IMF PROGRAMME: What Will Nana Akufo-Addo Do With it?

Nana Akufo Addo, President Elect of Ghana

By Ekow Mensah

Election campaigns have a way of revealing the direction of policy of those who participate in it and the institutions they represent and from all indications the in-coming NPP administration must be very unhappy about the Mahama governments’ deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Vice President –Elect Alhaji Mahamoud Bawumia was emphatic that the deal with the IMF showed how far down the drain the Ghanaian economy had travelled.

For him that deal was indicative of the incompetence and mismanagement of the Mahama administration.

Mr Sammy Awuku, National youth organiser of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) used the IMF deal to scare voters away from voting for President John DramaniMahama.

He said the Government and the IMF had agreed on the “rationalisation of labour” and that this meant that thousands of public sector workers would be retrenched from 2017.

He said on “Peace FM” that workers would be taking a great risk if they voted for President Mahamaand the National Democratic Congress (NDC).

Mr John Boadu, Acting General Secretary of the NPP congratulated the Kufuor administration on several occasions for removing Ghana from the claws of the IMF and chastised President Mahama and his team for dragging the Ghanaian economy into the gutters again.

From the pronouncements of leading figures of the NPP, it stands to reason that the party and its leaders have been unhappy with the deal with the IMF.

Having profited from bashing the Mahama administration for doing a deal with the IMF, the question is what will Nana Akufo-Addo do about this deal?

Will the Akufo-Addo government abrogate the agreement with the IMF?

Interestingly the neo-liberal path to economic management has had a devastating impact on the Ghanaian economy

In 1983 the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) went into an embrace with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank which produced the so-called Economic Recovery Programme (ERP).

Within two years of the implementation of the ERP, more than 300,000 workers from the civil and public services, were retrenched,subsidies on agriculture and such social services as health and education were withdrawn.

The implementation of the ERP also led to a massive privatisation of state enterprises and the devaluation of the national currency by more than 23,000 per cent.

Given the right-wing orientation of an Akufo- Addo government, it is doubtful if it can or will abrogate the deal with the IMF.

The question is, will it then retrench labour in 2017 as alleged by Mr Awuku?

Editorial

OUR FOREIGN POLICY

Nana AddoDankwaAkufo-Addo, President-Elect fully understands the weight of foreign policy and how that can impact on domestic policy.

Indeed, having been Foreign Minister before, Nana needs no lectures on Ghana’s foreign policy orientation.

What we intend to do in this editorial is to remind him of the key ingredients in Ghana’s foreign policy and how they must play out today.

Right from independence on March 6, 1957, Ghana has been seen as the torch bearer of the national liberation movement in Africa and for African unity.

Under the respected leadership of Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana made a full commitment to uphold the rights of all people to determine their own destiny.

If this remains our commitment and there is no reason why it shouldn’t, then Ghana must vigorously support the struggles of the Saharawi people to free themselves from Moroccan colonial occupation.

The Saharawi people remain the last colonised people on the African continent and they deserve our solidarity.

Similarly, Ghana ought to support the struggle against the colonial occupation of Palestine.

AIDS CASES GO UP IN GHANA
By Edward Adeti

At least 669 persons have died from HIV/AIDS with 698 new infections recorded in the Upper East Region, the Ghana Health Service (GHS) has announced.

A report compiled in 2015 and cited this month by the Upper East Regional Health Directorate has also revealed that 6,397 people are living with the disease with 3,886 persons- only about a half of the infected numbers- said to be on antiretroviral therapy.

The disturbing developments come amid claims by the directorate that the HIV prevalence rate has dropped in the region with antiretroviral treatment clinics established in all thirteen municipalities and districts.

“We are the only region in Ghana that has been able to attain hundred percent district antiretroviral treatment clinic establishment coverage by increasing the number of antiretroviral clinics from 9 to 16 since 2014. Every district now can provide HIV care, treatment and support without referring to any other district as it used to be few years ago,” the regional director of health, Dr. Kofi Issah, stated at the regional commemoration of the World AIDS Day at Navrongo, a town in the western part of the region.

“Our region has continued to register a consistent decline in HIV prevalence rate from 2.1% in 2012 to 1.5% in 2015. The proportion of HIV-positive pregnant women put on antiretroviral treatment increased from 35.1% in 2013 to 94.9% in 2015. There has been reduction in HIV infection vertical transmission among babies from 7.3% in 2012 to 5.7% in 2015,” he added.

