DAY OF SHAME: SFG PLANS BIG EVENTS IN ACCRA

Prof. Akilagpa Sawyerr

The Socialist Forum of Ghana (SFG) is planning to observe the 49^th anniversary of the overthrow of Osagyefo Dr kwame Nkrumah, founder of the Republic of Ghana in a big way.

On February 24^th, 1966, the Central Intelligence Agency of the USA assisted by other Western Intelligence agencies and with the support of internal forces of reactions overthrew the Nkrumah government.

In a formal correspondence to the foreign and commonwealth office in London the British high commission in Accra justified the overthrow of the Nkrumah government in 1963 by claiming that he was making the African too politically conscious.

This year’s anniversary falls on Tuesday February 24 and SFG is feverishly planning a big symposium at the Teachers Hall in Accra.

Professor Akilagpa Sawyerr former Vice Chancellor of the University of Ghana and a member of the Council of State has been invited as a speaker.

Professor Sawyerr is a respectable lawyer and an academic and his credentials as an Nkrumaist are impeccable.

His participation in the symposium is a major boost to the effort to revisit the dark side of Ghanaian history.

Dr Yao Graham, of the Third World Network has also agreed to speak at the event.

Dr Yao Graham is also a respected left wing activist both home and abroad.

He has been actively involved in a wide range of struggles for the improvement of the working and living conditions of working people.

The third speaker at the event will be a gender and left wing activist, Nana Yaa Gyamfua a member of the All African People’s Revolutionary Party.

The event will be chaired by Comrade Kwesi Pratt Jnr a member of the Socialist Forum Ghana and a Managing Edition of “The Insight”. SFG source told “The Insight “that invitations are extended to all progressive organizations, special institutions and the general public to participate in the grand event .

Those who  have spoken at previous events include Professor Agyemang Badu Akosa of the Convention Peoples Party (CPP), Dr Gamal Nasser Adam of the University of Ghana, Professor Raymond Osei of the University Of Cape Coast and Dr Dzidzo Tsifata of the University Of Ghana.

Editorial

INSULTNG THE PRESIDENT

President John Dramani Mahama is not the first Ghanaian president to suffer unprintable insults from his opponents.

Indeed all presidents before him including President John Agyekum Kuffour and Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah had their fair share of unjustifiable insults.

On the presidents recent visits to Germany some element of the Ghanaian opposition organized a demonstration against him.

Our view is that the right to demonstrate is guaranteed by the 1992 constitution and that the citizens ought to be free to organize or participate in demonstrations even if they are wrong.

However, the right to free expression which is the umbrella under which the right to demonstrate falls does not confer the right to peddle falsehood and to pour insult on demonstrators.

The Insight is simply shocked by some of the inscriptions on the placards held by some of the demonstrators in Germany.

It is time to stop those insults because they belittle the political debate.

Please stop it!

The fault is not within the Electoral Commission, Akufo-Addo and Co.

Nana Akufo Addo

By Dr. Michael J.K. Bokor

I have been wondering why all manner of people and so-called civil society groups, politically motivated ones, and the clergy cannot contribute anything useful to enhance Ghana’s democracy apart from targeting the Electoral Commission and making utterances to suggest that it is the cause of the woes that they alone have perceived as afflicting Ghana’s political system.

Our political developments over the years have attracted attention all over the world, and we have been commended for ensuring political stability and national cohesion, especially since the coming into being of this 4th Republic. No doubt, a lot has gone into creating that impression and proving to the world that despite the acrimony exhibited by malcontents who cannot accomplish their political ambitions, Ghanaians know and value peace, national integrity, and oneness as mechanisms for political stability. Ghana has remained an enviable oasis in the desert of instability, plain carnage, and brimstone and hell in our part of the world.

Much credit should be given to all those whose efforts have brought us thus far. So also should the institutions charged with superintending over the electoral process be commended for their sterling role. That is where Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan and his Electoral Commission stand stall in the estimation of every reasonable Ghanaian who knows what partisan politics entails.

