Critical News, 5th May 2012

By Sydney Casely-Hayford, Sydney@bizghana.com

We finished the 4^th movement in BVR minor this Saturday 5^th May.  Half way in the middle of it all we went an octave higher and started a violent movement in a major city.  Between Ododiodoo and some other places, it was completely overshadowed by the Oman hiplife rap.  Kennedy Agyapong is still on bail and the prosecutors are looking for his docket, lost somewhere between the police, BNI, National Security and the Attorney General’s office.

Critical News, 25th October, 2010

By Sydney Casely-Hayford, Sydney@bizghana.com

Jerry “Oedipus” John “Rex”.  Now here is a conundrum.  I seem to be caught in a whirl, writing about these puzzles all the time these days.  Either that, or I do “riddle-riddle”?  RIDDLE!  “What name do you give to a founder of a political party who is so pissed off he won’t even talk to his hand picked successor?”  Answer, “His Jerryship”! And he is very upset with the people he owns.  They dare to go about making false statements about him and peddling untruths.  Not enough that their leader Prof. Mills has abandoned the path of NDC probity and accountability and is out there disrespecting his Jerryship.  I published His Jerryship’s full statement last week, please read it in full for history’s sake.  So JJ is upset with Mills as he was with Kuffuor and all others who have preceded him in Government and he will be upset with Nana Akufo Addo, should he win in 2012.  But TV Africa with Fred Chidi on “Matters Arising”, put on a very interesting panel.  Alhaji and Alhaji – Rawlings critic, Ras Mubarak – confused militant and Kobby Fiagbe, editor of The Lens.  With Ras attempting an interpretation of JJ, which these days means accusing everybody of something without saying clearly who or what, this time tried voice and body mimicry as well.  I am afraid I didn’t really grasp the essence of his analysis and I gave up listening to him after a while.  Alhaji however, was very emphatic that all this was just gassed up for public benefit and concluded that JJ and Konadu cannot afford to carry on without the NDC.  Come 2012, he predicts a convergence of views and a single team candidate, who will NOT be Nana Konadu.  She denies she is vying for president.  But what do you call a woman president these days?  Presidentess?  Well, Nana wants to be one of those, I think.  Her 15,000 posters are all over parts of Ghana.  Can her husband handle that?  We might never live to see.  So we left the TV current affairs program with no time left, as usual, after all the radio stations had aired versions of public commentary and noise.  I am not sure if the Rawlings’ have done themselves any good this week.  We seem to have a seasonal event every month from them. We just got over the fire event, the in-law home event, the Herbert Mensah event, the AU event (Mills congratulated JJ on the front page of the Daily Graphic, probably secretly hoping he would go and pitch camp in Somalia, alas it did not happen!) and now we have this NDC event.  Two more months to the end of the year and we could yet have another one.

Critical News, 18th October, 2010

By Sydney Casely-Hayford, Sydney@bizghana.com

I took a break to re-group.  I have been back home now for a year this December and I wonder whether we can really change Ghana.  The politicians are our worst nightmare.  Then last week, Deputy Minister of Information, Mr Okudzeto Ablakwa started to describe he and others in the Mills Government as “the political elite”.  This is at the time when school re-opening has become a complete mess.  If you have followed the news closely, you know that the NDC Government decided to revert to a 3-year term for the SHS period after the NPP had changed it to 4 years during their term.  Wonder Madilo writes a very good piece on this.  But what has happened this past week is just appalling.  First year students have no beds to sleep on, no desks, no chairs.  Government promised with gusto that they would have everything in place before the school term starts.  Now the Ghana Education Service has advised the Conference of Heads of Assisted Senior High Schools (CHASS) to charge a Ghc100-300 fee for all new admissions and convert other facilities to dormitories while the government gets its act together.  But I heard all the advice for the dos and don’ts of 3-year to 4-year as far back as March this year.  Much ado was made about previous decisions by the NPP government and in the end it all came down to a manifesto decision by the NDC and therefore they changed the law.  Now we have a major mess on our hands.  Sorry! The NDC has a major mess on its hands.  This should be a political game-changing event.  If the NDC comes out of this and wins in 2012 we have to do a lot of analysing.

Critical News, 29th August 2010

Hmm, Christians are very upset this week, when they heard that a group of armed robbers had raided a church after hours and tried to steal cars from the pastors.  Now we hear they are going to make a special petition to the President that Pastors be allowed to bear arms to protect themselves from armed robbers.  Not to protect the Congregation, they are protected by the Holy Spirit and the Pastors have to stay alive to protect them.  Hmmm!

