global Capitalist Marketplace and still exercise the requisite courage and wisdom to stand up to these insensitive manipulators taking undue advantage of us.

If folks do not know, these Western entities do not deal similarly with Singapore, Hong Kong, India, Brazil or China, because the leaders of those Nations have their act together and display the moral and legal backbone to reject such coercion.

It is time our leaders boldly confronted the US Congress and the British Parliament on this issue of their Agencies and Businesses unconscionably throwing blocks in our way and turning around to blame us for not proceeding fast enough towards progress. The International Laws on Trade and Corruption must be evenly and fairly implemented across National boundaries to dissuade potential perpetrators of such misdeeds in all Nations. How often do the Developed Nations allow us to pursue criminals across their borders? Yet, we are always diplomatically cajoled and pummeled into submission for Interpol and other Intra-National Law Enforcement Agencies like the DEA, FBI and MI-5 have a free range within our borders to literally seek our Citizens and others that have broken their Laws. When such incursions into our yards are not possible, they try our folks incriminated in various crimes in absence. Could we do the same to them?

So, now, here we are with our Vice President on the ropes for giving in to the British Political fist. Let us see how our Parliament deals with this.

Long Live Ghana!!!