Not so for the holier-than-thou politicians banded together in the NPP who cannot bring themselves to accept their sad fate at the end of peaceful, free and fair general elections. After all that happened to put Kufuor in office, and even in 2004 when Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey unilaterally usurped the authority of the Electoral Commission to pronounce Kufuor as the winner of the Presidential elections, they still cannot see themselves as problems in the electoral process. They are very quick to point fingers at the EC as if it has chosen them for a special vengeance!!

Within this context, we condemn the orchestrated public posturing and damning utterances by all those malcontents creating the impression that the EC is unfit to help Ghana sustain its democracy. That is why I find the current campaign against the EC by just anybody or any group of people to be really reprehensible.

The latest has come from an advocacy group calling itself CENAB-UK that “is calling on the Electoral Commission of Ghana to respond positively to the numerous calls for electoral reforms in Ghana ahead of the 2016 elections.”

In a statement, it said that it “believes that as a nation we have entered a new year with lots of promises and the desire to start afresh and tackle national issues on the scale of priorities and electoral reforms which will forestall the derailment of Ghana’s peace and political stability should be the foremost on the national agenda.

The Christian Council as well as many other civil society organisations such as the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), the Institute for Democratic Governance (IDEG), IMANI-Ghana have all added their voices to that of the Christian Council as well as other political parties but so far it appears the Electoral Commission has failed to see the need to reform its operations.

It noted that “the recent call by Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo recently in London for an independent body to help review and audit the voters’ register was met with a stiff resistance by the EC, through its spokesperson Mr. Christian Owusu-Parry. Always quoting the constitution as the basis for its independence and therefore subject to no other’s supervision, the Electoral Commission has become oblivious to the number of calls for reform.” (See details at http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=341613).

I won’t bat an eyelid anymore, but I will say aboveboard that calls of this sort are misplaced. They are designed to paint the EC black and create the impression that it is not fit to superintend over the next general elections; or to set the stage for some treachery and chicanery by those still disturbed and torn apart by their electoral losses at Elections 2008 and 2012. I condemn those making such calls and urge them to look into themselves rather than wasting time and energy criticizing the EC.

In truth, I see nothing wrong with the modus operandi being used by the EC for the conduct of the polls in Ghana. These very modus operandi have been in place since the establishment of the 4th Republic, which has seen the defeat of the NDC at Elections 2000 and 2004 and that of the NPP at Elections 2008 and 2012.

When the NPP won those elections (even with the backing of the mushroom political parties because it couldn't do so alone), none of these ugly noise makers talked about pitfalls; neither did they use their "coconuts" to determine what ensured Kufuor's victory. They went to bed, satisfied that their dreams had come true. But as Fate would have it, those dreams came true only to a point and metamorphosed into a terrible nightmare that has been haunting them ever since the electorate jettisoned the NPP at Election 2008 and will do so again for as long as they don't see anything worthwhile coming from it. No one needs any divination to say so.

Clearly, the EC has the constitutional mandate to organize the elections and ensure that our democracy grows on the basis of the free exercise of franchise by the citizens. It has put everything in place and has continued to appraise its performances at every juncture to be abreast of developments. It has recorded details of voters and opened the voters’ register at various times to admit eligible prospective voters. Nowhere in the course of performing its duties has the EC left any trace behind for anybody to point to as a dereliction of its duty or a skewed handling of issues to favour any particular party.

The issues raised by the NPP malcontents after Elections 2012 ended in smoke when the Supreme Court threw out their petition and validated President Mahama’s victory. The basis of that useless petition was technicalities associated with PINK SHEETS, which only went to prove how hollow they are as politicians.

Now, they are talking about the voters’ register and creating the impression that there is something mystical or mysterious happening that already foreshadows their defeat at Election 2016. That is why Akufo-Addo is making the ugly noise; but that noise will return to hurt him. Has he taken a good look at himself to know why he isn’t favoured by the electorate? I wish he would so he can save himself from all this torment!!

To ask the EC to introduce or implement reforms is nonsensical, to put it mildly. What are the specific reforms that it should implement? And whose reforms are they? Those of the malcontents expending energy to fight against the tide or those of any credible institution that has established incontrovertible facts to prove that there is, indeed, a lot wrong with our electoral system as it has been all these years? Why do these people think that unless their viewpoints are accepted, everything going on in Ghana’s electoral system is bad? Such self-righteous characters will continue to laugh at the wrong side of their mouths.