Critical News, 22nd August 2010

There couldn’t have been a better week for democracy in our Ghana, this week.  The NDC party, not the Government, went on public record to state their intention to clean the judge’s benches and served notice to the Chief Justice of her perceived bias in recent rulings by the judiciary.  Following the decision to allow Kwadwo Mpiani and Wereko Brobbey to walk without a recommendation to formally charge them with any offence, the judges explanation of his understanding of the law, so completely baffled both opposing sides that the NPP claimed it as a vindication of their innocence and the NDC took up arms against the law.  The pity of it all is that the NDC party, which has not been able to dissociate itself from the Government, thought they should threaten mayhem and cause fear and panic across board by resurrecting the murder of judges under the (p)NDC, which no adult of voting age in Ghana has forgotten.  We are reminded of this event every time we pass in front of the Courts in Accra.

Critical News, 15th August 2010

We are probably as close to a Constitutional crisis as we are going to get.  The Constitutional Review Committee is going around Ghana soliciting views for amendments to the 1992 constitution. We all know the real reason is to see how we can either continue to entrench or remove the transitional provisions granting immunity to PNDC coup makers and their supporters.  We are just going to spend $1.2 billion doing so.  If we fail to remove the provisions, we don’t get another crack at it for a long time.

Critical News, 8th August 2010

Finally, NDC put the STX deal to bed.  Came at the expense of the Ghanaian voters, who put the NPP parliamentarians in office to debate issues on their behalf, only to find that they walk out of most critical discussions.  The NPP “honourables” have still not got the tactic of filibustering an issue and allowing time to work with them.  They walked out of the final debate in parliament because they could not meet the Speaker’s one hour imposition for final review of the housing deal.  Poor show, they can do better in my opinion!  Now the contract has been passed and all we have to do is wait to see how Government proceeds to build the 30,000 houses for security personnel.  All they could do was wish the Koreans “good luck with this one”

Critical News 1st August, 2010

Glory, Glory, Glory!  What a start to the week.  The New Crusading Guide blessed the week with the story of the year so far.  Tsatsu Tsikata involved in a contentious (have to be careful here, might cause Fear and Panic!) contract with MODEC, the builders and managers of the FPSO Kwame Nkrumah.  Rather longwinded so here are the essential facts as I see them.  Tsatsu signed a contract to provide advisory services to MODEC back in 2008 when he was in custody.  The IFC through the Multi-lateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) were only recently told of this contract.  Both the IFC and MIGA are heavily invested in the FPSO, which is owned by Jubilee Ghana BV 21, a special purpose company, set up to raise funds for the development of the Jubilee field unit in West Cape 3 Points.  This also involves Tullow, Kosmos, Anadarko, the EO Group, Sabre Oil and GNPC.  I will do a very detailed report on the shareholding structure of all this in the coming week.  It will impress you! trust me.  Anyway, the IFC and MIGA are p***** off because they were only told at the back end.  The contract is for $5million, two has been paid, all of it during the NDC era and the remainder to be paid when the first oils starts.  Great start to the week!  It got more interesting as the days rolled forward, and Tsatsu publicly threatened to sue through his company Strategic Oil and Gas.  He owns 50% of the company and we are yet to know who owns the other half!  This story will run for a long time.  Until the due diligence is completed and the IFC and MIGA are content, the FPSO will not be storing any oil!  Imagine what this will mean to Ghanaians if one person’s greed halts our whole economic jump off!

Critical News, 25th July 2010

The news this week was dominated by the arrest and charge of Ato Kwamena Dadzie, Acting News editor of Joy FM.  This actually happened last week, but the real issues raged on through the week.  All the pro-freedom of speech institutions in the country had a say.  The GJA held a press conference to protest, Mr Blay Amihere, Chairman of the National Media Commission, the Center for Democratic Development also waded into the fray and the hue and cry forced Government to issue a very muddled statement to the public to clear its name and its position on the “invitation” to Joy Fm.

Critical News 18th July 2010

The week in Ghana ends with the JoyFm political news program “Newsfile” now hosted by Kwaku SakyiAddo.  Last week, the studio raged with the Rawlings’ home situation after Nana Konadu had come on air to tell Ghanaians how she and his “Jerryship” were not living together because Government had until now not given them alternative accommodation.  Well, it turned out not to be exactly true, but the two and a half hour discussion took up most of the three-hour program and other news was left to fester till the this week.