By Francis Kwarteng

“I apologise unequivocally. If I am able to get the opportunity to talk to the president, I will definitely apologise vehemently and if I’m not able to, I’m doing so through your outfit. I do apologise unequivocally. I will not at any point in time insinuate anything evil…except to state my opinion, flat as it is” (Fadi Dabbousi)

CLOSING REMARKS

“The problem of Africa is because folly is set in dignity and the wise have been reduced to nothing. People who have no business telling anybody anything shoot their mouths everyday and people who have something to say shut up every day and the rest look on…

“It is very interesting that many people who step into the corridors of power are not fit to walk in those corridors. People who influence our world mostly are people who have no business influencing anything because they are not good examples themselves; many of those who determine how we live our lives have been failures in their own lives…” (Mensa Otabil).

JOURNALISM AND THE ERROR OF LEADERSHIP

Of course, no one says journalism is an exact science. It is not.

Regardless, it should be the conscience of society speaking truth to power, promoting humanism, entertaining, educating, challenging the status quo and so on.

That is, journalism should be a watchdog of the public interest as well as of the public morals.

Our journalists must therefore put partisan politics aside and work towards a platform for positive dialogue across ideological, ethnic, religious, class and political lines, exposing the rotten underbelly of society even if it is inconvenient and uncomfortable, through temperate language.

Thus, journalism should be the moral and political voice of the people and not only those of the elite and the privileged few.

This means out journalists speaking inconvenient and uncomfortable truths where it hurts the most.

Certainly, we cannot expect journalism to be perfect because it is a human invention. We can improve it nonetheless.

However, oftentimes the complex question of subjectivity permeates opinion pieces to the point of exaggerated infallibility because the writer thinks he or she exclusively owns “the facts.”

But these “facts” may actually be a fictive imagination of the writer, mere opinions in other words.

Opinions on the other hand are not necessarily facts. Anybody can have opinions just about everything but not everybody can have facts.

Particularly in the case of lampoons and satires opinions sometimes resolve seamlessly into facts, fiction into facts.

Dabbousi correctly points to this contrastive blend of facts and opinions as “concoction of malice.”

It bears pointing out that the entire geopolitical conflagration of the Middle East, so-called, is premised on “concoction of malice.”

Also his empire of yellow or right-wing journalism is built on a strong foundation of this bizarre concept.

It is interesting how he quickly he diagnostically imputes this concept to others and not to himself.

This fact alone does not mean we should tolerate any kind of Donald Trump-like journalism in our body politic. In fact society should frown upon this dangerous breed of journalism.

After all, the kind of Donald Trump-like journalism we are talking about surely belongs in the political caliphate of ISIS, Boko Haram, Al-Shabab, Al-Queda, the Lord’s Resistance Army, and the like.

And the contemporary history of ISIS, Boko Haram, Al-Shabab, Al-Queda, the Lord’s Resistance Army…is the ancient history of the National Liberation Army (NLM), the United Party (UP), and the National Liberation Council (NLC), all of which have metamorphosed into the New Patriotic Party (NPP).

More so, one of these Donald Trump-like journalists, Thomas Sowell, compared President Obama to Adold Hitler, Mao Tse-tung, and Jim Jones. He writes in this regard:

“Telling a friend that the love of his life is a phony and dangerous is not likely to get him to change his mind. But it may cost you a friend.

“It is much the same story with true believers in Barack Obama. They have made up their minds and not only don't want to be confused by the facts, they resent being told the facts…

“Some of Senator Obama's most fervent supporters could not tell you what he has actually done on such issues as crime, education, or financial institutions like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, much less what he plans to do to stop Iran from becoming a nuclear nation supplying nuclear weapons to the international terrorist networks that it has supplied with other weapons.

“The magic word ‘change’ makes specifics unnecessary. If things are going bad, some think that what is needed is blank-check ‘change…

“These ranged from Jim Jones who led hundreds to their deaths in Jonestown to Hitler and Mao who led millions to their deaths.”

Apparently, Sowell made these right-wing apocalyptic forecasts before Obama’s first assumption of the highest office in the land, the United States.