Navrongo rocked by HIV upsurge 

Navrongo, capital of the Kassena-Nankana Municipality, has been reported as showing what the regional health directorate describes as a “consistent increase” in HIV prevalence rate since 2013.

The worrying trend prompted authorities to hold this year’s observance of the World AIDS Day in that busy capital with several market women and students from basic and senior high schools involved in a road march that preceded a durbar at the COS Park.

“Despite the positive consistent reduction in HIV prevalence our region has recorded over the past three years, there is a cause to worry as the situation is on the reverse in Navrongo where records show a consistent increase in prevalence rate in the past three years- 1.2% in 2013, 1.6% in 2014 and 1.8% in 2015,” Dr. Issah disclosed at the grassless park.

For a capital scourged by the draining virus on a troubling scale and playing a regional host for the World AIDS Day celebration, the organisers of the event did not lose their footing about what to do on that rare occasion. The Ghana AIDS Commission pitched tents on the verge of the durbar ground with a solemn call for voluntary HIV testing, breast cancer screening and blood pressure measurement. And scores, in rapid but cautious response, took turns in a queue to be examined.

Babies at risk of HIV as region mourns shortage of midwives
The regional health directorate also painted the picture of a region where a chronic shortage of midwives, whose role in preventing the transmission of the virus from mothers to babies has been crucial, could put newborns at the risk of sharing the viral loads their infected mothers carry.

“The region is faced with limited midwives who play [a] pivotal role in the comprehensive prevention from mother to child transmission and general HIV testing intervention services. This situation has the tendency to compromise the delivery of quality services since the limited midwives are overwhelmed with work as they run both static and outreach services. Due to dwindling financial support, our quest to build the staff capacity to offer the service is affected,” Dr. Issah pointed out.

He added: “The number of midwives and community health nurses trained on comprehensive HIV testing services is far below the target of at least 2 per facility. Stigma and discrimination exhibited towards people living with HIV from the society, poor family support for affected persons and lack of NGOs and philanthropists in the region to support in the HIV fight are also a cause for worry. Coupled with this is transportation constraint. Motorbikes and cars to facilitate outreach services and antiretroviral delivery to lower-level facilities are also not readily available- which has become a major bottleneck in all service delivery facilities.”

Sanctions for mockers of people living with AIDS
It was also announced at the durbar that those who inflicted any form of stigma or discrimination on people living with HIV/AIDS would not go unpunished by the law from the beginning of 2017.

The HIV-related sanctions, according to the Upper East Regional Technical Coordinator of the Ghana AIDS Commission, Dr. Gifty Apiung Aninanya, are backed by a new Act.
“We are entering the year 2017 with a new Act for the Ghana AIDS Commission. Some of the striking aspects of the new Ghana AIDS Commission Act are the provision it makes for sanctions against people who stigmatise and discriminate against persons who live with HIV, the need to address the human rights needs of people living with HIV and other vulnerable populations.

“The Act also makes room for a less [manageable] Commission- which in my view will ensure efficiency and cost-effective administration of the Commission. It is my fervent hope that we all will support the implementation of the new Act when it comes into force,” Dr. Aninanya said.

António Guterres sworn in as UN Secretary-General

Antonio Guterres

A humanist, a listener, António Guterres, ex-Prime Minister of Portugal, ex-Director of UNHCR, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, ex-President of International Socialist, has been sworn in as United Nations Secretary-General, over the UN Charter. A new chapter in world history is due to begin with a hands-on, people person in charge.

The United Nations gains more than a breath of fresh air with the appointment of the Portuguese ex-Prime Minister and ex-UNHCR Director, António Guterres, as the next Secretary-General. The UN gets a free thinker, a man of integrity and courage, someone who is more than an apparatchik, someone who can make a difference, a people person.

António Guterres fought his winning election campaign to lead his Socialist Party to victory after ten years of governance by the PSD, or Social Democrats, under the then PM Aníbal Silva, had led the country to breaking point, with the expression "The Portuguese are not a business. They are people". That expression sums up António Guterres.

