Opinions of Friday, 29 January 2010

Columnist: Wilheimer, Martha Assibey

EO Saga: The Mother of all Bombshells

*Martha Assibey Wilheimer, Berlin, Germany*

If you never believed in the triumph of good over evil, believe it now. This will go down as the most dramatic change of heart in the right direction in our nation’s politics. One crucial insider in the NDC government whose identity, for now, will have to remain confidential has made an about-turn that is threatening to reveal enough to have some high profile heads roll in the current administration. So far, “Many Rivers,” a pseudo name he/she asked to use has supplied enough pieces of information, and Ghanaians are entitled to know what is going on. (He/She chose the name after hearing Jimmy Cliff’s Many Rivers to Cross on one of our members’ I-pod at the meeting) Some of you die-hards may think this is a ploy, but folks in the higher echelon of the administration know the following information emanated from discussions that actually took place.

On why Many Rivers decided to change his/her heart, he/she responded thus: “sometimes you cannot deny certain realizations when they dawn on you. And I hope many Ghanaians, when they are called upon to face the reality as I have been called upon to do, they would act in good faith with Ghanaians. The overriding importance is that Ghana must survive whatever challenges she faces and maintain her enviable peace and tranquility. I will do my part regardless of who employs me.” This note was written on a cardboard in a handwriting designed to be untraceable.

When Many Rivers made his/her initial contact with this group, we were obviously suspicious of his/her motives. But after two vital exercises, we felt comfortable to meet. That, unfortunately, is as much information as we are able to provide at this juncture. These are the submissions made by Many Rivers

First, some members of the Mills administration have confessed jokingly that they have had “sleepless nights” over the potential of the “enemy coming into such insane wealth.” They have consequently been holding strategy sessions over how to ensure that it does not happen. The first meeting was held on Saturday January 17, 2009 in the private home of one “Presidential Advisor.” (Many Rivers, although helpful, decided to talk on a condition that we do not push him/her to get into names because he/she does “not want to jeopardize anyone’s life.”) Those strategy sessions, according to Many Rivers, have been taking place on a bi-weekly basis with “four or five cancellations.”

Second, the group of five determined from the onset that the Attorney General had to have the buy-in. say what you may about Mrs Mould, but she would not agree to the plot. For five months, the group of five kept feeding her with “evidence,” which she had demanded as the only way she would go to court. This so-called evidence supplied by the group of five was so hollow that Mould snapped at them in one of their meetings saying “look, if you people want me to go to court, you’d better give me something that would not let me make a fool of myself.” It was not until late July that she was given what Many Rivers called a “carrot and stick” deal with the carrot being a promise of a Vice President spot in 2012 and the stick being jeopardizing her own job. That is what turned Mould around to co-operate.

The Attorney General has been busy since them. She is the one who tabled the suggestion that an orchestrated strategy to first prosecute the EO group in the public arena would make her job easier when she finally goes to court. She also called for an “American Wing” of the investigation, a tactic that brought in Duke Amaniampong. The so-called American Wing is to call into question EO Group’s activities in the United States. Never mind that Anadarko, American-based oil company signed a partnership deal with Kosmos and EO after requesting for an extensive Justice Department led investigation into the activities of the two companies uncovered “no smoking gun.”

Third, after the carrots and stick deal, the Attorney General called a halt to the investigations by the group of five, and promised to “finish the job” on her own. In fact, she joked with a confidant that the first charge “is a given – causing financial loss to the state.” Next, she deduced that another easy charge would be money laundering since she herself knows “from experience” that most well-to-do Ghanaians living abroad regularly contravene the money laundering laws of Ghana by bringing in more money than they declare. These, she admitted, were the heavy hitters if they had any chance of annulling the EO contract. The rest were “so minor that considering the end result, no judge would give them more than a slap on the wrist.”

Fourth, the Attorney General has been personally responsible for leaking bits of information to the media and the National Enquirer in particular. Raymond Archer’s frequent visits to her office, sometimes disguised, hold testimony to why the Enquirer seems to enjoy such exclusivity on matters relating to the Attorney General’s handling of the EO case. This paper has published some highly confidential pieces of information that are available to the AG’s office. Raymond Archer has used these pieces of information to assassinate the characters of many a noble business persons. All this was in keeping with the Attorney General’s strategy of successfully prosecuting the EO in the public arena to pave the way for an easier courtroom prosecution because she has not been very successful in her cases with the Judiciary.

The plan was to epic in a serialized release of the 25 concocted charges. The Attorney General devised this plan after the impact that the serialized release of NBC’s interview with then Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin. Her friends would attest to the fact that she fell in love with how the serialized release of Palin’s stupid statements adversely impacted the Republicans’ chances of winning the White House. “That plan should work like magic in the case,” she proclaimed. Unfortunately, she did not release the charges in bits to Raymond Archer because she wanted to limit the number of “exposure” that she had with Raymond.

Fortunately, Mr. Archer, a single man, is not short of female friends. It is suspected that one of his female cohorts may have inadvertently bumped into the list of charges, stolen them from Archer’s house and peddled it to another media house. It is upon that media house’s publication of ALL the concocted charges that “took the wind out of their sail,” causing the Attorney General to come out and claim that they were stolen out of her office.

Of course such a meeting would not be complete without a question on who constitute this group of five. To that, Many Rivers would only write the following in that same awkward handwriting: “some of them have been very good to me – in fact great to me. So you can understand why I am thorn between doing the right thing and recognizing my loyalty. Go with what you have so far. Based on how they handle this, I would decide as one way or another.”