TAKING ON THE GREEN BOOK - AN ANALYSIS.

INTRODUCTION

 So the government has launched “Overview of the Better Ghana Agenda” and is daring all and sundry who do not agree to challenge it. I have taken up the challenge. I find it very instructive that the government thinks this book cannot be challenged and I will prove it otherwise. As the recent STX saga has shown, wisdom does not lie in the head of one individual so I will invite all comments and suggestions from all of you. Please send them to nkoppongdamoah@gmail.com and I will take all of them into consideration.

I have endeavored to look at the various sections of the book and challenged all that is within my knowledge.  This work however is not exhaustive. We continue to look at it and it must be noted that critique of this work must be ongoing through the years as some of them will be further highlighted over the future. ‘Green Book 1’ is beginning to expose itself so we look forward to the ongoing critique of all of them.

 1.       EXAMINING THE BASIS.

The introduction to the ‘green book 2’ is apparently written by the government communication team. This is a new creation under the Mills Administration and I will want all of us to do a critical analysis of this creation. On page 4 of his maiden State of the Nation Address, the president, H.E. John Evans Atta Mills reminded Ghanaians of his “promise to establish a lean but effective government”.  I will want to question the idea behind having a government communication team when we have a ministry of information with a minister and two deputies, a communications directorate at the presidency and other such institutions for handling government communications. Is there the need for this government communications team when we have party functionaries, ministers and their deputies and spokespersons for various MMDA’s all on the government payroll?

Also, let us examine the transparency in the creation of this body. The president adequately said that “Transparency in government and the fight against corruption are cardinal for sustainable development. During this administration, we will address transparency…..” (Maiden State of the Nation Address by the NDC Government, Pages 3&4). This particular creation of the government has been so non-transparent that it baffles all who bother to take a close look. A number of questions come up:

1. Who set up this team and who is the head?
2. Who are the members of this government communication team?
3. What are the selection criteria?
4. How much are the members of this team paid and are their salaries and allowances drawn on the consolidated fund?
5. Are they taxed on these salaries and allowances?

I raise these issues because the ‘Green Book 2’ document is hinged on the credibility of this group that we know very little of. More worrying is the fact that this group is able to use the coat of arms of our dear nation. For us to consider this document and give any serious thought to what it is that they are saying, someone must answer these questions first.

Having cleared that, it is instructive to note that no one person bothered to sign the document. The introduction to the book is said to have been authored by this ‘Government Communication Team’ but no one appended his signature to the document. The problem this poses is that the group pushing this agenda is unknown to us so perhaps Ghanaians would have been better disposed to give some credibility to the document if anyone we know had appended his signature to this document. It is a government document so if the minister of information or perhaps even the president had signed it, then we could consider it. As it stands now, is it fair to assume that no one in government wanted to put his or her credibility on the line for this document?  These are just broad introductory questions.

“The NDC government will measure its successes, (not that we are going to be obsessed with touting such successes) in the extent to which we shall be able to implement the policies contained in this Manifesto…”-  H.E. Professor John Evans Atta Mills (foreword to the 2008 manifesto of the NDC, 3rd pg).

Again I have to question if things like having a government communication team to ostensibly tout the successes of the administration is not in direct contravention of this statement. That aside, why are we having discussions of the government’s achievements without any references to its manifesto? Clearly from the above quoted statement, anyone who undertakes such an exercise is not helping the Mills cause in any way. The government made a promise to strictly measure its achievements by the policies and in its manifesto so the ‘Green Book 1&2’ is not good enough an analysis. They should do it again.

I would understand if the chroniclers who put together the green book document have a difficulty in ascertaining which manifesto to use. This is because the NDC withdrew the manifesto they used for the 2008 campaign after they won the election and replaced it with a new one, citing mistakes in the pre-election manifesto. Such mistakes involved promises to build stadia for all regional capitals among others. With such a situation, one can sympathize with chroniclers who for one reason or the other decided to leave all mention of the manifesto out the green book. Sympathies aside, such an attempt to divert attention from what must be done as a result of an unsolicited attention is disingenuous and must be condemned. The government communication team must go back and do the right thing.