Brilliant student

António Guterres, born in 1949 in Lisbon, was a brilliant student - in fact he was awarded the country's best student award in 1965, before entering the prestigious Technical University (IST) where he graduated with a 19 out of 20 in physics and electrical engineering. He started his life as a professor, but after the Revolution in 1974, joined the Socialist Party and dedicated himself to politics.

Coming from the Catholic Socialist area, he rose through the ranks and became General Secretary of the Portuguese Socialist Party from 1992 to 2002, and Prime Minister of Portugal (twice) from 1995 to 2002. Simultaneously he was President of International Socialist from 1999 to 2005, then United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees from 2005 to 2015.

His discourse has always been to gain the trust of the people through understanding the people and working for them, leading by example and practising inclusive politics, working towards understanding, working against marginalization.

Working as a volunteer helping poor children

But there are two other stories coming out of Portugal which also place António Guterres, the person, in a nutshell. One is the fact that his own neighbor in his block of apartments in Lisbon had no idea that he was the ex-Prime Minister, or even that he worked at the UNHCR - she thought he was just another transparent, anonymous regular guy...and the other came from a mutual friend.

The day after António Guterres resigned as Prime Minister (after an arguably weak showing in the municipal elections - Guterres understood that petty domestic politics was not where he wanted to stay), this friend asked me if I knew where Guterres was. I said no. Then he asked "And do you know what he is doing right now?" I said "No, I suppose he is relaxing and enjoying real life after politics?" "No, I will tell you where he is and what he is doing. Right now, he is sitting with children from poor social backgrounds, helping them with their math homework in a voluntary coaching center, working as a volunteer, helping poor kids with their studies".

This is the António Guterres I introduce you to, a people person. And more than this. At the time he did not tell anyone, nor did he wish anyone to know, what he was doing. A remarkable man, a remarkable person, as the world is about to find out for itself.

António Guterres, the People Person, represents the very thing the international community needs at this delicate moment in time, namely dialogue, debate and discussion, the fundamentals of democracy. The personal history of António Guterres, chosen as the next Secretary-General of the UNO, makes him the G-spot in international relations.

António Guterres' personal political epitaph stands in Portugal over a decade after he resigned as Prime Minister after winning two elections, and that epitaph is one of a compassionate, caring and thoughtful leader who aligns himself with and feels social issues, favoring an inclusive and egalitarian society and striving to achieve these ideals not only in his public and political life, but also in his personal time. He is a man of principles, of values, of action and courage. He stands against the vested interest, he stands up against the lobbies and looks them square in the eye.

Guterres is no Portuguese pushover, he represents one of the world's oldest nations, home to one of the most widely spoken languages worldwide, the Super Power of the 1500s, which built 3,000 fortresses between Ceuta and Malacca, dominating the coastline around Africa, Arabia, Persia, India and Asia and across the Ocean, giving itself Brazil (by Tordesillas) before it was officially encountered in 1500.

Compassionate and caring

His compassion and caring stem from his personal approach, which is forming consensus through sharing ideas and this means respecting the fundamental precepts of democracy - debate, discussion and dialogue over the ABC of prepotence, the Arrogance, Bullying and Chauvinism approach favored by NATO - and respecting international law, namely following the terms of the UN Charter and not breaching it, another approach favored by the USA and its sickening NATO lapdogs in Europe.

If we take a good look at the world around us today, we see multiple examples of why conflicts have started and continued, and the bottom line is a lack of dialogue. Once again we have two "sides" - the broad coalition called NATO, led by the FUKUS Axis (France-UK-US) and the defenders of the social model, those who respect the hearts and minds of the citizens of the world, namely the BRICS, most of Latin America, most of Africa, most of Asia and most of Oceania.

Let us hope that António Guterres takes the position followed by the Humanists in the international community, which is very much the position and approach defended by the Russian Federation, by the PR China, by Brazil and most of Latin America, by India, by Malaysia, by Indonesia and most of Asia, by South Africa and most of the African continent, namely a multilateral approach to crisis management, sitting all the players round a table and reaching an agreement, achieving peace, development and education - rather than war, destruction and deployment of troops.

This peaceful approach is evidently not possible with the unilateral, holier-than-thou, top-down approach adopted by the powers which only yesterday were drawing lines on maps and ruining lives and livelihoods of entire peoples over many generations. These are the ones that practised and enriched themselves by slavery, these are the ones that practised colonialism and imperialism, carving up communities, stealing resources.

