Ecowas Condemns Pseudo Democracy

West African leaders (ECOWAS) are calling on Laurent Gbagbo to step down as president of Ivory Coast in favor of a former prime minister who won the United-Nations certified vote.

Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan chairs the Economic Community of West African States. Following an emergency meeting with the leaders of Burkina Faso, Ghana, Liberia, Mali, Senegal, and Togo, President Jonathan said Mr. Gbagbo should step down because he lost last month's vote.

"The votes of the people must count. Where we have a democracy where the votes do not count, ECOWAS will no longer accept such a pseudo or false democracy," said Jonathan.

President Jonathan says West African leaders agree that former prime minister Alassane Ouattara won the election and is now Ivory Coast's rightful leader. "We reviewed the whole issues, the whole elections, and have come to the conclusion that Ouattara was the person who duly won that election.  Of course you know that we no longer accept illegitimate government within the subregion," he said.

So the regional alliance suspended Ivory Coast from all of its activities.

 Both men have named new prime ministers and have the support of rival armed forces. Mr. Gbagbo is supported by senior military officers who control southern regions. Mr. Ouattara is supported by former rebels who control northern regions.

President Jonathan called on the United Nations and the African Union to work with West African leaders to keep the peace. "We know we have a challenge on our hands. We have two people claiming to be the president. We have two prime ministers. We have two sets of executive councils. And of course that is a very, very abnormal situation. But we believe that we will get over this ugly phase of the history of the subregion," he said.

The first sign of the conflict's regional impact is the arrival of refugees in neighboring Liberia.

The rebuke by his former colleagues is unlikely to change Mr. Gbagbo's approach to the political crisis. ECOWAS joins the United Nations, the African Union, the European Union, Britain, France, the United States, and Canada in calling for Mr. Gbabgo to yield power.

President Jonathan says West African leaders want Mr. Gbagbo to yield power without delay because they do not believe a government of national unity is in Ivory Coast's best interests. Given the experience of power-sharing governments in Kenya and Zimbabwe, the Nigerian leader says that does not really work.

COLONIAL ECONOMIC STRUCTURES IN AFRICA: THEIR PURPOSE AND LEGACY

. THE ORIGINS OF THE COLONIAL ECONOMY
• Colonization was simply an extension of the trading ties that
existed for over 400 years between Africa and Europe. Peasant
agriculture characterized most parts of the region and
there was no money economy. Production patterns were conditioned
by land availability.
• Trade involved slaves, gold, ivory, salt, and other commodities.
Trade in slaves is argued to have deprived the region of
enormous human capital.
• The trade in different items continued until the middle of the
19th century, when European governments decided to take
administrative control of the regions they traded with (Berlin
Conference of 1884).
• The decision to colonize large parts of Africa was driven by
(1) a need to support the industrial revolution with disrupted
flows of raw materials in large quantities, cheap labor,
and the need for new markets for industrial goods (2) strategic
competition among European powers, both politically and
militarily, and (3) individual hot heads (adventurers) that
sought to achieve fame.
THE STRUCTURE OF THE COLONIAL ECONOMY
There were basically three types of colonial economies in Africa:
(a) “peasant-statist” regimes known all over West Africa and
parts of East Africa
(b) The settler economies that developed plantations using
huge labor reserves in eastern and southern Africa
(c) Economy organized around chartered companies as in
Congo.
• The peasant-statist regimes were basically primary
commodity export enclaves. The colonial government
provided the minimum of infrastructure to ensure
that export crops would be produced by peasant
farmers and shipped to Europe. Taxation was intended
to make the administration self-sufficient, and
social services were minimal (largely coming from
missionaries). The state (colonial government) determined
what should be produced for exports, in
what quantities, and also determined producer prices.
There was minimal private participation outside agriculture,
and hardly any processing took place.
• In the settler economy, plantation agriculture was
controlled by European settlers that confiscated land
and marginalized indigenous people. Investment was
much more significant as the owners of the capital
also lived in those colonies. While exporting mainly
primary commodities also, the role of the government
was minimal, hence influencing largely the incentive
structure.
• In the chartered economies, the main characteristic
was the involvement in mining by those chartered
companies, the little regard for agriculture and associated
labor, and infrastructure only to support mining
and related activities. There was little attempt to
develop domestic governance structures and no investment
in human capital development and social
services.
• In many economies there were reforms in some colonies,
largely in response to growing nationalist agitation.
Reforms brought in greater participation by
the indigenous people in the running of the colonies
and hence greater attention paid to social services.
The structures of the economies remained the same.
THE LEGACY OF THE COLONIAL ECONOMY
Hardly any industrial production; MVA was 5% in Ghana at
time of independence.
• The monetized economy could be found in only select regions
of the country;
• Hence there were hardly any domestic markets for land, labor
and capital.
• Entrepreneurship was quite absent in most societies
• International trade in primary commodity exports and manufactured
consumer imports were mostly with the dominant
colonial power (trade concentration)
• There was significant social inequality
• Ethnic and regional inequalities became pronounced
• Fragile class systems emerged

The beautyful ones are not yet born...

