In the November 28, 2011 write-up, the beef was with growth of the motherland’s economy without corresponding development or marked improvement in the living conditions of her daughters and sons.
Three months on, the matter has resurfaced in a more worrying proportion in an atmosphere of an egregious and scandalizing woyomeing (spending public money on nothing) of the motherland’s treasury.
The seemingly bunkum was what appeared as the content of a speech supposed to tell my compatriots the state of the motherland’s economy. The true state of the economy is that of the more you grow, the less you develop.
The economy is said to have grown by 14%. A natural expectation or follow-up to that ought to have been how that increase should have translated into improvement in specific aspects of the life of my compatriots so we could say there has been development or that we are continuously developing.
Expanded NYEP, MMT, school feeding, capitation, NHIS and obliterated schools under trees would have presented tangible areas of development into which the 14% growth would have materialized.
Over the period, the only noticeable and visible growth was recorded in the amount and number of monies paid to individuals and companies (with GH¢51 million going to ONE individual) for no work done; absolutely free. If stock were to be taken of mansions built by congress public officials, including their party apparatchik, it might suggest where the motherland’s woyomic stolen money went.
Another way to track down the money will be to examine the incidence of pot bellies and bulging cheeks. I will not mention assets declaration and all the conning that has gone with it. It is a pity we will never know those who forward declared. But who knows; maybe one day we will get to know.
Just think all that woyomic GH¢51 million money going into even some small job creation program as the NYEP. All congress footsoldiers would have found jobs for some to spill over to NPP youth.
Never in the history of the motherland has an attorney-general so scathingly indicted his boss for complicity in monumental corruption. It could not have happened in Kwame’s time because ministers were busy dreaming big and thinking great thoughts.
With Ankrah and his junta busily trying to figure out desperately and with little or no success how not to truncate the motherland’s accelerated development of Kwame, there was hardly any time for that kind of looting cash directly from the consolidated fund. It couldn’t have happened under Busia; and under any of the generals Acheampong and Akuffo; not even with the rumoured and purported deep corrupt practices. No attorney-general would have dared steal so wantonly.
Jerry John, in military uniform or civilian mufti, would not have tolerated that while academic Limann was too busy clearing the AFRC mess to have allowed that kind of daylight robbery of the motherland’s cash by ministers.
As for Osono Kufuor, we all saw it all. His government was so busy installing the most pro-poor policies and programs (in the NHIS, NYEP, MMT, LEAP, school feeding, capitation grant), after Nkrumah’s unprecedented and unparalleled achievements, that it was not possible for that kind of naivety, incompetence, recklessness and plain thievery.
Having thrown themselves into that quagmire by their thieving actions, the congress executive has now resorted to victimization of the innocent through cowardly vilification expressed in arrests of the Ya Na and other high profile kinds including damning all constitutional decency and propriety in respect for the institution of Parliament.
Arrests are more in apparent appeasement towards disaffected and revolting congress footsoldiers, especially those operating by the crusading purity of former ‘gargantuan’ Attorney-General MA, than legitimate upholding of the rule of law.
Their politics of securing a motherland means you keep dancing around picking up political people whose only duty was to have served their nation and served their nation well. In the process, they ensured that growth of the economy was accompanied by corresponding development as was visible in all the Kufuor/NPP programs and projects, those listed above being the most tangible.
It is clear we will never record a positive correlation between growth and development for as long as he, who was made never to be an effective monitor of achieving a nexus of growth leading to development, is in charge.
Verily, verily I say unto you that the motherland’s advancement will continue to lag and be a struggle with the results of a negative inverse correlation of higher growth along with less improvement in the living conditions of her daughters and sons.
If you doubt me, or if you choose to contest my submission, try analyzing the performance of a bogus motherland economic manager who forgot his tax and law professorial assignment over a period of three years.
By Kwasi Ansu-Kyeremeh
