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Opinions of Tuesday, 29 November 2011

Columnist: Newton-Offei, Justice Abeeku

Will prisoners save Atta-Mills from annihilation? (1)

There is a very popular saying that a drowning man will frantically clutch to even a straw. Desperate times, indeed, calls for much desperate measures.Again, it is very easy to lie your way into political power but absolutely impossible to govern through abject lies and insipid propaganda. It is pragmatic formulation of policy alternatives that brings about real change in the lives of socio-economically deprived citizenry.
School pupils across the length and breadth of our nation continue to proclaim Nana Addo as the current president. Immigration officers and NDC foot-soldiers posted to the kotoka International Airport under the NYEP, all abandoned their duty-posts, last night, to cheer Nana Addo as their president. Recent flood victims hooted at Atta-Mills while they cheered Nana Addo during their respective visits to these floods affected areas.
Now, with all these developements, it is evidently clear that the good people of this nation have realized that they were lied to by the NDC in 2008, and that, they have seen the light and therefore never going to gamble again with their destiny for the next 4-yrs, by simply kicking out Atta-Mills and his bunch of incompetent gluttons.
Even Andani Youth who feel deceived by Atta-Mills and are asking him to justify his walk through the blood of Ya Na to the presidency with vain promises of knowing who the killers of their king were, have been told by Okodzeto-Ablakwa to, literally, go to hell. But I would ask my brothers and sisters of Dagbon, to please leave everything in the hands of Allah since 2012 is just around the corner where you'll also get the opportunity, at the polls, to tell these greedy NDC fools that they can also go to hell in opposition and rot there!!!
Can prisoners save Atta-Mills?
Prisoners are a section of our populace who, for one reason or the other, has their freedoms restricted by the laws of our land. Their social freedoms are also restricted and for that reason, they are not a class of people who can be described as being very well informed on the happenings in our nation. And when people are not well informed on issues, it becomes difficult for them to make well-informed choices when given the opportunity.
In the light of this, a person who knows he has already been completely rejected, even before the polls in 2012, as a result of grand deception and untold hardship inflicted on the citizenry, after mountains of sugar-coated promises in 2008, will take undue advantage of such people just to ride on their backs to power with ship-loads of illusionist promises.
The 2008 IEA-organized debate for the presidential aspirants was used by the opposition parties to attack the record of the NPP government. Atta-Mills who led the onslaught, sounded just like someone who had all the solutions to our nation’s ‘economic woes’, at his professorial finger tips.
Foreign relations
Kufuor’s excellent global diplomacy and negotiation skill was given a wicked slant as “useless foreign travels”. But today, he has become an ‘oracle’ that the Mills-Mahama administration consults 24-hours to seek solutions to their miserable administrative hopelessness.
President Kufuor did business with Gbagbo in the name of ECOWAS solidarity for the advancement of peace and general co-existence in the larger interest of the West African sub-region. But in pursuit of their myopic and selfish desire for political power, the NDC painted their current political idol Gbagbo as a tyrant.
Kwesi Pratt and Tony Aidoo said Gbagbo’s ‘craze’ for power was what led to the rebels taking-up arms resulting in the partitioning of Cote d’Ivoire. But Gbagbo visited Ghana in 2009 and these very same hypocrites hailed him to the skies!!
Tony Aidoo said it was foolish, in this present day, for a leader to be decorated with a medal/sasch.But Atta-Mills was decorated with these very same appurtenances when he visited Gbagbo after just 3-months of being in office.Gbogbo lost an election but was encouraged, through ‘dzi wofie asem’ foreign policy of the NDC, to hang on.
President Faure Gnassingbe was also subjected to verbal abuse by the NDC.Ironically, Fifi Kwetey (himself an alleged Togolese), was at the fore-front of those attacks. However, the Togolese President paid a 2-day visit to Ghana and Atta-Mills, at his hypocritic best, was clearly delighted as captured on the front page of 26th August,2009 edition of the Daily Graphic.
