Opinions of Wednesday, 11 October 2023

Columnist: Iddrisu Abdul Hakeem

Fixing the country movement’s ultimatum: A reckless provocation

A file photo A file photo

Fellow Ghanaians, there’s a Confucian dictum that states that “he that wants to embark upon a battle of revenge, must first dig two graves.” And the Dagomba people maintain that “it’s foolish and stupid to roast the tail of a live dog.”

The impending gaseous nonsense of the Fixing the Country Movement with their careless provocation of attempting to congregate at the office of His Excellency, former President John Dramani Mahama, over the Airbus SE global scandal, undoubtedly, has the proclivity to ignite chaos in the country.

It is an attempt to roast the tail of a live dog – to brew uncontrollable trouble in the country and from indications, the move of the Movement seeks to do just that: to create a national instability because of the spectacular embarrassment and flat failure of the Akufo Addo government.

Sadly, the Ghana Police Service accepted their so-called petition to stand Akimbo and watch them carry out this sheepish and reckless endangerment.

Yes, indeed, Article 21(1)(a) and (f) of the 1992 Constitution guarantees the individual rights of public assembly, and section 1 of the Public Order Act (Act 491) indeed stipulates that the Ghana Police shall be notified in organizing any public event.

However, nowhere do both the 1992 Constitution and the Public Order Act state that, any idiotic and blockheaded party’s foot and food-soldiers have the right to organize a public assembly purposely to “defecate” at the premises of an opposition leader’s office. Neither the 1992 Constitution nor the Public
Order Act guarantees fundamental human rights to provoke others most carelessly and recklessly.

Nowhere does it mention in our national law documents, that when you use subterfuges, lies, and deception to win over political power and reality catches up with you after mismanaging the economy most incompetently, you must ventilate your frustrations and desperation on your political opponents.

To congregate, picket, or demonstrate at former President Mahama’s office because of the failure, lack of commitment, gross economic mismanagement, and massive corruption supervised by the thieving and criminal government of “Lawyer” Akufo Addo, is like seeking the constitutional right to defecate at the
premises of the office of the former president. It must never be welcomed by the party.

This is the most offensive provocation capable of igniting political unrest in the country the convener Ernest Kofi Bempah Bonsu would be the first to be consumed by it.

The New Patriotic Party of President Akufo Addo cannot do away with their garrison politics of cynicism and whataboutism usually carried out in the most dunderheaded fashion. And like late Prof.

Mills once said, “They don’t care whose cow is gored”(neither the state nor the citizens they claim to lead)… “in befuddling the hard-core issues.”

The NPP’s version of politics is that of what former President Obama described as “politics of anything goes” premeditated by jaded negativity. It is Machiavellian in every regard. And it is often the most immature and defeatist manner of playing the game of politics by weaker minds.

That is, they resort to baseless smear campaign tactics to uncontrollably throw mud at political actors far superior to themselves hoping that some would stick and stay to score cheap political points.

If not enemies of our nation yearning and beating the TomTom for war or military takeover to cover their economic shame and incompetence, which buffoon at this juncture of our national failure due to criminal leadership, would want our current state of affairs to abide and continue?

Is it not quite interesting that despite the unheard of and what my Foreign Policy (MyFP) describes as unspeakable massive corruption of the Nana Addo – Bawumia government which has brought Ghana to its knees, some very empty-headed nonentities like Earnest Kofi Owusu-Bempah, the so-called leader and convener of the Fixing the Country Movement, can be so daft and gullible that he and his talakawa of vandals, cannot see anything wrong with the current complete criminal government, but have the gusto to protest at the office of former President Mahama over why the former President decides not to investigate himself on the Airbus SE allegation?

Why would men of their caliber, Owusu Bempah Bonsu and Co. be so blockheaded to understand there’s a legal dictum that states that “he who alleges, must prove”? And that, if the one that alleges couldn’t prove his allegations, it’s offensive to call out the accused person for the same accusations?

