THE PAINS OF POSITIVE CHANGE, CHAPTER 2 - OPEN LETTER TO MY PRESIDENT

Dear My President,

I must apologise for intruding’ with this letter of mine. In the not too distant past, I know you would have approved of my writing to you in this manner but these days, I am not really sure anymore. Indeed, that partly informs my decision to write to you because it’s been quite a while and everyday I postpone this communication, you seem to get further and further away from me. I hope you are well. From my small corner, I can imagine that it’s not been easy being omanpanyin. It’s taken all your waking hours and some of your sleep too, I guess. Even those of us managing small fiefdoms of 100 feet by 80 feet have not had it easy at all. You therefore have my full understanding, Sir. I hope you do not mind the fact that I have copied Mr. Mac Manu too. I feel my message may even be more inclined towards Kokomlemle rather than Osu.

Mr. President, I have chosen this ‘logorligi’ path to you because all other roads seem to be blocked by people who now survive on their ability to facilitate access to purgatory. There may now be people who are close to you and seek to interprete the happenings in Ghana to you. I hope you do appreciate that some of the interpretations may emanate from the tummy and not necessarily from the head. Down South, the stomach is everything! I recall an earlier meeting with you when you were candidate Kuffuor. I believe it was at the residence of the British High Commissioner or some other top official of the High Commission before the 2000 elections. We had an extensive chat with other Chevening scholars on matters Ghana. I have never been a card-carrying member of the NPP but I have been a believer and have exercised my belief on all occasions when I have been called upon to do so. My beliefs made me pack my car on two occasions to drive to Akim Oda to queue and vote for you and Yewura Safo. My votes and that of my two brothers and my wife were premised on a belief in the mantra of positive change, in my life, in the life my manager and our two boys and in the life of all Ghanaians. Those were the days! Our latest meeting was on the Achimota-St. John’s Road on a sultry June Sunday morning. My manager and the boys were in the car on our way back from church. Then we saw the motor-riders coming at us with such speed and noise. The sirens etc signaled immediately that some Oga kwatakwata was on the road. We duly parked. Then the ‘flotilla’ cruised by, one after wonderful one. E.G. Jnr., my numero uno, 8, who asks 1.5 million questions a day, went “Daddy Joe, who’s that?” I had to explain that it was a former friend of mine whose circumstances had so changed that it wouldn’t be possible to access him again, until he descended from the heavens. Indeed, your convoy left a lot of dust in our car and I had to work on my boys to let them know that you did not do it intentionally. But Sir, what an impressive convoy! That was our last ‘near’ meeting. I mused on positive change and its impact on my life on the drive home. I believe the seeds for this communication were sown that day.

I am therefore writing this letter not as an advocate of the people of Ghana. I make no pretences or presumptions on that score. I only speak for myself, my manager and our two boys aged 8 and 5, for whom I am personally responsible and on whose behalf I can speak at any given time. I further speak as a believer in positive change who is just about to backslide because I am not too sure whether what I was promised has been delivered. I also write to you because I know what it means to have a broken heart and I don’t want to go through that again. I write to you, Sir, in the absolute belief that someone has to point out some pressing ‘perceptions’ to you and perchance, if you are gracious enough, you will relay them to the other foot-soldiers that “ye wo asem bo no por” in 2008. It is my wish that this small letter will wake people in the party to the fact that there is developing a herculean task that will necessarily confront the mighty Osono come 2008.