On Gambia, the NDC said 44 of our compatriots had been butchered under the watch of Cpt. Yahya Jammeh, and for that reason, we were justified to go and wage war on Gambia. Kufuor and Akufo Addo, who were President and foreign minister respectively, came under a hail of insults for what the NDC and their ‘akatamanso’ jaundiced human rights advocates described as ineptitude in handling the issue.
Here too, Atta-Mills was captured spotting a gigantic smile and in a hearty handshake with Yahya Jammeh on the front page of 3rd June 2009 edition of Daily Graphic under the caption “Murder of 44 Ghanaians in The Gambia,6 bodies to be exhumed and perpetrators to be prosecuted”. In the end, they brought home only 4 bodies and a blood-money of $500,000.And more shamefully, it later emerged that this paltry sum of $500,000 meant solely for the bereaved families, had been blown on tea, 'kyebom',hampers,pampers and 'chinchinga' by these NDC greedy bastards.
Security, law and order
A promise of safe and secure environment where Ghanaians will be free to go about their business ended up in a nightmarish scenario where innocent Ghanaians were callously butchered in broad day light at Agbogbloshie.
A plain-faced murderer was found taking cover in the house of the deputy Brong Ahafo regional minister but nothing happened. Nowadays, the politically-jaundiced human rights activists who travelled to Anloga to investigate alleged police ‘brutalities’ during the Awemefia Chieftaincy crisis are nowhere to be found.
A young man, who had a brush with Rawlings in Ashaiman in 2004, was shot at home in presence of his wife and the issue has been allowed to suffer a silent death. A chief was butchered in Garishegu and absolutely nothing has been done till date. Question surrounding the ‘killing’ of the pregnant woman at hands of BNI is still begging for answer.
The case of lawyer Blay who was stabbed in the neck with a broken-bottle while sitting in his car at Tema, has hit a snag as we speak.
When guns were blazing in Bawku in 2008, the NDC said the only solution to the problem was for President Kufuor to visit the area. Guns started blazing under Atta-Mills and he chose to cocoon himself in the old slave castle while his vice attended funerals in areas boardering Bawku but failed to step a foot there.
Mark Wayongo, escaping by the skin of his teeth after coming under a hail of bullets on a visit to the conflict zone, said the situation had gotten to the point where even a fight between two dogs could ignite a fire-fight. Again, Mr.Wayongo said that the Bawku-Burkina boarder is so long and it is therefore difficult to patrol. The question is, was the boarder short during the Kufuor administration and it was not patrolled?
Instead of BNI infiltrating troubled areas to gather information that will identify, isolate, arrest and prosecute criminals, they have rather been pre-occupied with seizure of vehicles, ‘kidnapping’ ex-NPP-government officials, engaging in scuffles with harmless women at the airport, invading people’s homes to look for missing dogs, pouncing on innocent film producers to cease “Atta mortuary-man” et all.
Today, people brazenly proclaimed on radio that they were going to attack the Ga Mantse, yet, the military dinosaurs masquerading as security advisers at the seat of government and sucking the tax-payer dry with monumental renumerations, simply sat aloof for the threat to be carried out.
Vodafone and Valco
Following intense noise NDC made during the GT sale, a probe was instituted by Atta-Mills. That probe only ended up with the minister, Haruna Iddrisu, saying “there is neither going to be a review, nor, a re-negotiation”, but rather, “a re-engagement”. And whatever this “re-engagement” means in NDC lexicon, still remains a mystery.
When the Kufuor administration, in 2007, acquired 100% share in VALCO, the NDC, led by candidate Atta-Mills and the likes of Kwesi Pratt and Tony Aidoo described it as “a stupid decision because price of aluminiun is low on the international market”.
However, in a report carried in the 5th November, 2009 edition of the Chronicle Newspaper, then minister of trade and industry, Hannah Tetteh, said “through the operation of VALCO, there would be an injection of $300million into Ghana’s economy through the VRA, power purchases, income tax/VAT, Valco Fund, property rate, port charges, local purchases and indirect labour”.

Justice Abeeku Newton-Offei
E-mail: justnoff@yahoo.com