The Al-Hajj’s 11th October 2011



Intensive investigations conducted by The Al-Hajj newspaper have revealed that Ghana has settled on Nov 7 as the new date for the nation’s parliamentary and presidential elections instead of December 7 as has been the norm since the inception of the Fourth Republican Constitution in 1992.

Thus, the next elections in this country will be on November 7, 2012 instead of December 7.

Credible sources versed in the workings of the Constitutional Review Commission (CRC) told this paper on condition of anonymity that the new date of November 7 will be the solution of the perennial transitional challenges that the country faces any time there is an election and especially a change of power from a democratically elected government to another.

Again, governments which are lucky to be re-elected to serve a second term of four years would also get ample time to put a winsome team together before they are sworn in.

The Al-Hajj has gathered that though the new date for the elections have been shifted one month behind, the swearing in of the President will always be on the 7th of January. This would be two clear months after the elections.
According to the sources the decision to accept these changes to the political calendar of the country is the result of the numerous petitions presented to the CRC in favour of changes of the date.

The sources said, the Commission was inundated by petition to change the date of the elections and most of the petitioners are in favour of November 7, two clear months before the swearing in of the President.
The Al-Hajj’s further painstaking research has revealed that majority of the proposals submitted on one of the 25 most popular issues tabled by the Constitutional Review Commission (CRC) after its in-depth analysis of the over 85,000 submissions received are in favour of the change of the date.
All the political parties are said also to be solidly in favour of the change of the date so as to be convenient for whoever wins an elections to get ample time to form a competent team to govern the nation.
The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) which has also been pushing for the passage of the Presidential Transition Bill in order to ensure that the next transition process is devoid of the acrimony as characterized the previous transitions in 2001 and 2009 proposed to the Constitution Review Commission a change in the voting date from December 7 to November 7 to allow for a longer transition period.
This in their opinion would give a breathing space for the incoming government especially in the event of a run-off, as happened in the 2000 and 2008 elections.
It would be recalled that, this country was nearly plunged into a constitutional crises in January 2009 when John Evans Atta Mills and the National Democratic Congress (NDC) won the general elections which had gone for a third round of voting in early January.
Political pundits were puzzled that less than 96 hours for the mandate of out-going President John Kufuor to expire, there wasn’t still a clear winner in the two earlier polls held on December 7th and December 28th presidential.
So therefore, when President Mills set up the CRC by a Constitutional Instrument 2010 (C.I.) 64 as a Commission of Inquiry to conduct a consultative review of the operation of the 1992 Constitution and based on the experience of what happened in 2009 transition and that of 2008, which also incidentally had to go into a run-off; it became apparent and necessary for political actors and civil society to take advantage of the constitutional review process to call for an amendment to the transitional period.
Ghana has had almost two decades of uninterrupted constitutional rule under the Fourth Republic, basing itself on the 1992 Constitution.
The nine-member Commission is made up of the following persons:
1. Prof. Albert K. Fiadjoe, Chair

2. 2. Osabarimba Kwesi Atta II, Commissioner

3. 3. Kumbun-Naa Yiri II, Naa Alhaji Iddirisu Abu, Commissioner

4. 4. Mr. Akenten Appiah-Menka, Commissioner

5. 5. Mrs. Sabina Ofori-Boateng, Commissioner

6. 6. Very Reverend Prof. Samuel K. Adjepong, Commissioner

7. 7. Dr. Nicholas Amponsah, Senior Lecturer, Commissioner

8. 8. Mr. Gabriel Pwamang, Commissioner

9. 9. Mrs. Jean Mensa, Commissioner
The Executive Secretary of the Commission is Dr. Raymond A. Atuguba.


HAJJ 2011
-All you need to know, 1st flight Oct. 14


Muslims all over the world, particularly those with the ability to do so are gearing up to fulfill the fifth and last commandments of Allah, the performance of HAJJ, and Ghana is not to be left out of this year’s pilgrimage.
Hajj operations in Ghana over the past years has been bedeviled with avoidable challenges to the detriment of would-be pilgrims and their families and bringing in its wake serious embarrassment to successive governments.
Thankfully, all these seem to becoming a thing of the past under President John Mills’ administration giving his government’s handling of Hajj operations from 2009 to date.