Dear My President, as earlier indicated, I write this letter with my own life as a litmus test on the viability of positive change as a commodity purchased in 2000. As yet, I am not too sure whether positive change came with “caveat emptor”? I have seen things in my young professional life. I therefore no longer consider myself a virgin. I have seen role models look truth in the face and blink. I have seen old men who have had it all but just can’t tell the truth and stand up for principle. I have encountered Ghanaian role models who are prepared to sell their conscience and their fellow citizens for a quarter of the value. I am young but I have seen enough to be nurtured into being cynical about some of the statements that we have collectively put out in the public domain regarding our commitment to development in freedom. When I left the law school, I bought into the fiction that the only way to redeem the country was to get it back from Mr. Rawlings and plant it on higher, firmer ground. The irony was that throughout that period, Uncle Fiifi was my ‘father’ and indeed, still is, though I haven’t been able to see him for sometime now. I must confess that Uncle Fiifi is the only politician I know who is willing to accept the fact that someone so close to him would hold differing political opinions. Opanyin, please don’t throw my letter into the bin now just because I mentioned Uncle Fiifi. You see, out there in Legon in the bad old days, I was an agyaba and he was my lecturer. He did not know me but he adopted me. Till date, he has not told me why. But Uncle Fiifi has been a father to me since. Indeed, some very interesting phases of the development of my emotional intelligence were crossed under his guidance. When one of your people broke my heart ages ago, he was the man who taught me that it was part of life’s lessons. When my manager and I left for the UK for a year of further studies and returned to find Uncle Fiifi metamorphosed into an ‘abodi fofro’ and ensconced in the same building you occupy today, he had a way of beginning our numerous political discourses by showing me a newspaper and saying, “Joe, be hwe adze a wo nkrofo no wo reka”, to wit, “Joe, come and see what your people are saying”. ‘My people”, according to Uncle Fiifi, meant the Osono fraternity, of which you were a prominent member. I therefore do not need to be a card carrying member of the NPP but I have plunked for the party for a long time and at every opportunity. I have come to know that it is people like me who make the difference in an election. But increasingly, among colleagues, friends and enemies in Accra and every time I go to Kumasi and Oda, I get to hear lots of people who feel just like I do. People who believed and who are just about to backslide because of broken heart! That, Sir, is where my jitters come from and that informs my unsolicited communication to you.

Cynical by Nurture
My President, recently you had occasion to wonder why Ghanaians were that cynical about their leaders. I have also had cause to ponder over that too. Well, with the greatest respect, Sir, I am also Ghanaian. I have been an NPP sympathizer throughout my electoral life. I am cynical too. Not by choice. I have been nurtured into being cynical. My manager is also cynical, not of my doing or in solidarity with me. She is a teacher and she has also been nurtured into being cynical. Every time I go to Praso-Kuma, the holiest of my villages, I have to explain to the old folks why all the things I promised them have not been delivered by the government and why kerosene is so expensive. I have tried all the reasons you have given so far. They just don’t believe whatever I say anymore. They are cynical about me and my so called Osono. The venerable Kwabena Debrah of Oda-Aboabo, a.k.a, Kwabena Krakye, taught us from childhood to “trust and obey”. And we have…. Until now! I grew up in the Rawlings euphoria. We all believed. Then we later got to know that sadly, Jesus had become Judas on the road to Damascus! The stoicism of the makola woman in the heat of the revolution is only now being appreciated by me. They survived on “ehuru a, ebe dwo”, a.k.a, ‘all shall pass’. We have lived to see Dr. Rawlings send his kids to schools abroad and enjoy the same quality of life that was a death sentence for some of our kith and kin. In my candid opinion, Ghana lost one of her finest opportunities at development with Dr. Rawlings. One nation, one people, one destiny, one driver, just that our driver was not licensed and drove us into a ditch. I also recall the politics of yore when every fuel price increase, power outage, water shortage, shoddy roads etc was laid at the doorsteps of Dr. Rawlings. It may be a perception but we all believed it and based on that, we voted in positive change. My manager and I also believed. I had to drive to Oda on two consecutive national election days to vote for you and Yewura Safo. I have since not accessed Yewura Safo though I have tried mightily to draw his attention to issues that confront me as a constituent. Busy man, that!