The phrase the beautyful once are not yet born has been interpreted literally by most Ghanaians.  I don’t really know if most of you have read Ayi Kwei Armah’s novel. The title provides an intriguing set of artistic and socio-political implications.  These implications acquire more importance when the novelist interpreted in its historical and social context, and in its literary achievements as one of the most interesting African novels. “The Beautyful Ones” stands for clean, honest, righteous, and trust worthy people in our society. 

During Electioneering year we hear beautiful promises... this gives us a feeling of salvation and hope. This turns out not the case when they are sworn into office. The political victory itself happens to be the identical twin of defeat as corrupt practices retard the progress of the country. 

Will you cast a stone at The driver who gives his folder, together with the bribe in it, to the policeman? Well a Police Chief Inspector, who could not stand the persistent attempts by a driver to bribe him over a road traffic offence, on Friday, gave the driver a punch to shrug him off.  By providing his novel with such a title, the writer seems to look at things with a more realistic vision that goes so far in protesting against corruption, opportunism and disillusionment. If a former president can tell Ghanaians: corruption could not be eradicated because it was part of human kind since it started in the days of [yore] Adam and Eve, and that it was

 as old as creation itself. That many people had attempted to bribe him with loads of money [as money was coming WAA WAAH] but he had asked them to hold on and come later because the time was not ripe then.   

I will want to ask "ARE THE BEAUTYFUL ONES BORN ”??

SLOTH JOURNALISM

 The investigations normally carried out by the press in Ghana, are privy to a lot of inside information. What is not surprising is how easy it is for political parties and influential persons to manipulate reporters by the use of leaks, exclusives, and off-the-record briefing. Many simply do not undertake to check and verify the facts their insider sources fed them; and once something false was published as fact, most reporters were extremely reluctant to go back and correct the record. 

In October, it was reported that  a group calling itself The CAPE MILITIA had emerged as the militant group posing as the official mouthpiece of mostly unemployed youth of the area who believe a large chunk of the oil proceeds should be used to develop first, the oil find area before the larger Ghanaian society.

In September 2009,the police in the upper East Region denied knowledge of any guerrilla training for some unemployed youth in the area by unidentified guerrilla lords.

In July, the Ghana Real Estates Developers Association (GREDA) may have withdrawn its petition to Parliament on the STX housing deal because its executives were threatened with death.

The Ghanaian Times in its Wednesday, 14th April, 2010 edition had a banner headline; “Warning: Drought ahead! Poor harvest predicted, Load shedding likely.” The paper attributed a looming drought situation in Ghana to Mr. Yorke, quoting him as saying, this year’s rainfall pattern would be comparable to that of 1987, the year the country experienced one of its worst rainfalls. Contrary to that in November, the Volta River Authority spilled the Akosombo Dam as the water level rose to the brim. The water level in the dam reached 277.4ft, which is the first to be recorded in 20 years.

January 2010 experienced another wave of ploy to cause fear and panic as 'Wild rumours started by Oman fm of an imminent earthquake in Ghana was sent to of thousands of panic stricken Ghanaians into the streets and the open where many spent the night. The panic was triggered on Sunday night, when rumour mongers, taking advantage of the Haiti situation, sent text messages round saying the country was about to experience a major earthquake'

There are many journalists in the country who, against all odds, are doing their best to deliver their mandate as a voice of the voiceless. The likes of Stan Dogbe, Raymond Archeer, Anas Amereyaw Anas, Roland Acqua Stevens and the folks at both TV3 and  Metro TV are changing the face of media practice in this country. But if practitioners continue to idolize corrupt but rich politicians and scorn their social responsibility, they will write their legacy on water. The Ghana Journalist Association (GJA) can continue to play the ostrich that all is well but they must know that confidence in the media is spiraling down.

SOME TALKING POINTS ON NDC ACHIEVEMENTS

The list of achievement of this government is modest but endless. This government is definitely focused and would not be distracted from its ‘Better Ghana Agenda’ by uninformed and illogical comments. The NPP seem to be soliciting endorsement for their misleading mantra of ‘everything not working in the country today’ and they have targeted people who appear to have some credibility in society but are gullible to prosecute that agenda.
Certainly, the 20 months of the Atta Mills government has delivered on many fronts.

1. For over two years, The NPP led government was unable to pay newly recruited teachers their salaries and related allowances not to mention Railway workers, nurses and doctors. The NDC government of President Atta Mills has addressed these challenges they left behind.

     b. The Atta Mills government is constructing 120 dormitories for schools across the country within the less than two year period it took office.               President Mills takes credit for initiating the process of eliminating the school shift system as well as phasing out the holding of classes under trees. Presently over a thousand new classroom blocks have replaced out of the over 4,000 classes that were conducted under trees during the NPP era.