I am not sure if they even know what the EC can or cannot do as far as their noisome advocacy is concerned. Does the EC have the constitutional backing to unilaterally introduce just anything into the equation as its attempt at reforming the electoral system? Or is it the collective effort of the stakeholders to do so?

To me, focusing on the EC and blaming it is nothing but the product of a fertile but poisonous figment of imagination. Baseless premonition or predilection to cause tension!!

What wins victory at the polls doesn’t have to lie with the EC. It has a lot to do with the politicians themselves. Their ability to reach out to the electorate with good campaign messages and their own personal qualities count a lot. No amount of reforms can put Akufo-Addo in power, as I can infer from the drift of the advocacy going on. He is so shortsighted as to place himself at the centre of it all as if bringing in those auditors to work on the voters’ register will make those who don’t want him as their President change their minds in the polling booth.

To cut a long story short, let me remind all those making this noise disguised as an “advocacy for electoral reforms” that they are known for their own political affiliations and shouldn’t deceive themselves that people cannot read deeper meanings into all the dust that they are raising. The truth is that they are so blind as not to see the doors of Heaven open to them and are going round the building, looking for windows to pass through.

That is the unavoidable consequence of “book” and “rogue” politics. Those who are well-cut-out to win general elections don’t go to all this distance. They simply reach out to the voters with convincing campaign messages and present themselves for scrutiny. They have nothing to fear and, therefore, don’t seek to hide behind technicalities. Only those who see the Presidency as their “birthright” will look for dung where no cow grazed.

For their information, the EC (as constituted and mandated to function) will do all that is constitutionally required to ensure that Ghana’s democracy thrives, at least, if only the voters can freely and fairly exercise their franchise quadriennially. It is the voters who determine contestants’ fate, not the Electoral Commission. Reforms or no reforms, candidates who fall short of the voters’ expectations will be cast adrift on the high seas of Ghanaian politics. In that sorry state, all they can do is to wail, weep (on the quiet), and gnash their teeth. But that won’t solve their problems.

They had better learn how to descend from their high horses of self-importance and self-righteousness to be favoured by the electorate. Voters like those they can relate to, not those who scare them stiff. In Ghana, it is only the political scarecrows who will turn to technicalities to circumvent the due process. And when they come out to complain, they worsen their plight, even as Election 2016 approaches. So long!!

The Madness Called Prophesy

Rev. Owusu Bempah

By Dr. Michael J.K. Bokor

The madness called “prophecy” is in full flight, so early in this year. The first one came from an Odiyifuo Tawiah barely two weeks ago that we quickly dismissed as obnoxiously opportunistic.

As if not wanting to be overdone, none other but the Rev. Isaac Owusu Bempah (Founder and Leader of the Glorious Word Ministry International), has sprung into action, gushing out a string of figments of an infested fertile imagination he labels as “prophecy”. He was speaking on OKAY FM’s Ade Akye Abia programme.

His preamble is that “The year 2015 will go down in history as the year of cataclysmic dirges”. And what are the main elements of that doomsday prophecy? Four of them:

1.     “I see the whole Ashanti Kingdom clad in black mourning a prominent person. [Refused to mention name]. I know, and God has shown to me what will happen to the Ashanti people. We must all pray for them to avert the bereavement”.

2.     A flagbearer of a great political party will die, but was quick to add that some comrades of the flagbearer have consulted him for prayers to prevent the untimely death. “People pretending to love Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo but want his downfall should be very careful. I have seen them all, and I know those burying live cows to destroy Nana Addo’s presidential ambition. There are so many things going on, but I will work towards that.”

3.     What is likely to happen to Ghana’s Vice President, Kwesi Amissah-Arthur this year will be perilous.
“Revelations about the vice-president is dangerous than the president [John Dramani Mahama]. We must pray”.

4.     “More celebrities will be jailed. A great musician in Ghana will die through sickness”.

This conman has the guts to go to this length because people create opportunities for him to gush out this kind of nonsense. He has his freedom of speech alright, and the right to ply his trade as a so-called “Man-of-God”. So also do we have the right to take him when he “brings himself” as he has been doing all this while.