As a young professional in my early working life, I was naïve enough to point out wrongdoing at the Ghana Stock Exchange. I lost my job as a direct result. I walked the corridors of some of the role models of corporate Ghana. None had the courage of their convictions to stand up for a patent truth and assure my rights. I wrote a passionate letter to Yewura Safo in his capacity as my MP, to draw his attention to the gross abuse of my rights. I should have known that I become useful in four-year cycles. I received no response whatsoever. Alhaji Siddique of Radio Universe waded into the matter by reading a letter I had done to you, Mr. President on the self-same issues. He was nearly ‘lynched’. These were the heady days of positive change and I should have learnt. But I was blinded by my unadulterated love for the Osono! Those were the days when the Council of the Ghana Stock Exchange could write to the Securities Commission that the only duty of a Council member was in respect of disclosures of dealings in listed securities. Therefore, all other transactions, including establishing an investment consultancy and diverting business from brokers to that entity was perfectly legitimate. The SEC accepted that and Ghana moved on. I still should have known but was still so much in love that I carried on. I was once again too dumb to realize that in Ghana one of the fastest ways to achievement is to be a sycophant. By doing my job professionally and letting my former employer know what Ghanaian law was in respect of a major transaction and refusing to be a Whiteman’s poodle, I was clobbered a second time under positive change. This time too, I tried to get to the venerable Yewura Safo whom I had stood in the sun for. I forgot it was sometime away from the four-year cycle. I wrote twice. Till date, no response. I am in Court still awaiting justice on a very simple issue more than one and a half years after the fact. I also belong to an organization that wrote to the Minister of Finance on certain corporate governance issues. Busy man, too, that! Our organization has also now ended up in court and awaiting justice. The point, Sir, is that, positive change meant that those we had tasked with doing jobs on behalf of the nation will have the courage to do their jobs and do right by all. Sadly, its life as usual. I was a believer in positive change. I looked for it and can’t seem to find it, let alone a positive one in that regard. It took my Lord above and my lady below to help me appreciate the times. Positive change seemed to exist only in the figment of my imagination.

Yet I still believed. At every opportunity, I stood up for the beliefs of the party and did my advocacy. I stood in the sun again and gave you the mandate for Chapter 2. But that’s when the scales begun to fall from my eyes and I started losing my faith. Mr. President, in all truth, “wa yer wa fa mu die!” You have done your part for Ghana. Yet you have done very little in dispelling the growing perception that you have lost your way and this country is basically on auto-pilot. Continually, incidents seem to remind us of the NDC days. These days I wonder whether my advocacy skills have been dented. No matter how you see it, Sir, there is a lot of disillusionment in the country and the sentiment seems to be growing. Last week, I took a cab home and I firmed my decision to write to you after the driver said without any prompting that: “boss, yenfa ma omo biom o”! Mr. President, he is not the only one who says that. I have heard very informed people also make the same statement. In Kumasi!!! Their abiding dilemma is who/what is the alternative? But we cannot bank our hopes on fears that there may be no credible alternative. I am aware that you have said that it is only a perception. Mr. President, I dare say that we won the elections on the previous occasions based also in a large measure on perceptions. We rode on the back of “opipipiipi” to the Castle. We have not nailed anyone yet for the “opipipiipi”. To my mind therefore, respectfully, it means that in an environment where the majority of our people will not check for the facts, it’s crucial to work on the perceptions especially if its sum total is negative. Consistently, too many people I come into contact with in all shades of life are ready to protest by staying at home during election 2008. The NDC will have an incentive to turn out because they want to return. Unless the Osono begins to work on this perception of “chop time no friend”, the party may have a major difficulty in 2008. Winston Churchill once said that ‘no part of the education of a politician is more indispensable than the fighting of elections”. Let’s not wait to be educated at the elections, please. I humbly suggest that we watch the turnout for the impending local elections closely. Though it’s conventionally low, if the turnout is considerably lower than the norm, we ought to be concerned. More importantly, we ought to take the Offinso South bye-election critically. We must retain the seat otherwise we hand a propaganda coup to the opposition. If the Osono loses, tofiakwa, lets declare an emergency in the party and start working on the perceptions immediately.

Mr. President, you will notice that though I acknowledged that you have done your bit in moving this nation forward, I have not dwelt on that. In my candid opinion, if you had not promised positive change and zero tolerance, your achievements would have been more marketable. However, the achievements pale significantly in the shadows of the promises made to the tunes of awurade kasa! I am concerned about perceptions and their potential pain come 2008. I hear questions about what happened to the young people who were registered for jobs. I hear comments that you are detached and no longer empathetic. Even Oseikrom seems to be tottering and needs to be wooed back to the fold. This is worrying especially in these times of debt forgiveness, MCA, Capitation Grant, School Feeding Programme, NHIS and many others. “Political image is like mixing cement. When it’s wet, you can move it around and shape it, but at some point it hardens and there’s nothing you can do to reshape it”. It is my sincere belief, Omanpanyin, that the cement is about to harden and we all have to move quickly to mold opinions and perceptions before they harden beyond redemption and lead to wailing and gnashing of teeth in 2008. You may not be in the Castle but if we lose, “ebi ber ka wo, perrrr”!

