By: Otchere Darko

“So Government in a principled manner has the right to take back the lands but it must be principle and expose all those involved. But if it is dealing with it simply to make political capital and make others look bad, then it is unfair because clearly we are all aware of the divestiture implementation and how State lands and State properties were sold to private individuals since the PNDC and NDC regimes continuing to the NPP era.” (The CPP); [Ghanaweb, 14th Oct.2010; Source: Citi FM]

The CPP is hundred percent correct in the assertion above. When it comes to grabbing of State lands and other State assets, names of big politicians from the two main parties, [P]NDC and NPP, have constantly been mentioned, together with names of big chiefs, big judges, big army personnel and big police officers who associate with, or are close to the two groups.

Whether they are politicians, chiefs, members of the Judiciary, members of the Armed Forces or members of the Police Service; or whether they are any other category of Ghanaian public office holders, [for that matter]; our leaders are all guilty of wanton greed. They all behave like a “village dog” that discovers the carcass of a dead bull which is several times bigger than [the dog] itself. Despite this fact, a “village dog” will ward off all other dogs and will try to eat the entire carcass till it becomes sick and starts vomiting out everything it has eaten. When Ghanaian leaders get opportunities to “grab” good things, they never even consider whether they do, or do not need these things; and whether they should, or should not let others who need those things have them rather. With their families and friends, our leaders grab every good thing they can lay hands on.....whether it is State car, State house, State land, or any other State asset. And they do this because they feel it is proof of their power and their importance in society. *If this were not the case, why would a University don accept to acquire a slot out of land given to a University, [so we are told], but would not develop this piece of land many years after acquiring it? *If this were not the case, why would a chief who holds custody of vast stretches of stool lands in his traditional community accept a small part of divested Government lands that are being reallocated to private people? *If this were not the case, why would top people in the Judiciary or in the Armed Forces or in the Police Service want to take part in the acquisition of State lands when they are men and women who can easily buy lands from private sources and, therefore, do not need to chase State lands or accept them from any Government for any reason? Why is there so much greed among leaders in Ghana?

With the exception of Dr Kwame Nkrumah who was uniquely selfless and non-materialistic, and excluding Dr Busia and Dr Liman who were both removed from power so early that it becomes unfair to them and statistically wrong to make a comparative assessment of their administrations, all Ghanaian Heads of Government, civilian and military alike, have been so selfish and so greedy that they have always used their periods of office to acquire personal wealth at the expense of the State......privatising and back-peddling all State assets and interests they can think of, at the flimsiest excuse, and paying “peanuts” for their secret acquisitions. *There are, today, Ghanaian leaders who falsely brand themselves as “Socialists” or “Social Democrats” but who convert State assets into private entities and then quickly and covertly acquire and own them privately with the help of the “stage-managed” divestiture of State businesses and other assets schemes they put in place, while they shamefully continue to proclaim “we are the friends of the poor”, with [some] “street people”, who have been “squeezed” by them into more and more poverty from day to day, echoing ignorantly after these “caricature socialists” and “fake social democrats”. *There are, also, Ghanaian leaders today who call themselves “[Private] Property-Owning Democrats” and who never fail to demonstrate their ideological belief by converting from State ownership into private ownership as many State properties as can be contrived, which they then quickly peddle back to themselves and members of their party and families, just as their “Social Democratic” counterparts do.

“All roads lead to Rome”, they say proverbially in English. And by extension of that English adage, we may say that good leaders build nations from all ideological directions; that is, from the right, from the centre, centre-right, centre-left, and also from the left. This is why, using the capitalist ideas they believe in, good American past leaders built their country into the great nation that America has today become. This also is why, good Chinese leaders of today are currently developing their country into one of the greatest nations in the world, using the socialist ideas that they, the leaders, believe in. Ideology per se should, therefore, not matter when we are evaluating the performances of the Ghanaian leaders we have had in the past, and contemporarily have in Ghana. Leaders should feel free to use the ideology they believe in to pursue their goals of national development and collective wellbeing. If leaders are selfless, visionary, and committed, they do ultimately reach the end they seek, whether they follow the leftist, rightist or centrist path; even though, one may concede that in certain times and circumstances, the path of the journey used determines the smoothness and time-span with which the end may be reached.