What manner of “Man-of-God” is this who doesn’t foresee anything good about anybody or anything happening (or to happen) in Ghana?

The last time he originated rumours about the death of the Asantehene in South Africa, I thought that something drastic would be done to cripple him so he won’t abuse our senses and sensibilities any more. The so-called “spiritual forces” at Manhyia cursed him, threatened him, and vowed to take action against him if he didn’t apologize to the Asantehene and Asanteman. He didn’t budge, but nothing was done to him. He is an Asante and should know the consequences of his foolhardiness. Nothing more from me on that score.

Now, he has turned round to “prophesy” about the death of a prominent person to throw the whole Asanteman into a huge funereal mood. Although he wasn’t “man enough” to mention any name, one can easily infer from that part of his “prophecy” to suggest that he has the Asantehene on his radar. After all, which Asante is more prominent and whose death would shake the Asante roots so much?

Apart from the Asantehene, the next prominent personality is ex-President Kufuor; but if he dies, the mourning won’t be limited to Asanteman alone, which knocks him out of this madness from Owusu-Bempah.

As for his take on the death of a flagbearer of a great political party, no one needs any divination to know that he is talking about Akufo-Addo, which makes me wonder very much what exactly his agenda is. We have heard rumours concerning Akufo-Addo’s health, and Nana Akomea has just been debunking claims that Akufo-Addo has been “poisoned”.

For Owusu-Bempah to turn round to talk this way speaks volumes. And for him to behave as if he is Akufo-Addo’s spiritual fort makes me laugh really long, more so considering his claim that those ditching Akufo-Addo are burying live cows to reinforce their “against” manouevres. Burying live cows to thwart Akufo-Addo’s Presidential ambitions? Inconceivable.

The truth is that no one but Akufo-Addo is thwarting his own Presidential ambitions. We have written a lot on that score and won’t flog any dead horse but will opine that strategies for winning Presidential elections go beyond what Akufo-Addo has used thus far. And he hasn’t learnt the lesson yet. A long shot away from success!!

As for the nonsense about Vice President Amissah-Arthur and the so-called celebrities, not worth my bother.

This Owusu-Bempah needs serious disciplinary action to curb his kind of inanity. Is there a Christian Council in Ghana with any power/authority to discipline such errant characters abusing their calling in Christendom? These are the people who see nothing wrong with waywardness in their own circles but everything wrong with how President Mahama and his government are ruling Ghana. Such characters? The hottest place in hell is reserved for them, I daresay. Tweeeeeeeeeeeeeeaa!!

Je suis les victimes du Boko Haram!

Boko Haram Terrorists

Je suis les victimes du Boko Haram! I am the victims of Boko Haram in northern Nigeria, who were slaughtered in their thousands last week, a story overclouded by the terrorist attacks in which twenty people died in Paris. Another forgotten Africa story in a callous two-faced world with two sets of weights and measures.

So where was the solidarity march of Hollande, Cameron, Sarkozy, Poroshenko and Netanyahu, and company, in Nigeria? After all they were quick to show up in Paris, walking some fifty meters towards the media on a street which had been cleared of people and which had on both sidewalks armed police looking on, before the politicians split up and went their separate ways to the airport. All you have to do is see a photograph which was taken from a different angle.

So the Charlie Hebdo attack and subsequent shootings elsewhere served to further their own political careers - Cameron in his election year, Sarko clinging onto the fringes of French politics, Hollande sans femme, Bibi welcoming all French Jews to Israel and Poroshenko waving madly at some non-existent fairy on the empty sidewalk. What about Africa?

What about Africa, indeed? You know, the dark continent full of dark people and dark stories. A continent of danger, disease, disaster... or so our media would have us believe. That is why, ladies and gentlemen, in 2015, the benchmark year of the Millennium Development Goals, the vast majority of humankind is speaking about Charlie Hebdo's sell-out print run of three million copies today yet is unaware that anything happened in northern Nigeria.