Preparations for this year’s Hajj is expected to be the catalyst of the new dawn in Hajj operations in Ghana as government and the National Hajj Committee are poised in reversing all the negative constrains associated with the pilgrimage to the Holy land of Mecca year after year.
Indications so far are that, preparations for this year’s Hajj which is expected to commence on the 14th of October is right on course.
The National Hajj Committee has gotten approval from both the governments of Ghana and the Royal Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to airlift 3500 prospective Ghanaian pilgrims to Mecca. However sources from the Hajj Committee tell this paper that out of a request for additional 800 being sought from the embassy of Saudi, 500 more seats have been given bringing the total number of Ghanaians expected to perform this year’s Hajj to 4000.
The cost of the package for this year’s Hajj is US$3,100 or GHC4650, and these include; round air fare, Royalties (airport tax), accommodation in Madina, Mecca, Mina and Mount Arafat. Others are health care, commitment fee (guaranteed) and ground transportation from Medina to Mecca-Mina-Arafat-and Mudzalifa. Then back to Mina, Mecca and finally to Jeddah for the return journey back home.
In all Egypt Air which has won the bid to provide charter flights for the Ghanaian pilgrims is expected to make in all fourteen round trips with each pilgrim being allowed a maximum of 40 kilograms weight-free baggage.
In order to facilitate easier identification and to ensure that the40 kilograms weight-free baggage quota is adhered to, the government of Ghana is providing special customized bags embossed with an emblem of the Ghana flag, imported from China.
All prospective pilgrims are also expected to ensure that they are vaccinated against yellow fever, cholera and CSM- a strict requirement from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
To improve the system of sorting out of travelling documents of pilgrims, the National Hajj Committee beginning this year has introduced three different colours for each pilgrim-fully paid up pilgrims will have blue passports covers whiles yellow will be for those on protocol list and white for workers, volunteers and welfare officers of the Hajj committee.
Pilgrims are also being advised that the Royal Kingdom of Saudi Arabia forbids the importation into the Kingdom; raw foods, cosmetics, narcotics, pharmaceuticals and cola nuts. However, pilgrims with health conditions should carry along with them their medical records and prescription in case they choose to go on Hajj with their medications.
According to Alhaji Halidu Haruna, the spokesperson of the National Hajj Committee; they have secured reasonably good homes in Mecca for pilgrims, but added that it is along major highways. He is therefore advising pilgrims to be extra careful when crossing the streets.
Alhaji Halidu is also advising pilgrims not carry along with them ablution kettles and bathing bowls since authorities in Saudi Arabia would confiscate them. He has also cautioned pilgrims not to engage in early shopping spree since they are likely to run out of funds as they have experienced in the past.
T he first flight to Hajj this year which would fly direct to Medina takes off on the 14th of October and only pilgrims would be admitted into the Hajj village according to their flight schedules.
The return flight from Jeddah is expected to commence on the 20th November 2011, pilgrims are expected to be away for 33 days.