 2.       THE ‘UNPRECENDENTED’ ACHIEVEMENTS.

The prevailing context of these are that within three years of governing this country, this government has been able to achieve some things that have never before been done. It is instructive to note that this claim of unprecedented achievements is sited in an appeal that Ghanaians re-elect President Mills. Thus logically, they are claiming exclusive rights to these achievements and so let us examine them one by one.

-          Ghana under President Mills has recorded GDP growth rate of 13.6%. This is the highest in the nation’s history.

COMMENTS.

Firstly the figure is incorrect. Just a day after this publication was graciously outdoored in pomp and pageantry, the Ghana Statistical Service released new figures that put the GDP growth rate for 2011 at 14.4%. Granted that the figure quoted was the previous official estimate, this is a pertinent issue in that a government that promised: “not that we are going to be obsessed with touting such successes” certainly could have waited a while longer to provide us with the most recent data.

Secondly, the context within which the fact is quoted makes it deceitful and almost fraudulent. Ghana achieved non oil induced growth of 7.5%, which is less than the 2010 estimate of 8% final or 7.7% initial estimates. So in reality, without oil, our economy’s rate of growth will have slowed by a significant 0.2% in 2011. That is just one side of it. The 6.9% growth of the economy attributed to the production of oil is only a testament to the lies of the NDC. When the announcement was made in parliament on June 18th 2007 that Ghana had discovered oil in commercial quantities, “Mr. Lee Ocran, NDC member for Jomoro said a similar report was made 37 years ago to the day that Ghana had struck oil, arguing that it turned out that we had not made anything worth jubilating about.” As providence will have it, Mr. Ocran is today the minister of education at a time when his government is claiming ‘unprecedented’ economic growth as a result of this same oil discovery. The fraudulent nature in which this government has sought to portray this achievement in political light favouring itself lies in the fact that it does not have exclusive right to claim this achievement. The discovery and initial works were started by NDC 1 under President Rawlings, continued under Kuffour and he is continuing. Any benefits and achievement under economic growth as a result of this oil find in therefore not exclusive to the reign of this government. The classification of this fact an achievement of this government is therefore an exercise in deceit.

Governance, as we have often been told is a continuing process. Benefits of some initiatives are realized only after certain times have passed. When the fruits of seeds sown by past administrations materialize within your era, please give recognition where it is due instead of attempting to claim it as an “unprecedented achievement”. Honest men do this.

-          Longest sustained single digit inflation.(sustained for more than 22 months and now at 8.6%)

Comment.

In recent times, as government has attempted to tout this as an achievement, various people have scrutinized it. I choose not to question the veracity of the figures put out by the Ghana Statistical Service because we have to build strong institutions to further our democracy. However those who choose to question the figure raise very serious concerns. Take for instance Mr. Kweku Kwarteng, who has stated that for July 2011, “for certain areas they have left some of the items completely out of the inflation basket. We went to Wa and we discovered that for Wa for instance, 11 items; pawpaw, coconut oil, palm kennel, pork, palm wine, men’s kente, women’s kente, things like starch, pyjamas, were completely left out of the inflation basket, adding, that the team uncovered similar situations in other regional capitals like Ho, Koforidua and Takoradi. Many of the prices of the items that were cited had prices of 0, Property tax in the whole of Kumasi is 0. In Bolga, pineapple price is 0, coconut oil price is 0’. This invariably means that no one pays property taxes in Kumasi and all the other items listed are free in the market for all to go and grab. As I said earlier, I will not question the institutional competence of the Ghana Statistical Service but we need to keep these things in mind when discussing inflation in Ghana.

However, I will dare say that the inflation numbers are not a reflection of reality. It is important that we note that our calculation of inflation does not take into account payment for utilities and fuel etc. Aside that, bear in mind that from the above, some of the things in the inflation basket are actually calculated as having no prices. Thus the inflation figures churned out have no bearing on the reality. In actuality, the rate of inflation is higher than what is being bandied about. How else can we explain a bag of cement rising in price from about 9 cedis in 2008 to close to 20 cedis in 2012 though we have had single digit inflation for the past 22 months. How also could the unit cost of a standard six classroom block have risen from 700 million old cedis to close to 3 billion old cedis in just three months? The payment of gargantuan judgment debts may have taken a toll on the economy of the country but definitely not by that much.

to be continued soon.