In the town of Baga and the surrounding villages, this week on a six-day killing spree, terrorists from the Boko Haram militant group slaughtered, according to some reports, up to two thousand civilians - including women, children and the elderly. Twenty thousand people fled and are now living in precarious conditions in the bush around Baga, terrified for their lives. Buildings were razed to the ground, everyone that moved was slaughtered in cold blood. The motive appears to be an attempt to frighten people away from voting in the upcoming Presidential election on February 14.

The point is, why so many tears over twenty victims in Paris and none over two thousand victims in Nigeria? It is not necessary for anyone to answer the question, because the answer comes with western foreign policy and the media outlets which whitewash this and tarnish regions and continents outside North America, the EU and Australia as being threatening and menacing, justifying measures which increase security. In other words, justifying control of lobbies and the politicians they place in power, through the manipulation of fear, creating a powerful "id" to justify the "ego", a powerful "them" to justify the "us".

And so people are indifferent. They and their elected politicians (pawns used by the banking, energy, food, finance, pharmaceutical and weapons lobbies to further their interests) show indignation when a handful of white people are killed by a couple of psychopaths, when the right to freedom of expression is attacked. Yet they say nothing when western agents hack into social media and systematically try to interfere with e-mail accounts, social media accounts and websites. That for them is fair game. So much for freedom of expression.

But when two thousand Africans are slaughtered and twenty thousand others have to flee from their homes (whatever the exact figures) then nobody wants to know. It's Africa after all, the continent which hits the headlines with Ebola, drought and floods and massacres - disease, disaster and death - which apparently generates no good news stories.

And so ladies and gentlemen welcome to our comfy squeaky clean little world, where you can chortle in amusement watching belches on the Simpsons as you sip your Port wine, slurp your beer, guzzle your carbonated drinks and stuff yourselves with potato chips or bagels, throw into the trash thirty percent of the produce in your fridges every week, and swallow what the media feed you hook, line and sinker.

This is exactly why countries like France, the UK and US (the FUKUS Axis) manage to get away with their own terrorist acts in Libya (where they deployed munitions against civilians, where they sided with terrorists on their own lists of proscribed groups), in Syria (where they sided with those who perpetrated chemical attacks and then blamed President Assad, where they sided again with terrorists to overthrow a Government) and acts of intrusion and interference such as in Ukraine, where the democratically elected President was ousted in a Fascist coup, before Fascist massacres were perpetrated by those with whom the west sides.

And for the victims of Boko Haram in Nigeria? Where are Cameron, Hollande, Netanyahu and Poroshenko? Nowhere! Je suis les victims du Boko Haram!

Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey

Western fawning to shore up Saudi House of Cards

Saudi King Salman Bin Abdulaziz

By Finian Cunningham

The fawning by the American and British governments toward Saudi Arabia over the death of King Abdullah is for good - albeit unspoken - reasons. The oil-rich feudal kingdom is a lynchpin of Western hegemony in the strategically vital Middle East region. At a time when the region is gripped by instability more than ever, the House of Saud now enters a dangerous period of transition, which presents deep alarm to the Western patrons.

Britain’s own “crown prince” Charles flew to Saudi Arabia this weekend along with Premier David Cameron to pay tributes, on the passing away of Abdullah (90) last Thursday. Flags above Buckingham Palace, 10 Downing Street and Westminster Abbey were flown at half-mast as a sign of respect. US Vice President Joe Biden represented Barack Obama at the funeral proceedings. Obama hailed the late king and the US-Saudi relationship as a “force for stability and security in the Middle East.”

American and British human rights campaigners criticized their governments for hypocritically extolling Saudi Arabia. Just this week a Saudi journalist was being flogged with 1,000 lashes for his criticism of the ruling system, adding to a legion of other human rights violations in the secretive kingdom, including the mass imprisonment of thousands of political prisoners and the denial of women’s basic rights, as well as a vicious crackdown on a pro-democracy movement in the Eastern Province.

This apparent double-think by Western governments is of course nothing new. Ever since US President Franklin D Roosevelt signed a strategic pact with the founding monarch of Saudi Arabia, King Abdulaziz Ibn Saud, in 1945, the kingdom was given an ironclad commitment of American military protection - and freedom to practice its feudal system regardless of human rights or democratic demands within the kingdom. America set up a “tyranny in perpetuity.”