FRONT PAGE COMMENT/FEATURE
NPP CANNOT FRIGHTEN ANYBODY WITH TRIBAL UNDERHANDEDNESS AND VIOLENCE IN 2012
Somehow the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) and their so-called team of intellectuals and advisors have sat down and thoroughly done their home and come to the conclusion that the only way they can recapture power from the discreet and genteel Professor and his National Democratic Congress (NDC) government is to adopt rough tactics: tribal instigation, naked lies and deception, war-mongering, deliberate distortions, threats and what have you.
After painstaking observation of the modus operandi of the current crop of NPP leadership and elites, the Al-Hajj has come to the final conclusion that they are the carbon copies of their forebears who subjected the founder of this nation, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah and his Convention People’s Party (CPP) to sustained harassment, characterized by politics of perfidy and calumny until they succeeded in getting him toppled by their surrogates in the military in 1966.
The Al-Hajj finds it interesting the current strategy of NPP elites in taking refuge in tribal and ethnocentric politics by always referring to their party as an Akan party just to throw dust in the eyes of our brothers in the Akan dominated regions of the country.
Arousing tribal sentiments have dominated recent comments of almost all the key leaders of the NPP, the recent ones being the one in the infamous All-die-be-die comment of the party’s flag bearer Nana Addo Danquah Akofu-Addo and Jake Obetseby Lampty’s allusions that what happened in Ivory Coast can happened in this country.
Again, the NPP have in the past few weeks subjected the Electoral Commission to sustained verbal attacks and threats over the proposed biometric registration and a potential re-demarcation of the electoral boundaries for the 2012 elections.
The security set up of this nation is also not left out from the desperation of the opposition NPP regarding what they perceived may happened in 2012. The list on the misbehavior of the NPP can go on and on and on.
But the Al-Hajj wants to sound a note of caution to the NPP. Tribal or ethnic tactics in politics all over the world are adopted by political parties who are desperate to either cling on to power or capture it from others.
In the Ivory Coast that they always cite as example, Laurent Gbagbo and his inners circles of elites clang to tribal and ethnic manipulation for the entire ten years that he was in power. At the end, what happened is the total destruction of the Ivory Coast and its institution. In this day and age of multiculturalism, The Al-Hajj just as majority of Ghanaians considers tribal issues as toxic and unhygienic issues. So we are reluctant in commenting about it but for the recklessness of the NPP elites.
Once the NPP elites, whose rationality has been beclouded by the desire to recapture power using the toxic issue of tribalism, we find it appropriate to respond to them and expose the deception in it.
The NPP must be made to understand that the NDC is a national party with an Akan as the leader of the party and the current President of the nation. So if they claim they are the Vanguards of the Akans, what are they talking about? Unless they want to tell us that Fantes are not Akans and Nzemas and the people from the Central and Western Regions are all not Akans.
Apart from the President who is a certified Akan, the NDC government has capable Akan appointees and leaders such as the Finance Minister Dr Duffuor, Chief of Staff Martin Newman, Bank of Ghana Governor Amissah Arthur, Agric Minister Kwesi Ahwoi, Education Minister Beti-Mould Iddrisu, General Secretary Asiedu Nketia, the list is endless.
Again, to demonstrate the true national colors of the NDC, the party in the 2008 elections won three of the five Akan regions, namely: Brong Ahafo, Western and Central despite all the noises of tribalism and ethnocentrism from the NPP and their leaders. Unless the NPP elites want us to believe that people from these regions are not proper Akans or some Akans are more important than other Akans.
The Al-Hajj strongly believed that the best description of the NPP is that it is just a regional party. A party which draws its support from the Ashante Region and nothing more, nothing less. The result of the 2008 is a strong testament to this assertion.
They must acknowledge this and stop generalizing every Akans in their political underhandedness and desperate desire to recapture power and perpetrate corruption and wealth-accumulation to the detriment of the majority of the people of this country including the areas that they always bamboozle to get their votes.
Further, this paper would like to humbly advise the NPP that they cannot use threat of violence on the Electoral Commission (EC) or the general Ghanaian population and think that through that power would be yielded to them on the silver platter in 2012.
They must remember that they are not the only party or their leader is not the only person who has lost elections and conceded in this country.
President Mills has lost elections twice to President Kufuor but he never threatened mayhem and Armageddon to the people of this country, on the contrary he peacefully conceded and congratulated his opponent in both 2000 and 2004.
In 2004, when it was evident that the NPP had rigged the elections, the genteel Professor resisted all the temptation to move the crowd of agitators on the street of Accra and other regions.
They must emulate the behavious of the gentle Professor and know that just two years after losing elections they cannot be accorded what they think is their birth right of coming back to rule. The Professor was in opposition for a good eight years before God in his magnanimity pushed him to the Presidency. They must also learn to wait until when God in his magnanimity uplift them to rule this country again.
They cannot just leave power in two or three years and then begin issuing threats to everybody thinking that by that people would be frighten and allow them to usurp power. They cannot frighten anybody and so the earlier they see through this reality and change their tactics of tribal chicanery the better it would be for them.