2. Within these 20 months in office of this government 38 Colleges of Education are being integrated into the Tertiary system. Polytechnics have been accredited to offer Bachelor of Technology degrees, particularly in Science, Technology and ICT; while work has started in earnest on two new universities; one in the Volta Region and the other in the Brong Ahafo Region. In the eight years the NPP ruled this country how many additional universities did they build?

3. The government increased the Capitation Grant by 50% from GH¢ 3.00 to GH¢ 4.50 to support access, participation and quality in basic schools and provided school children with free uniforms and exercise books.
4. Today, the NDC government is constructing additional classroom blocks for 214 SHS in the country to cater for the extension of the Senior High School (SHS) system from three to four years which the NPP introduced without having comprehensive plans to build new additional school blocks to cater for the unnecessary extension they introduced.

5. It is under this NDC-led government that the Tamale hospital is being transformed into an ultra modern Teaching Hospital attached to the University of Development Studies.
6. The New Patriotic Party (NPP) government left behind inflation at 20.1 per cent in December 2008. However prudent measures put in place by the National Democratic Congress (NDC) government has reduced the inflation to 9.3 per cent.

7. Data available indicate that total credit advanced to the private sector by the banking sector has moved from GHC4, 238.5 million in February 2008 to GHC 7, 050.1 million in February 2010.
8. The Mills administration has done some good work in the areas of agriculture, with GDP growth in agriculture soaring up to 6.2 percent last year, against a target of 5.9.

9. Work on a 10 million-dollar Shea nut Factory to process sheanuts into Shea butter, Shea oils and other derivatives has commenced at Buipe.

10. Currently, there is more than 30 per cent increase in rice production and five per cent increase in maize production, while sorghum and millet production went up by 20 per cent each. Groundnuts and cowpea also recorded a three per cent growth rate each.
11. The decision of the World Food Program (WFP) to purchase 1,433 metric tons of local rice worth $780,000 is a big relief for farmers and a plus point for the NDC Government.

12. The construction of 500 boreholes for irrigation and agro processing in all ten Regions is in progress, while studies to activate the Accra Plains irrigation project which can irrigate 150,000 hectares have been completed.
13. The second face of the rehabilitation of the Tono irrigation project has been completed and effort to rehabilitate 30 others in the Greater Accra and Volta Region has started.

14. The government has established the National Food Buffer Stock Company Limited (NAFCO) to hold food security and intervene in the market where necessary; to purchase, preserve, sell and distribute foodstuff.
15. The era of the ‘KUFOUR GALLONS’ and the erratic power rationing as well as the long periods of darkness Ghanaians had to grapple with under the NPP led regime cannot be forgotten. Provision of these utilities have grown by ten percent. It is only a hypocrite who would not have noticed a modest improvement in the situation.

16. The NDC government has had the courage to implement the Single Spine Salary Policy. The officers and men of the Ghana Police Service can attest to this.
17. Today the international community is hailing Ghana for being committed to the fight against drug trafficking. During the NPP era Ghana was labeled as a hub for narcotic drugs and was placed in the same category by the international community with notorious drug trafficking countries of the world.

18. With the road sector, it is important to state that the NPP left office without paying monies owed road contractors. It was this current government that had in addition to other payments in 2009, released an amount of 170 million Ghana Cedis for the payment of road contractors. Most of these contractors had pre- financed their contracts with bank loans.
19. Apart from financing the old road projects left behind by the NPP government, Prof Mills, even in the first year of his administration started several new road projects. These include 30 million Euro Awoshie-Pokuase road projects. The 2.6 km Spintex road and the 60 km Adidome-Adiklu-Ho road project Infrastructural development in neglected areas in Mafi Traditional area has also started.

20. There are two hundred and eighty-eight (288) ongoing periodic maintenance and minor works projects under the Ghana Highway Authority. One hundred and sixty-one (161) construction, road rehabilitation works and upgrading works are also being undertaken by the Department of Urban Roads. The Department of Feeder Roads currently has over seven hundred on-going construction works under its purview, with one hundred and fourteen starting in 2009.

21. It must be stated that a number of the roads constructed during the NPP era were so shoddily done that they turn to develop potholes in less than three years of construction. Unlike the Kufour-led government, the NDC led government does not overprice contracts.
22. Again this government paid to the Ghana Commercial Bank a whopping 445 million Ghana Cedis as part-payment for debts owed it by the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR). The Bank was on the verge of collapse, and badly exposed as a result of the TOR debt. It is important to note that the NPP instituted the TOR Debt Recovery Levy, and collected from the Ghanaian people monies far in excess of the TOR debt; yet it left office not properly accounting for the monies collected. It will suffice you to know that the NPP diverted about 15 billion cedis of the monies collected to a handful of journalists and media commentators allegedly to do propaganda for the NPP.