In return Saudi Arabia - possessor of a fifth of the world’s known oil reserves - would serve as the oil supplier to America and more importantly ensure that global oil trade would be conducted in US dollars, thus giving the petrodollar the pre-eminent place as the world’s reserve currency. That arrangement continues to underpin American financial hegemony even though US economic demise has meant that the dollar has long outlived its role as a viable international standard of global exchange currency. The bankrupt dollar system is sustained by the Saudi “special relationship.” No wonder Washington is falling over itself with condolences.

Another quid pro quo for American and British patronage of the Saudi monarchy is that it would use its gargantuan oil revenues to buy endless military weapons from these two Western states. Saudi Arabia and its related Persian Gulf oil monarchies are the world’s biggest weapons importers, which is vital to shoring up the American and British military-industrial complexes that have become central to their bankrupt capitalist economies.

Saudi Arabia, along with Israel, is also a key proxy military force for Washington and London in their pursuit of covert regime-change objectives in the Middle East, for example in Syria, as well as fomenting instability against Iran.

So, naturally from the viewpoint of American and British governments, the fawning toward Saudi Arabia over the death of its king is not at all incongruous. It is very much part of the “special relationship” of indulging a tyrannical despotic regime for their strategic interests - interests which do not include human rights or democracy. Indeed, interests that rely on the suppression of human rights and democracy, which the House of Saud has dutifully obliged, as can be clearly seen in the way Saudi forces moved swiftly in 2011 to crush the pro-democracy movement in Bahrain.

But what gives the latest outpouring of American and British sycophancy urgency is the imperative need to secure the shaky realm within the Saudi kingdom.

The trouble with a backward absolute monarchy in which the state is run like a family business is that secretive succession of power is prone to explosive petty rivalries. With no constitution or democratic system of governance, the House of Saud is vulnerable to power grabs based on perceived rightful lineage among hundreds of potential suitors.

One of the many contradictions of the feudal kingdom is the practice of polygamy (multiple marriages) by the House of Saud. Ibn Saud, the founder of the state in 1933, is reckoned to have had 22 wives and more than 36 sons. They in turn have had sons - and all can claim some right to hereditary power.

The late King Abdullah, who took over in 2005, is believed to have had 24 wives and at least four sons. Three of them, Princes Mutaib, Turki and Mishaal, hold positions of considerable power.

Abdullah’s successor is his half-brother Salman. At age 79 and in ailing health the new king’s days for ruling are already numbered.

The next in line is 69-year-old Muqrin, another half-brother, who has been made Crown Prince. However, Muqrin, whose mother is from a Yemeni family, is not considered by some members of the House of Saud as having the “right pedigree.”

Ibn Saud, who died in 1953, has three other surviving sons apart from Salman and Muqrin, and each of them have claims to the throne, as do their offspring.

Then there are the sons of the recently deceased Crown Princes Sultan (2011) and Nayef (2012). The latter’s progeny Muhammed bin Nayef has been made deputy Crown Prince and is in control of the powerful interior ministry. He is also said to have strong support from Washington and London. Whereas, Sultan’s son Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the notorious former spy chief, has since been pushed out of favor, partly owing to his disastrous terror meddling in Syria and partly owing to the death of his father and therefore loss of the crown prince link.

The practice of polygamy is the way for the House of Saud to use marriage ties and bloodlines as a means to cement relations across the tribal factions in the kingdom. While that arcane method of power control may have worked in the past to consolidate Saudi Arabia as it emerged from a lawless desert nomadic entity into an stupendously oil-rich unitary state, the problem is that the custom creates an endless array of potential heirs to the throne. As time goes on, and the hereditary lines become more complicated and entwined, the clash of perceived heirs to power will become all the more sharp.

For now, the new Saudi monarch, King Salman, is emphasizing continuity and coherence, as are Washington and London - evidenced by their obsequious rush to the Saudi court this weekend.

But Western pandering to a backward despotic regime is a sign of its deepest fear - that continuity and stability within Saudi Arabia is far from certain. The Saudi House of Cards has a lot of wild cards in play in regard to its power structure. And, uncomfortably for the West, this comes at a time when conflicts across the Middle East – due in large part to Western-backed Saudi machinations - are on the boil.