A Guide To Corruption (4). President Mills Cannot and Will Not Do This!

You can read all about the Mabey and Johnson judgment from the leading websites on Ghana. Each carries the story and details what I said in an earlier breaking news alert of August 7th. At the time, I wrote about the impending implosion and chronicled the history of the Mabey and Johnson bribery of NDC executives in another Guide to Corruption. Since then we have waited patiently for September 25th and this is just the beginning. I will dare to suggest that President Mills will make a show of investigating the issues involved and former President JJ Rawlings will pretend that all this happened under his nose and he knew nothing of it, even though his senior cabinet ministers were in the thick of it, and so was his wife.

President Mills has allegedly asked the Attorney General Betty Mould Iddrissu to investigate the Mabey and Johnson case in Ghana and spare no one found guilty of the offences established by the UK’s Serious Fraud Office.

Sydney Casely-Hayford

Results of our opinion poll, July 1, 2009

These results are the opinions of Readers of Ghana News Monthly newspaper and its related website, www.ghananewsmonthly.com They DO NOT represent the views of Ghanaians in general. Reader’s views were solicited between July 1 and July 12, 2009. We received 247 responses.

Sydney Casely-Hayford

Barack Obama and African mindset

s various editorialists and commentators throughout Africa have analyzed the substance of US President Barack Obama’s Accra policy statement on Africa on July 12 wasn’t new. What was new was Obama’s metaphysics, the bold unto-your-face manner, the ambience, the level of confidence, the psychological import, and the attempts to hit home a new mindset for Africa’s development.

That one of the key stumbling blocks of Africa’s progress is its mindset is unarguable. And Obama set to knock off the self-immolation, inferiority complex and finger-pointing. To let Africa face its problems head-on Obama didn’t promise huge monies as George Bush and Bill Clinton had done earlier. Obama has thorough grasp of the African situation (his father being victim) and he played brutally into it unemotionally, using his own refinement against all odds that saw him become the first African-American president of the United States.

Kofi Akosah Sarpong

A guide to Corruption (2) Mabey and Johnson

This past Friday, August 7, 2009, the case against Mabey was postponed, to be heard on September 25th this year. The UK has to prove that it is taking these corruption charges seriously, coming in the wake of their refusal to investigate the BAE’s Saudi Arabian arms deal and other cases presently before the UK SFO. One major disclosure made by Richard Alderman, Director of UK SFO is that Mabey and Johnson has agreed to pay “reparations” to both Ghana and Jamaica for bribery offences between 1994 and 2000. This admission immediately attaches guilt of some wrongdoing. How much was given, and who was bribed on our (Ghana) side is detailed in the UK SFO submission to the court, but unfortunately presiding Judge Rivlin chose to gag the press. The information is available, we just cannot broadcast in the public yet. But it will come out. The pressure is on the NDC government to accept this reparation.

Sydney Casely-Hayford

Tsatsu Tsikata as Minister of Justice and Fair Play

In the lead-up to the 2008 presidential run-off, when then-NDC flagbearer Prof. John Evans Atta-Mills promised to make a drastic reduction in fuel prices the topmost priority of his first 100 days in office, we promptly knew, intuitively, that such campaign promise, like coital sweet-nothings, had to be taken with the proverbial pinch of salt.  Now, true to our suspicions, Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia – alias General Mosquito – the NDC general secretary, is telling the Ghanaian electorate that, in fact, the topmost priority of the Atta-Mills presidency, or administration, will be to speedily bump Mr. Tsatsu Tsikata out of the Nsawam Medium-Security Prison, where the former CEO of the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) has been serving a 5-year prison term for unduly using his official and public position to benefit himself, his cronies and private business associates (See “NDC Dedicates Electoral Victory to Tsatsu” Ghanaweb.com 1/3/09).

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

Corruption and the fabric of our Existence

By Mike Mensah-Bonsu, former National Chairman of PNC and staunch Nkrumahist

I think we shall be doing our country a great disservice if we single out Mr. J.J. Rawlings as a ‘betrayer’ of his own rules.

Similarly, I do not agree with the imprisonment of Mr. Tsikata on the basis of corruption even though “there may be” clear proof of wrongful doing.

My comments are in no way intended to defend or attack these gentlemen in question. However, I firmly believe that vindication can never be the best form of justice and of resolving problems in our society, otherwise we may have to ‘get rid’ of many people – we have far too many corrupt men and women in Ghana – singling out “scape goats” is not the answer. The killing of the Honourable Judges, Afrifa, Kotoka, Achampong, Akuffo, Yaw Boakye, Felli, etc., etc., is still haunting the Nation – the result of vindication.

Rawlings too is Corrupt

The former Senior Minister Mr. John Henry Mensah has stated that former President Rawlings has no moral right to accuse the NPP government of corruption when he and the PNDC government did worse things. ”If the former President is not corrupt, then how come a whooping sum of $7 million went missing under his supervision,” he asked. According to him, Mr. Rawlings owes Ghanaians an explanation as to how $7 million cash got missing from a total of $10 million, secured by the government of Ghana for the refurbishment of Tema Food Processing Factory.

Rawlings Exposed

In-depth investigations conducted by The Statesman have established that the education of two of former President Jerry John Rawlings’ daughters abroad was funded by a British water company – Biwater – which paid 7,000 Pounds Sterling a term per child.  A few years ago an independent newspaper based in Accra, reported that after his government had created the Junior and the Senior Secondary School (now Junior High and Senior High School) system, the former President deemed it more expedient to educate his children abroad using the Ordinary and Advanced Level system, which his government had discredited.

The children, Ezanetor and Amina Rawlings, were sent to Millfield public school in Dorset – a classy institution that charges very exorbitant fees. The fees were described as scholarships paid for by Biwater, which was then bidding for the management of Ghana’s water supply system.

By Peter Atiemo