The primary duty of leadership in all human endeavours, therefore, must involve the seeking of the “general wellbeing of the group” that leaders lead, rather than the seeking of the wellbeing of the leaders themselves. Leaders should be selfless, rather than self-centred. They must also be honest, morally disciplined and incorruptible. Monetary and material rewards should not be the source of motivation of good leaders. And ideology should be seen by them as a means to an end, rather than as an end in itself. Similarly, good leaders should not be recognised or accorded by political analysts through ideological prisms, but through the services they render to the groups, communities and nations they lead. It is important, therefore, that this fact is recognised by the “Ahoofes”, the “Pratts” and other one-sided political critics who persistently and monotonously attack certain targeted Ghanaian leaders, purely on the basis of ideology, rather than on crucial issues of leadership failures; and, by being so ideologically biased, help to divert attention from the crucial political rape of Ghana by both [P]NDC and NPP leaders since 1982; and which continues to take place to this day; but which constantly gets swept under the carpet by political ideologues and party sycophants who always only see and treat issues through, and from, ideological and partisan prisms and perspectives.

When our political leaders decide to write off State vehicles and then quickly turn round to buy them cheap; when our political leaders place State enterprises on divestiture and quickly turn round to buy them cheap secretly; when our political leaders borrow money to build State houses for workers and, after completion, sell these houses cheap to themselves, instead of selling them to the workers who will later bear the brunt of the burden of debt repayment; when our political leaders acquire lands from communities and families for State use, and years later decide that the State has no more use for such lands and, accordingly, decide to divest such lands from State ownership into private ownership by selling them to the political class and other members of the elite for less than their market values to enable them to resell these cheaply-acquired lands to the less privileged in the society to derive “unearned” profits; when traditional leaders, judges of the superior courts, army chiefs, and law and order enforcement bosses cave in to the corrupt machinations of political leaders who use offers of State properties to buy their consciences; when Ghanaian contemporary leaders of all types, from politicians and traditional leaders to army generals and police chiefs, behave in this way, then they fail to seek the wellbeing of the Ghanaian community they lead in their various capacities and, accordingly, make themselves liable for rebuke and condemnation by us, irrespective of any ideological commonality with such people. The issue of reckless acquisition of State lands by politicians and other top public officials, through ruling parties, is neither ideological nor confined to any one ruling party. Ghanaians must therefore criticise equally the two dominant parties, NPP and [P]NDC, who have shared the mantle of government since 1982 and who, together, are grotesquely guilty of this type of abuse of office. The CPP has taken an impartial stand on the issue and it deserves commendation for that.

*So, let the rest of us boldly tell our Napoleonic “Social Democrats” to learn the lessons from George Orwell’s Animal Farm before they continue to lie to Ghanaians and live their “double lives” of rolling on “golden beds of glory” at night while, during the day, they play to the gallery by feigning “needy” and squatting on politically induced sand-dunes of “desert bare”. *And also, let us boldly caution our “survival-for-the-fittest” inclined [“Private] Property-Owning Democrats” to learn the chilling lessons from a couple of Charles Dickens’ novels before they continue to push on Ghanaians their version of “The Tale of Two Cities” within which there are always the “few do-wells” with “money-sagging pockets” that constantly draw the eyes of the several hungry “Oliver Twists” who have made it their profession to use their circumstance-induced criminal minds and artful hands to rob the “few rich” in order to provide daily survival-support for themselves and other members of the “many suffering poor” in the community. *Let these two groups of “lie-lie politicians” and their sycophantic associates stop their culture of grabbing State assets to satisfy their unquenchable greed. And let them end their habit of constantly exonerating themselves from blame, while at the same throwing offensive punches of blame-passing accusations at their rivals in the “political-booty” grabbing business, with twenty million innocent poor and suffering Ghanaians tossed and battered between two raving fronts along the political battlefield of two warring “political grabbers”.

Source: Otchere Darko. [This writer is a centrist, semi-liberalist, pragmatist, an advocate for “inter-ethnic cooperation and unity” and a community-based development protagonist. He opposes the negative, corrupt and domineering politics of NDC and NPP and actively campaigns for the development and strengthening of “Third Parties” in Ghana.]