Why have these men then not deemed it necessary to congregate at the offices of those who accused the former President of wrongdoing as far as the Airbus SE global scandal is concerned, but at the office of the former president? What level of provocation is this? What impudence? What nonsense?

Fellow Ghanaians, it would interest you to realize that even the governments of France, the USA, and the UK also made plain charges and allegations against the French Aircraft Company they were yet to prove. According to the Fixing the Country Movement, “Airbus SE, a global aircraft provider based in France, agreed to pay hefty fines totaling more than $3.9 billion to resolve foreign bribery charges. The charges were brought forth by authorities in the United States,
France, and the United Kingdom, stemming from the company’s scheme to bribe government officials and non-governmental airline executives worldwide.”

But because the company agreed to resolve the matter with these governments by accepting the charges, the Fixing the Country Movement also wants former President Mahama to accept that there was wrongdoing even if that wrongdoing has nothing to do with him.

For these dunderheaded criminals, because the USA, French, and United Kingdom governments accused the Airbus SE Company of business malpractice for using foul means of selling their products, President Mahama must also be part of it because his brother was hired to lead the Company to Ghana. What a load of bullshit?

In the first place, no man can determine whether the Ghana government bought the aircraft from the Company just by the mere fact that the brother of “government official 1” was leading the Company, or it was a bribe they offered government official 1 to influence the government.

In any case, does it suggest that President Akufo Addo, Bawumia, or any government official never accepts “something” to grant a contract? In the Anas Aremeyaw Anas Number 12, how much did it cost the Dubai officials who wanted a participate in the Ghana Premier League? President Nyantekyi claimed the president was in his pocket and needed how much from the Dubai officials.

Fellow Ghanaians, let’s be honest, how much does it cost us citizens who want to work in the public sector today to be able to get employment? I mean, how much do Ghanaians pay to be recruited into for example the National Fire Service, the Military, the Ghana Police, and even the Ghana Educational Service? Who talks about these anomalies in the country?

Today, we have our national institutions crumbling to the ground because of these corrupt practices of heads of our public institutions who sell employment to the citizens. Why the hell the Fixing the Country Movement can fix these challenges of callous bribery matters in the country?

Fast forward, the courts of the USA, UK, and France, never revealed how much the Company hired Samuel Adam Mahama, and whether their accusations of the Company of bribing and influencing governments across the globe, which included the government of Ghana, was limited to only the Company’s hiring of Samuel Adam Mahama (middlemen closer to corridors of power), or it involved government official 1.

For these governments (UK, France, and USA), the fact that an incoming or freshly inaugurated Vice President’s brother was hired by the Airbus SE to lead their business delegation, was tantamount to courting undue influence from the Ghana government. Hence their charges against the Company.

Nowhere did the courts of the USA, UK, or France, substantiate that “government official 1” actually received a bribe from the Company.

Fellow Ghanaians must, again, appreciate that the investigative or prosecutorial agencies of all these governments (France, the UK, or the USA) never referred to the so-called “government official 1” (former president Mahama) as a “prolific bribe collector” as the Fixing the Country Movement has sought to defame former President Mahama. The Movement has concocted those words to throw dust into the
eyes of unsuspecting Ghanaians purposely to tarnish the image of the former President.

Well, the child that vows not to allow the mother to have a nap, won’t sleep either. We are all living in this hell once called Ghana. But I believe we cannot throw the baby and the bathwater away because of some foolish people among us. That’s why I want former President Mahama to not say a
word on this issue. Ghanaians have not misplaced their sense of reasoning like these gangsters.

Oscar Wilde said, “You should forgive your enemies; nothing pains them more, and it’s the exact reason for your forgiveness.” And Winston Churchill, former Prime Minister of the UK said, “The reason why I don’t wrestle with pigs is that, they get you dirty and they love that.” Let President Mahama not wrestle with the pigs.