And here we are today, such politically and ideologically motivated auguries that have proven patently false.

Obama is certainly not Jim Jones, Adolf Hitler, or Mao Tse-tung (see “Comparing George Bush With Adolf Hitler” at the end of this article).

This is the kind of journalism we are getting from our Lebanese-Ghanaian pilot, journalist and author Fadi Samih Dibbousi.

Our friend must pay close attention to Pope Francis’s views on journalism, bearing in mind he does so outside the protracted conflicts between his Western neo-Christians and Arabs-Muslims, the point being that Pope Francis and the Catholic is—understandably—part and parcel of the axis of what he, Dabbousi, had referred to as neo-Christians.

Yes, right-wing Fadi Sadih Dabbousi is in a good Eurocentric camp, the afore-referenced political caliphate where bigots from Akufo-Addo, Kennedy Agyapong, Yaw Osei-Marfo…to Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, and their village and useful idiots inhabit.

Kwame Nkrumah’s Ghana does not need these kinds of men and women as leaders. No! Never!

COMPARING GEORGE BUSH WITH ADOLF HITLER

“It is amazing what a people will blind themselves to when they wrap themselves with the banners of nationalism and patriotism. Good quickly becomes evil and evil quickly become good.

“Compare George Bush's words with Adolf Hitler's. Although Americans are presently blind to this fact, the United States is presently doing and supporting the very same kinds of evils done by the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler”:

COMPARE

“I BELIEVE that God wants me to be president.” (George W. Bush) with:

“I would like to thank Providence and the Almighty for choosing me of all people to be allowed to wage this battle for Germany,” (Adolf Hitler—Berlin March, 1936).

COMPARE

“God is not on the side of any nation, yet we know He is on the side of justice. Our finest moments [as a nation] have come when we faithfully served the cause of justice for our own citizens, and for the people of other lands.” (George W. Bush) with:

“If we pursue this way, if we are decent, industrious, and honest, if we so loyally and truly fulfill our duty, then it is my conviction that in the future as in the past the lord God will always help us” (Adolf Hitler, at the Harvest Thanksgiving Festival on the Buckeburg held on 3 Oct. 1937).

COMPARE

“Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them.” (George W. Bush) With:

“Never in these long years have we offered any other prayer but this: Lord, grant to our people peace at home, and grant and preserve to them peace from the foreign foe!” (Adolf Hitler - Nuremberg Sept. 13, 1936).

“The state America is in today mentally through media propaganda, the next president whether Democrat or Republican will probably be of the same spirit. The same money owns both parties.”

SOME QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

Is President Mahama Obama or George Bush? To answer this question we need to make some hypothetical assumptions first:

If as some historians claim is true that gonorrhea was partly responsible for Hitler’s rabid racism and anti-Semitism, then might it well be possible that President’s HIV-AIDS condition could be partly responsible for his poor management of the economy and, in retrospect, for his having children outside his marriage, for his philandering tendencies?

We know this parallel comparison is problematic, one being the question of anachronism, but it is only a hypothetical assumption. However beyond this parallel comparison, who then is Akufo-Addo?

Could his prostate cancer have been partly responsible for his poor leadership, the results of which are intra-party internal division and needless suspensions and intolerance and anarchy, and, in retrospect, for his murdering his wife, for his wee-smoking habits, for his philandering proclivities?

All these speculative assumption do not make any sense, yet, once again, Dabbousi makes it worse by not looking at the diagnostic and prognostic profiles of Akufo-Addo and President Mahama from the viewpoints of holistic evaluation and parallel comparison yardsticks.

In any case if President Mahama is not Obama and Obama is Hitler but President Mahama is Obama to a certain extent, then who is President Mahama?

If Akufo-Addo is not Obama and Obama is Hitler but Akufo-Addo is Obama to a certain extent, then who is Akufo-Addo?

But, we strongly suspect that in Dabbousi’s closet journalistic mind President Mahama is either Obama or George Bush. The connection to Hitler becomes obvious, otherwise why has he not negatively speculated on Akufo-Addo’s potential illnesses as President Mahama’s?

