The Bawumia tragedy
Last Tuesday, Dr Mahamadu Bawumia delivered the distinguished speaker lecture on the Ghanaian economy at the Central University College. To put it mildly, I was extremely dissatisfied with the content of the lecture, and will say so presently . But before I do that, I am challenging the Central University College organisers to organise a response from the government as soon as possible, within a month, and invite either Dr Kwesi Botchwey, Mr Kwame Peprah or Mr Ato Ahwoi, to also give us their view on the Ghanaian economy.
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I am saying so because I have it on authority that the college prevented Prof. Mills from addressing the students as part of the 2008 campaign, but afforded his opponents the opportunity.
This is an inerasable indictment on the scholarly credentials of the organisers of the Bawumia lecture, and they must take steps to put the affairs of the college on an even keel of academic and intellectual discourse.
Problem in lecture
To really appreciate the broad canvas I intend to roam on today, we must remember that Dr Bawumia stood by Nana Akufo-Addo when he declared his intention last week Thursday, after consulting God in the United Kingdom, and lesser potentates here in Ghana, that he intends to run again for the presidential nomination of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) when nominations are opened sometime later this year. This fact is very important in today’s epistle.
What then is my problem with the Bawumia lecture?
First, who constitutes the audience for this extremely partisan excursion on the economy? Way back in 1952, the polished, suave Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic candidate for the American Presidency, told his audience after a similar gushy intellectual address that he hopes all intelligent Americans would vote for him! His opponent, General Dwight Eisenhower, who won handsomely, was an acknowledged warrior and the then President of Columbia University, an Ivy League university.
Too many people in the NPP are unnecessarily bookish, indulging in the idle academic pastime of intellectual gimmickry, affecting a spirit of learnedness which turns off real voters, and have done so since party politics began in this country in 1947.
To be charitable, this kind of politicking tickles only the guilty consciences of the comfortable Accra elites who have no impact whatsoever on electoral outcomes in Ghana, and who wonder, why those who win are not paragons of their rancid intellectual pursuits but those who appeal to real people with real problems to be confronted daily.
Boneshaker economy
Second, it is very worrying for an acclaimed banker and economist to deliver an overview of current economic developments through the dishonest device of only retailing and criticising the liabilities side of the economic equation.
When was it in our history since, say, 1900, that our economy could not have been described as a ‘bone-shaker economy?’ It is this kind of distorted perspective that permits others of his ilk to describe our economy as a Guggisberg economy. Does Dr Bawumia honestly believe nothing good is happening in our economy, and that this is the result of weak policy choices?
My view of our current difficulties, which has persisted since the latter days of the Rawlings Presidency, is that growth is occurring phenomenally in certain sectors which have stretched public revenues to the limit, and would continue to do so for the foreseeable future. The principal sector is energy consumption. The only answer possible under any Ghanaian government is building capacity for the medium and long term.
But capacity-building in energy takes time, and it is enormously expensive, even without the albatross of an over-bloated public service and Single Spine. Our favourite bogeyman, Nigeria, also has internal needs and priorities. It is the bounden duty of true patriots to recognise and acknowledge this as a real growth opportunity. An NPP government wont do anything different from what President Mahama is doing.
Achilles heel
The Central University lecture and the politics surrounding it, and the announcement the previous week of the divine intentions of Nana Akufo-Addo, are hiding from us stark political facts that would surely come to haunt the NPP, come 2016. Their 2008 and 2012 candidate was first defeated internally in the NPP party by President Kufuor, and nationally the first time by President Mills, and again by President Mahama from the Northern Region.
Dr Bawumia is the Achilles heel of current NPP politics, and his lecture goes on to reinforce the image of the party as both too elitist and too sectarian in its approach to national issues.