23. The NDC government been a fulfilling government is going according to what it said in its Manifesto (page 86) i.e. to deal with the housing deficit. The agreement between the government and the Korean company is a bilateral one and payment of the loan is also flexible.

24. The STX deal would pump in about 10 billion dollars into the economy and it would also in a way reduce the unemployment situation in the country since the Koreans would use the Ghanaian man power. The local construction companies were not left out of the housing project as it is perceived because the vice president asked all of them to present proposals on the housing deficit.
25. The decision of government to prioritize the security agencies as the first beneficiary of thirty thousand housing units out of the intended two hundred thousand (200,000) housing project is laudable and strategic considering the crucial nature of their services to the stable and peaceful development of our society; as well as the deplorable and demoralizing state in which they are currently housed.

26. It will be recalled that not until the NDC led government took over the reins of governance last year (2009), Ghana, internationally had gained notoriety as a narcotic drug hub to a point that implicated the Ghana Police Service.

27. On the STX deal the NPP made the following allegations:

 a.

28. The government has denied GRADER equal opportunities as the Koreans and that GRADER could do better but GRADER had not submitted any estimates and drawings to back that point.

28. 
    

28. 
    

d.      Following these allegations you would notice that the NPP were just getting at the government without having the interest of Ghanaians at heart because those allegations were made to score cheap political points.

e.   As a social democratic Party, the NDC is mindful of the need to providing affordable housing for the majority of the Ghanaian people; a position which is in contrast with that of the previous NPP led government which focused on building deluxe houses the least of which was estimated to cost one hundred thousand dollars, targeted at only the rich and affluent in society.

f.   The resources spent on such expensive mansions could have been spent in building several affordable housing units such as the Adenta and Sakomono Flats to benefit majority of Ghanaians. It is in the light of these reasoning that the NDC considers the STX Project laudable.

g.     The NPP’s harsh hostility towards the STX Project is unfortunate but understandable. Anything that should make the NDC favourable and preferred by the electorate must be opposed even when it is of national interest or public good. It was a similar posture adopted by their forebears when the Motorway and the Akosombo Dam were to be constructed in the 1960’s.

28. c.The government is using the oil resource to guarantee the loan for the STX deal (this was countered by Mr. Isaac Osei who reacted by saying the NPP also used the cocoa returns to support the Bui dam project)

28. b.The Korean company is in debt (this was nullified by the information about the company on the internet.)

FREE MARKET ECONOMY IN AFRICA

A market economy described as  an economy based on the power of division of labor in which the prices of goods and services are determined in a free price system set by supply and demand has been with Africa since A.D. 1000. Merchants during this period practiced both internal and external trades. Chiefs and kings did not “intervene in pricing” as Ludwig von Mises  explains free market economy.

                                  De Soto assertion that people in the West trust each other may have the narrow view. Free market economy was practices by Africans by the fourth century A.D with Europe. Gradual commercial contacts were made crossing the desert to transact economic activities with southern Europe.  The whole system depended on mutual trust which African merchants did not betray. An illustration is the famous story of how when a North African merchant died in the empire of Mali, his goods were kept intact until his relatives could claim them.

                                     The break away from this was by Nationalist leaders who embraced superiority of the single party state and bureaucracy as the main ideals of state making for purposes of consolidation. In economic terms, however, the government postured itself as a benevolent amalgamation of political and economic authority seeking to provide for the needs of ‘marginalized masses’. Thus, without embracing communist ideologies, African nationalists turned advocates of the Stalinist- Marxist philosophy that the state should determine, inter alia, "allocation of resources, distribution of income and consumption, levels of saving and investment, and relative prices of goods and services. But this did not last as the peoples of Africa threw away such an alien policy with coup.

                                    Africa’s free market economies now embrace an economic agenda based on the premise that privatization require an end to distrustful politics that aroused tenacious bureaucratic resistance under the one party state. By advancing political freedoms of expressions, an end to human rights abuses and also free enterprises the atmosphere for distrust has dissipated at the onset of new democratic African states. The philosophy of government has shifted from obstructive regulation to demonstration of authority and political will to incentivize free enterprise.

                            The shift about reduced size and role of the public sector epitomize the contrast between the post colonial Africa and the African new on the same scale as the death of communism allowed economic democracy to thrive over the demise of state patronage.

                          I agree with Franklin Cudjoe's view that the developed states  have“shackles that keep Africans poor: It is more surprising to hear EU and U.S. advocate for free market economy but does not practice it. If EU and U.S. trade barriers are removed, Adam smith’s theory of free market will be actualized.