A lie is a lie, it will always be a lie.

Is the Finance Ministry a sidewalk for health boosting? At least that seems to make it for the financial minister Mr. Osafo Maafo glued forever in his seat despite numerous holes in his attach? case?and the papers are spilling!

Any time Osafo Maafo is in the news he trails a hoopla that furrows deep in suspicion. After reading Ghanaweb?s bit ?Tracing Osafo Maafo?s Award ..? in which most of the enquiries turn out to be loose ends a lot of things suddenly become disturbing. For one thing, it would have been a curious award if he had had it at all, taken the fragile position of the government during IFC and China loans agreements. For the other and mostly, it would have been ridicule to all the financial ministers in Africa. To our relief he came out bold at last (having been convinced by all friends and sympathizers), to tell all Ghanaians and the whole world he had been framed in a comfortable lie without having played any real part in it.

It is remarkable that the Daily Graphic should put itself in the forefront of wallowing the country in derision, deceiving the public and abandoning obvious obligations.

In Ghana, when something goes wrong and you feel you owe it to yourself to express your views, you are simply classed as playing for the opposition. Because of my last article in the Ghanaweb people have written to accuse me of supporting Mr. Rawlings and the NDC and sent all sorts of insult. They are wrong! I do not support anyone and I am not about to. I support only one thing, my country. Yet if I were to be there in Ghana I might not even vote for anyone. The political singsongs have always been the same; the voters? intelligence is forever scorned. That is the anatomy of African politics and it may never change. I appreciate the former president (I always will) for his courage, dynamism, energy and selflessness when he confronted the realities of the time. It does not mean I liked what some selfish and wicked military men did during those crucial times in the country?s history. What made the difference was that during the PNDC tenure of office one could not just think of stealing computers in Ministries in broad daylight, or even go late to work. I wonder if any minister could have dared to use the administration?s letterhead for personal business, let alone try to imitate the PNDC leader?s signature. Yeah, people were coerced to behave like normal and respectable citizens because that was the ONLY language they understood. Force. Unfortunately, this is true for every region in Africa. I appreciate Mr. Kufuor for his gentility, commitments and integrity (vilified in fact by his understanding that power corrupts and so corrupt we should be). What I hate is hypocrisy in all its forms, yet this is what we seem to enjoy best, in Ghana and again, in every region in Africa. So if Mr. Kufuor who rallies behind himself very highly educated people, and manages to get people all over, even in the USA to flute the university education, merits and intelligence of the members of his administration, I would be bowing to hypocrisy if I refused to comment on their costly errors during only four years of administration.

As a fact, any award Mr. Maafo could have won would have enthused our fat heads had he not made several enigmatic gaffes on end. His intriguing and ugly financial loan contracts that have cost the government its credibility continue to amaze even foreigners. This turnout seriously engages the government in a free fall from which it will never emerge face up even if the NPP wins the coming elections. One is not surprised therefore, that out of the five loan agreements reportedly secured by NPP administrative consultant Miss Gezel Yaaze four were withdrawn. This is a clear warning about how much we have to brace ourselves if he continues to stay where he is, engaging loans that are shrouded in mystery. Who will undertake business with a financial ministry so negligent and less detail-oriented? An Award!

If the prestigious Daily Graphic gleefully gives a front page to something inexistent, simply by accepting to be a pawn in the hands of the players it is indicative of how much the government tries desperately to fight its own shade as a means to whitewash its image long tarnished. It is another very bad mistake, or is it a joke? We are getting worried as Ghanaians. What is very much disturbing is the President?s position; he apparently feels a lot comfortable with these lies and inconsistencies. With Mr. President who masters so little his capacities, rules with icy appreciation of his entourage and refuses to curb the proliferation of negative tendencies endemic in his administration, there is nothing to hung on and hope for an enchanted next day.

From a lot of perspectives other than the government?s the financial Minister, whose financial gestures were like a cloud actuated on by wind, drifting whichever direction the wind went, obviously knew far less about his office than we were made to believe. Luckily there is this HIPC notion he would adopt as his first baby girl that would be bathed, polished and left to gleam in the sun. Never before has Ghanaian politics been so much derided.

In fact, the Financial Ministry has an old tradition, that of deploying an arsenal of financial rhetoric that toots in high pitch the glory of its economic uptrends inexistent in fact, much to the chagrin of those Ghanaians who know better. With elections only weeks away the worst propaganda is to cease a dominant position to announce an obvious impossibility, a worthless African financial title. A way of the government to tell us all is well with the way the sacred ministry negotiated its inadequacies through a four-year term ending in total fiasco.

Lies are like bad odours; at the end of the trail you find it, whatever it is, rotten!