So Mr. President, it may be a perception. But it is a perception that has the potential to haemorrhage the party’s votes and unless steps are taken to first of all recognize the problem and begin tackling it, we will be undone by perceptions! Perceptions are important in Ghanaian politics. My feel on matters Ghana is that you seem a little detached now. My manager and I have paid our NHIS dues but after more than a year, we still have not received our cards. I live in a community where we have been compelled to pay young men in the area to patrol in the night so we can sleep a little. I live in a community where water flows once every three months, in the best of times. I have driven over roads that have been washed away with the rains. Our rubbish goes uncollected sometimes for two weeks, not for being in arrears to the Assembly. Remember these matters and even the murder of women became political issues that we laid squarely at the doorsteps of the venerable Dr. Dr. Rawlings. Things have changed. So why do things increasingly look the same? Gradually, I am beginning to feel that Positive Change came with a sign which read ‘Caveat Emptor” but I just didn’t see it. The NPP needs to wake up to the fact that gradually it’s becoming just like the NDC in outlook. The NPP says what the NDC used to say in government whilst the NDC sings the songs of the NPP in opposition. How then can we seriously argue that we delivered positive change? Sadly, one of the ways out is for us to campaign on the premise that we are the lesser of two evils. How heartbreaking will it be to find that we had bought into evil eight years ago without knowing. Somehow I have a feeling we may be celebrating the day DFP was born. NPP’s saviour in 2008?

Omanpanyin, I apologise for the length of my letter. I wanted to end here but another matter vexes me much and I feel I should let you know about it or I might never get the chance again. The presence of Tarzan in the Castle!!! Mr. President, we spent hours on the road and then in the sun to vote for you and the party. At the same material time, this man was engaged in an act of treason against the party by setting up a rival political party, the UGM, whose sole objective was to deny the NPP access to power. Omanpanyin, the man set up a political party to contest the NPP! If he had succeeded, with respect, Sir, you will not be living in that property at the moment. Unless there was a secret pact between you which would have guaranteed you access to the Castle even if Tarzan had won, I still struggle with this issue. The same man who committed the highest offence against the party somehow gets an appointment as VRA boss. Even when it was proven that things were not working out, you seemed to have a major difficulty firing him. After that debacle, he gets another job in the seat of power and has your ear? Now I hear he is the supervisor of the Jubilee millions? Just a perception?

Your Excellency, once again, sorry for butting into your joyride but “ asem yi di ka!” There is a lot of work to be done and the earlier we get to it, the better for you and all of us. It seems the entire cabinet wants your job now. But we have to make sure that people do their jobs and don’t spend precious time and resources of the State on frolics of their own in pursuit of the golden fleece. Otherwise, if the enjoyment continues and we lose, you may very well find yourself being accompanied by Antie Theresa to Court to explain how Hotel K4 was acquired. That is the nature of Ghanaian politics. Ask Dr. Rawlings. Opanyin, if that doesn’t wake you up, then it means you are indeed very far gone. Beware the ides of December!

“For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth,
Action, nor utterance, nor power of speech,
To stir men’s blood; I only speak right on;
I tell you that which you yourselves do know”

- William Shakespeare, “Julius Caesar”.

God Save the King!!!

Your Disillusioned Sympathiser,

JOE ABOAGYE DEBRAH Esq.
For and on behalf of self, my manager Adwoa Gyekyewaa and our two boys E.G. Jnr. And the Little Bishop.

Cc: Opanyin Mac-Manu
Chairman, NPP
Accra.

P/S: Dear Sir, I just heard that you have waded into the cocaine controversy. How I wish you hadn’t! Its so Rawlingsque!!!