This is why Kweku Baako, Jr. has opined that Dabbousi’s write-ups on President Mahama are “serious and hugely offensive.”

The former added that the latter relied on “‘none existing and fake’ media organizations.”

It is funny how Dabbousi quickly makes a volte-face, reportedly making the equally funny claim that his write-ups on President Mahama were “without malice,” a sharp detour from his “concoction of malice.”

This is how the claustrophobic cage of the BNI can transform hardened avian loudmouths from Dabbousi to Captain Edmund Koda (rtd). Finally and quite expectedly, Dabbousi would say the following in an interview after his release from this claustrophobic cage:

“I respect President Mahama a lot because he is our President whether we like it or not but that will not deter me from criticizing him when he is taking the people of Ghana for granted and to the wrong direction. I didn’t intend to insult him…”

Further questions:

Dabbousi didn’t intend to insult President Mahama but ended up insulting the anyway?

Perhaps inadvertently?

This is why his corpus of journalistic writings should be collected and stuffed into Akufo-Addo’s mock coffin and buried deep in an ocean of human feces.

Thus, the rhetorical violence of Dabbousi’s journalism rather subtracts from Akufo-Addo’s political capital if, in fact, he has any to start with. All this is not to say he should not criticize the Mahama administration where it deserves criticism. We approve this statement of his:

“I will criticize the president but of course…”

Except that it should not be essentialist in rhetorical tone because if indeed it is, there will be a deluge of quick critical rhetorical reversion to the conflict-prone geopolitics of his Lebanese/Middle Eastern background. The essentialist pathway is counterproductive. Then also maybe, just maybe, the government is not doing nearly enough by way of fighting corruption.

But President Mahama and his government are not the originating parents of corruption in the body politic. As a matter of fact Dabbousi’s conman John Kufuor, the originating grandparent of Adam and Eve, is also the great-grandparents of political corruption. Kufour nailed the etiology of political corruption on his two grandchildren, Adam and Eve, who have always lived in the Flagstaff House, built by the generous children of South Africa’s racist Gandhi.

And equally true, let us just say, yes, there is so much the government can do, for corruption is as much a huge problem in the Flagstaff House and parliament as it is in our mosques and churches, including Pastor Otabil’s. In the churches and mosques it is God’s problem, God’s mercy, that is, to deal with it, but rather absurdly it is seen as an entirely different animal once it is in the court of the secular world. Why is Dabbousi running away from this basic fact? Is it because politicians, particularly those in the ruling government, are a different species of political animals, wicked and unconscionable ones at that, and so they must be held to different if higher standards of moral critique? How about the moral corruption of Dabbousi’s own political writings?

This excruciating etiology of moral illusion probably explains why corruption cannot be traced to President Mahama and his government. Furthermore, neither President Mahama nor Akufo-Addo is or represents the deity of corruption in the nation. The Ghanaian society is that which corrupt to the bone. The Second Coming of Christ and the Judgment Day will both surely take place in Ghana, a friend once told this author, on account of the heightened level of corruption in that country.

Fadi the Savior (or Redeemer) should simply tell us when this Second Coming of Christ and the Judgment Day are due in Ghana through his yellow journalism. He should also tell us, convince us as to why he thinks the politics of “The Satanic Verses” in the Ghanaian body politic is not unique to the two major political parties.

The above notwithstanding, we all need to come together as we direct our collective efforts toward neutralizing what Pastor Otabil calls “error of leadership.” Unfortunately, both the former (and Dabbousi) misses the bigger picture. Either he is being mischievous or economical with the truth.

Which politician in Ghana is not religious, either his [Otabil’s] kind of Christian or Dabbousi’s kind of Moslem for the most part? Those he referred to as “Christians” are already in the business of running state bureaucracies and government in various capacities. A chunk of the most corrupt politicians are arguably Otabil’s Christians (and Dabbousi’s Moslems). These Christians (and Moslems) steal from state coffers and then dish out part of these booties to pastors and churches in the form of offertory/tithes and as donations to religious charities.