So, the Fixing the Country Movement doesn’t see anything wrong with the disappearance of 60.18 billion from the Bank of Ghana in losses? They can’t perambulate the premises of the Bank of Ghana to find out why the Central Bank incurred 60.18 billion loss and has not been remorseful. Instead, they want to, in addition to this loss, use a whopping 246 million dollars to build a new headquarters in these times of drudgery.

Won’t Fixing the Country Movement picket at the DATA Bank premises and the brouhaha surrounding that godforsaken bank? Is Ken Ofori Ata not worthy of investigation for his incessant borrowing for the benefit of his DATA bank?

Can’t Fixing the Country Movement do something about the Agyapa (shady) Deal, BOST contaminated oil, 500 missing excavators from Galamsayers, mismanagement and devouring of COVID-19 funds; and how come the Akufo Addo-Bawumia government, in less than seven years, has borrowed more than all presidents and governments of Ghana combined, since Independence?

Why can’t Fixing the Country Movement congregate at Cecilia Dapaah’s house where millions of dollars were discovered and stolen? The list has no end, about why Ghana is at the crossroads of economic mess today. Gargantuan corruption.

The question that is now screaming and crying for an answer is, what financial loss did the Airbus SE scandal, purported to have involved former president Mahama, cause Ghana?

Let’s assume the company bribed then Vice President Mahama or even the Ghana government at large, to influence their decision in purchasing an aircraft from the Company; what negative impact did it have on Ghana? Did the money Airbus SE used to hire and pay the brother of former President Mahama, Samuel Adam Mahama, come from the Bank of Ghana?

So, Owusu Bempah and his bunch of blockheaded national idiots and hooligans think that the whopping sum of dollars from obviously proceeds of corruption discovered at Cecilia Dapaah’s house, don’t prompt and warrant their Movement to protest against? Wouldn’t Owusu Bempah want to find out how such a huge sum of money in foreign currency was packed up at a Minister’s house?

You see, while I am of a firm conviction that Owusu Bempa and his men could be mentally deranged, very sick upstairs, and not level-headed in this regard, there’s more to their nauseating provocation, and hypocrisy, careless display of unpatriotism, disloyalty to the state Ghana and unfathomable tomfoolery.

The Akufo Addo government has not done with Ghana yet even with this scale of economic battery, mess, and disaster. Ghana must go to war to destroy and lose everything that she has ever built. This latest agenda is what has motivated this sheep-biting move by Ernest Kofi Owusu Bempah to picket at the premises of former President Mahama’s office.

It is intended not only to provoke the NDC and the former President but to create chaos and mayhem that may escalate to destroy the country. The idea is to further label the former president what he is not by tabling the nasty outcome and blaming that demo at his doorstep.

In this case, they can plan (and may have planned) that, while the picketing is going on, the government’s hoodlums like the hooligans who attacked UTV, should launch an attack on their people. This may get nastier and lead to even loss of lives and the blame is tabled at the doorstep of the former president and the NDC. They would argue that the Accra NDC Youths had already warned the Fixing the Country Movement not to make the logical mistake of “defecating” at the premises of the former president, or else they would descend upon them with vituperative and bloodletting tendencies. Hence, the mayhem is done by them.

So the NDC should be careful. This could be a trap the government is setting to use a golden but undue advantage and opportunity to attempt to arrest former President Mahama to retaliate their bitterness of mismanaging the economy. This is a staggering shameful way of ventilating one’s incapacities.

It doesn’t make sense that the government together with prosecuting agencies in the country have failed to investigate an accused person, and somebody in his right sense thinks that they must confront the accused person because he has not been investigated for what he never accused himself of. What a load of crap?

The Ghana Police must have directed these trouble brewers and warmongers to “Occupy the Julor Bi House” instead. Let them go and demonstrate against the government for its failure to investigate the Airbus SE. It has been seven years since the Akufo Addo government created the most useless portfolio in Ghana’s history: the Office of the Special Prosecutor.

Let it investigate Ken Ofori Atta first. Does Governor Addison have a lot to answer? Shame on Akufo Addo and his thieving government. God would deliver and save us from them.