Democracy versus development - The Tsikata fixation and the emerging problem of Third World development
I was drawn to this large topic during the visit to this country recently by the Sudanese billionaire, Mo Ibrahim. If I remember correctly, the above topic was one of several pertinent issues to be dealt with at a symposium by selected speakers, most of them academic observers, not practising politicians. I never saw or read any news report on this subject, which is a pity.
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But before then, I must record my puzzlement with the fixation of some of us, on the lawyer and former university teacher, Tsatsu Tsikata. This is a man railroaded into jail by a previous government some years ago for causing financial loss to Ghana. The very lurid trial took six years, and prosecutorial discretion should have led to a different mode of treatment for the alleged loss to the state. I say alleged and use the word railroaded because he was surprisingly pardoned and freed from jail a day before that government left office on January 6, 2009.
This astonishing decision to free him alone, after tons of vilification on his person, his record as Ghana National Petroleum Company (GNPC) boss, should have informed those fixated on him anytime his name is mentioned since the year 2001 that no electoral advantage is gained through malice and mindless vindictiveness. It is no secret that some of the opposition to his name and person is actuated by personal envy of his sterling academic credentials, both at home at the University of Ghana and at the Oxford University in the United Kingdom. It has been transformed and morphed over the years into a false unctuousness about probity and accountability by some people who are not believed by the Ghanaians of this country.
This is aided by the fact that he helped greatly, in his peerless advocacy before the Supreme Court, during the hearing and determination of the pointless NPP election petition, to secure a landmark victory for the party and government of our President John Dramani Mahama. I am as certain as day follows night that if he was not included in those whose benefits were considered as meriting payment by the GNPC, this loud cacophony over these payments would never have arisen. Of course, it was this malice that made the government which jailed him to make sure the limitations on paying him his benefits lapsed in 2006 at which time he was being vigorously prosecuted and persecuted to prove the corruption of the Rawlings regime in our politics.
All such unctuousness came to naught as the people of this country gave their support and mandate to his erstwhile colleague in the professoriate of Legon, (the late) Professor Atta Mills in December, 2008, compelling the outgoing government of President Kufuor to free him from jail at the eleventh hour. If the government of President Kufuor really believed in the guilt of those who were pardoned by him, he would never have pardoned them.
The courts were just used to incarcerate to prove a point. That point was simply that we have the power and can do anything to change your sleeping place if we don’t like you. Tsikata was and remains the quintessential enemy to be silenced, incarcerated or even harmed.
Of course, I do realise that this whole Tsikata brouhaha is just a determined effort by the beleaguered MP for Obuasi, Mr KT Hammond to divert attention from the parts of the Judgement Debt Report which just advised him to avail himself to the Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO) to explain further his role in the disposal of the oil drilling ship bought by, you guessed right, the same Tsatsu Tsikata when he was GNPC boss. This is a Greek farce which will avail the characters who have forced themselves on the stage nothing, and may actually lose votes for these characters. The people can easily tell when someone is being hounded and persecuted.
The excursion on Tsikata is actually an aspect of the broader issues in the topic for today: whether the commitment to democracy and the protection and preservation of human and civic rights should triumph, or be equally considered as the physical development of society. Emerging Third World countries, Ghana included, have to grapple with issues of governance every day, broadly defined as the commitment and adherence to lawful procedures in the task of governing. Who polices the First and Second Worlds?
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This week, a curious but usual report on the corruption index was issued, damning all of us to the position of being the second most corrupt country after South Africa in Africa. I say curious because the perception of corruption index also issued this week says Ghana performed very well on the index this year. Which are we to believe? Since 1992, I, a citizen of Ghana, have never been sought by any organisation, phantom or real, to take part in any survey on any matter of public interest in this country. It seems some careless intellectuals are holding all of us to ransom.
You just wonder what such people will say of the report this year by the US government condemning the cost of a gas filling station in Afghanistan, built with American taxpayers’ money. It was a whopping $44 million dollars. The most that could have been spent on a filling station in that war-ravaged zone was $300,000. But of course the US is a First World country so such blatant, Himalayan corruption is hardly mentioned, or commented upon by our critics.
It is my belief that some people in our society thrive on bad news and do actively manipulate us to believe in our essential worthlessness. Some of our people, highly educated, believe that it is a mark of personal sophistication and good taste to disregard and disrespect local achievements and efforts. They obversely praise foreign efforts and achievements without let all the time. Nothing that Ghanaians do or attempt is worthy of praise. The worst is also expected of such people who hate our country and unctuously claim their negativity is that they want a better Ghana.
The problem of the Third World is that it seems our governments are unnecessarily hobbled by interests pretending love for democracy and human rights when in fact, those interests serve others who are committed to our underdevelopment because our underdevelopment is the reason for their continued prosperity and progress. How come the dictatorial Lee Kuan Yew is acclaimed today, likewise the autocratic Kagama of Rwanda today? To develop without the hobbling and second-guessing of critics of our progress within and without, we must take a hard look at whether we prefer development to democracy or vice versa.
Writer’s E-mail : aburaepistle@hotmail.com