These “charitable” acts are done to confirm the spiritual effectiveness of Otabil’s prosperity theology. These criminal philanthropists in turn get preferential treatments in the Ghanaian church. They also make pastors fabulously wealthy. Today it is difficult telling a criminally rich politician from a criminally rich pastor. It is the same with Dabbousi’s criminally rich Moslem and criminally rich imam. All these examples attempt to explain why moral education and its expected remediation ramifications have remained endlessly illusionary, a hopelessly useless platform for dealing with corruption.

Thus, influential religious personalities like Otabil sometimes misuse the church as a bully pulpit in a way that it should not, although we acknowledge and endorse his practical wisdom in matters of political expediency—for the most part. In other words they tend to explain why the moral and political fight against corruption in the country remains a mirage. In the end Dabbousi’s slandering of the office of the presidency without the benefit of verifiable forensic evidence is not good journalism. It is journalistic demagoguery! It is journalistic McCarthyism! It is journalism of the kind Salman Rushdie provocatively called “The Satanic Verses.” It is simply terrorism in the wise words of Pope Francis!

And it is not as if his idol, Akufo-Addo, Dabbousi’s man known for his post-factual politics, is a strong leader in political and moral terms. He is not. What Dabbousi needs to do at this point in time, is effectively exploring Akufo-Addo’s moral and political weaknesses, rather than President Mahama’s, and initiating a strategic program of policy formulations to eradicate or suppress these lapses, before he [Akufo-Addo] finally resolves into an uncontrollable bombshell of monumental failure, ideally against the backdrop of his potential resumption of political office if the favor popular sovereignty looks his way.

Indeed, it is a question that remains to be answered if the name Fadi Dabbousi is not a pseudonym under which Soloman Nkansah, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, Chairman Wontuni, Ofosu Kwakye, Koku Anyidoho, Kofi Adams, Kennedy Agyapong, Akua Donkor, Omane Boamah, or Gabby Otchere writes his or deeply polarized articles. Thus, his kind of journalism is at best “a concoction of malice” even when he says his anti-Mahama write-ups are written “without malice.”

This volte-face is a poor attempt at sophistry.

REFERENCES

Ghanaweb. “I’m Not Scared—Fadi Dabbousi.” September 27, 2016. Ghanaweb. “Error of leadership, Cause of Ghana’s Woes —Otabil.” October 6, 2016.

Ines San Martin. “Pope Says Journalism Based On Rumors and Fear Is ‘Terrorism.” September 22, 2016. Retrieved from https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2016/09/22/pope-says-journalism-based-rumors-fear-terrorism/

The True Statesman. “Kill All Ewes in The Ashanti Region—Kennedy Agyapong.” April 16, 2012. Retrieved from http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/Kill-All-Ewes-in-The-Ashanti-Region-Kennedy-Agyapong-236095

Ghanaweb. “Akufo -Addo neglected 'Kumi Preko' victims—Nyaho.” May 12, 2016.

“Desmond Tutu Calls for Blair and Bush to be Tried Over Iraq.” September 2, 2012. BBC News.

Ghanaweb. “Akufo-Addo more dangerous than Gitmo 2—Akua Donkor.” January 15, 2015.

Thomas Sowell. (October 20, 2008). “Believers in Obama.” Townhall. Retrieved from http://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2008/10/20/believers_in_obama

Tsedaka Emeth. (2016). “Comparing George Bush With Adolf Hitler.” Tentmaker. Retrieved from http://www.tentmaker.org/Quotes/bush_hitler_quotes.html

Ghanaweb. “Who Is a Comedian Than You—Agya Koo Fires Akua Donkor.” October 4, 2016.

Ghanaweb. “Fadi Dabbousi’s Write-ups on Mahama Hugely Offensive—Kweku Baako.” October 1, 2016.

Ghanaweb. “My Running Mate Does Not Know Her Date of Birth—Akua Donkor.” October 4, 2016.

Ghanaweb. “My Articles About Mahama Were Without Malice—Daboussi.” October 2, 2016.

Ghanaweb. “I respect President Mahama—Fadi Dabbousi.” September 26, 2016.