When they told me that the Bulgarian Kristalina Georgieva, who was fast-tracked into the list of contestants for the UN top job, was the favorite of Merkel, Nuland and the heads of the IMF and World Bank, and when they told me that António Guterres had won against these odds, something smiled in my heart. Something smiled for the future.

Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey

Pravda.Ru 

Twitter: @TimothyBHinchey

timothy.hinchey@gmail.com

CUBA WILL BE YOUR MONUMENT

Commandante Fidel Castro

By Yudy Castro Morales 

Neither squares nor streets with your name. No effigy to lay flowers. Detached from the coldness of statues. Distanced from marble and bronze which, inert, erode with time. Your ideas multiplied in men and women, that will be your monument.

You loathed any semblance of a personality cult, any excess of veneration, for it is something of the greats to not appear to be so, and leave the glories, sublime or epic, trapped in small kernels of corn. The continuity lies in planting them.

I am one of those who imagined at least one sculpture, dressed as a guerrilla, atop a mountain in the Sierra, looking out into the distance, some say into the future. There where you used to come and go.

During your pilgrimage through every place that the caravan once baptized with liberty, the legend of your immortality grew, of your eternal presence, beyond exaltations or idealizations that forget the material with which heroes are made: flesh and bone. It became clearer just how a man becomes a people, how history reveres him and how his ideas, all of them, are born of what is just.

And for me, that singular space where I could adore you became less necessary.

After all, milimetrically designed, it will not exist, beyond that rock with a heart of your ashes. But there will be an entire Cuba to cast your lot with, with each of her corners and streets to remember you.

When we see an unusual gathering or a long queue, we will ask ourselves whether you are going to speak; when we hear of some injustice or delayed response we will say that in your time, that would not have happened, at least if you knew about it; when we want to go to the root of problems, understand everything, and risk everything to save it all, we will say that is what you did. And you will continue to be born in everything that appears fatuous to us, in every perfectible work that will dignify us.

Long before your departure, there were many who, hanging your picture on the wall, asked you for miracles as one asks a god, or asked a god to take care of you, to give you health and a long life, because your existence was an anchor to their faith. Now there will be little to ask for and much more to do. And we will have to build the “miracles” with our own hands.

In his song to you, which has become an anthem during these days, Raúl Torres said that he had seen striding “in front of the caravan, slowly without a rider, a horse for you.” And Changó, that orisha of strength and justice that the Yoruba religion celebrates, rode on horseback, just as you decided to imbue a rock with the life of a warrior.

There will be no school, hospital, or avenue with your name. A country will be your monument. A country moving forward.

SWEDEN RUNS OUT OF GARBAGE

Apparently, Sweden has run out of garbage and have now been forced to import rubbish from other countries to keep its state-of-the-art recycling plants going.

The Scandinavian country’s recycling system is so sophisticated that only less than 1 per cent of its household waste has been sent to landfill last year.

The country sources almost half its electricity from renewables.

“Swedish people are quite keen on being out in nature and they are aware of what we need do on nature and environmental issues. We worked on communications for a long time to make people aware not to throw things outdoors so that we can recycle and reuse,” said Anna-Carin Gripwall, director of communications for Avfall Sverige, the Swedish Waste Management’s recycling association.

Sweden, which was one of the first countries to implement a heavy tax on fossil fuels in 1991, has implemented a cohesive national recycling policy so that even though private companies undertake most of the business of importing and burning waste, the energy goes into a national heating network to heat homes through the extremely cold winter.

“That’s a key reason that we have this district network, so we can make use of the heating from the waste plants. In the southern part of Europe they don’t make use of the heating from the waste, it just goes out the chimney. Here we use it as a substitute for fossil fuel,” Gripwell was quoted as saying by the Independent.

“There’s a ban on landfill in European Union countries, so instead of paying the fine they send it to us as a service. They should and will build their own plants, to reduce their own waste, as we are working hard to do in Sweden,” Gripwall said.

“Hopefully there will be less waste and the waste that has to go to incineration should be incinerated in each country. But to use recycling for heating you have to have district heating or cooling systems, so you have to build the infrastructure for that, and that takes time,” she added.

Swedish municipalities are investing in futuristic waste collection techniques, like automated vacuum systems in residential blocks, removing the need for collection transport, and underground container systems that free up road space and get rid of any smells, the report said.