In the Greek myth of Oedipus, the main character had complicated unresolved childhood issues bubbling up to haunt him later in life. From this tale, Sigmund Freud proposed his concept of Oedipus complex. By my own understanding, a ‘complex’ is an unconscious desire that silently but consistently drives an entity’s thoughts and actions. Many persons and entities have complexes unknown to themselves. I probably have one, you may have one as well. And I think the New Patriotic Party (NPP) has one too – a ‘media complex’.
This is a result of circumstances shaped by their opposition to the strongman rule of Jerry John Rawlings, coupled with their claimed commitment to democratic values. But how did it come to be?
The grip of incumbent governments on information through control of the national broadcaster meant that, like previous administrations, the revolutionary junta of Rawlings in the 1980s largely dictated what the masses could hear. Readership of the existing print media was only a tiny portion of the population hence many were cut off from alternatives to official government mouthpiece. But beyond the fact of limited readership, it is the nature of newspapers that they cannot reach millions instantly.
So the catalyst for NPP’s media complex was liberalisation of the nation’s broadcast media regime during the early years of the fourth republic. This was inevitable given the advent of information and communication technology, but also because, under the fourth republican dispensation, a single, government-controlled, broadcaster was ill-suited to the times.
Hence came electronic media pluralism and, in particular, the explosion in number of radio stations. The NPP’s advantage in that situation was crucially facilitated by the zeitgeist of natural sympathy towards the party that stood in opposition to Rawlings’ revolutionary turmoil and longevity in power. Party folks and sympathisers, in tune with people’s thirst for options and new things, channelled their energies to owning, controlling or nudging the media landscape to the party’s benefit. Their success was as remarkable as the failure of Rawlings’ party, which oversaw the broadcasting transformation, to similarly control critical media real-estate of nationwide reach.
Any political party, including the National Democratic Congress (NDC), would be envious of the goodwill that NPP has, for a long time, enjoyed – and in some respects, continue to enjoy – from many media houses. It is not always the case that the NDC is hard done by. But for a long time, there seemed to be a preponderance of bias tending against the party.
For the NDC, one could describe this adverse situation as the nature of things, a sort of karma for being the party of Rawlings, the party with roots from a bloody revolution, the party closely associated with that revolution’s excesses.
The NPP’s influence over the media heightened once they came into power during the Kufuor years. Over time, this influence nurtured enduring appetite to look good in the media space. But when emphasis is on looks, substance is not a necessity; carefully-crafted appearances may just be enough.
President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s presidential ambition and campaign was bolstered by this phenomenon. That was when we saw veritable manifestation of the media complex: the many tantalising promises from him and his running mate, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia. Not surprisingly, it is epitomised by his rule thus far. This urge to look good is quite strong, so that even with glaring evidence of misgovernance, his administration goes the full mile to maintain this appearance. The rationale for this urge can be understood better with a look at the history of NPP’s tradition further back in time.
Prof. Ato Sekyi-Otu aptly described this deep urge in an online article in which he writes: “Ever since Kwame Nkrumah came and wrecked their genteel party with uppity impertinence, the founders and successors of the Danquah-Busia tradition have been telling us this: They are the club of men and women of substance, endowed with superior intellect and wisdom, and, thanks to those qualities, the natural rulers of this country”.
In the run up to independence in 1957, the adherents of that tradition (which name is now Danquah-Busia-Dombo) have been defined by this deeply-held belief that they were the rightful rulers of the land. The effect of this primal belief was most pronounced in their instinctual reactions to two persons: Kwame Nkrumah and Jerry John Rawlings.
That reaction was to employ public relations (PR) artifice to feed the enduring need to appear superior to CPP and then PNDC/NDC. Now, the need is so ingrained that even in arguably the most serious and consequential economic crisis so far in Ghana’s history, and certainly during the fourth republic, in the form of the Domestic Debt Exchange Programme, the NPP government refused calls for a national dialogue. I suspect this was because, as they erroneously labelled a similar move by the previous government, that would make them look as bereft of ideas, and therefore incompetent. It would also cast them as swallowing back their own words of propaganda, and therefore be showered in shame.
Initially, the government set out to restructure a total debt of about GHS136billion, but at the end of a poorly-managed process, they had to engage in voodoo mathematics so as to label the programme successful. As the Finance Ministry announced at the outset, they needed to achieve at least 80% of that GHS136billion denominator, but since the eventual numerator could not give this, they just reduced, almost by a sleight of hand, the denominator and whim! They were good to go looking good.
But with the resources and coercive forces of state under its control, a government trying mostly to look good in the eyes of the public portends pernicious consequences. At the beginning of this government’s tenure, the major effect was sloganeering poorly-conceived policies into existence: a wasteful one-village-one-dam, an ultimately unsustainable nationwide builders’ corps (NABCO) programme, a poorly-implemented Free Senior High School policy and an ineffectual one-district-one-factory initiative among other flippant policies that drove borrowing to unprecedented levels, the nock-on effects of which were rightly predicted and we are now having to endure.
The trick moves of PR governance took hold on the government, and was a major reason why we had the following misadventures and gaffes:
- The President emptily promising that he would build 88 hospitals in one year only to revise this, when the time came, to a bigger package of 111 hospitals in about 24 months. Well after those months have gone by, there is not even a single completed project to show for the promise. Indeed, the administration’s latest timelines show not much will be achieved by the end of his presidency. So, what valid feasibility was the promise based on?
- The insistence that Ghana was never going back to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and once domestic debt restructuring became unavoidable in the wake of his administration’s fateful IMF U-turn, his promise that no individual bondholder would suffer a haircut.
- The gimmicky ‘cutting’ of so-called nuisance taxes and ‘reduction’ in utility prices in a country we would later be told, on average, pays less tax than its African peers. This point is also seen in light of recent hikes in utility tariffs. So what were the initial ‘cuts’ for? One clear answer: Campaign-promise shenanigans.
- The mismanagement of windfall revenue accruing to the country on account of COVID-19, which, in an irony twisted on itself, is chiefly blamed for our current woes.
- The sham exercise of supposed measures to alleviate the impact of COVID-19 on citizens only to sharply turn around and tax them for those ‘free’ stuff.
- The myopic decision to forgo the opportunity of the Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI) by the World Bank in favour of voracious appetite for Eurobonds, which borrowing, as Mr. Martin Kpebu rightly puts it, “dopes the cedi into artificial stability”. This was so the government could say it had done better in stabilising the national currency. In any case, these borrowed funds largely went into the euphemistic ‘budgetary support’. More bluntly, the expensively-borrowed funds went into consumption and wastage.
- The electronic transfer levy (e-levy) as a pretext to avoid facing reality. But quite bafflingly, the government appeared to have been taken in by its own fog that the e-levy was a silver bullet to stopping our economic descent downhill. Up until now, government communicators still parrot the official line that e-levy’s immense failure was solely due to politicking by the minority in parliament, who magically embedded a chip into the brain of the Ghanaian populace and programmed their vehement dislike of the tax handle, hence its failure. Never mind that the government’s overly-ambitious projections on the tax policy, and its ultimately woeful performance, was correctly predicted by experts right from the day Mr. Ken Ofori-Atta entered parliament with the idea. So the fact that such communicators continue to robotically utter that dim explanation and somehow expect it to be believed is, to put it mildly, quite telling of them. Because, how can a 90%-failure of any policy be wholly blamed on its debate in parliament, however protracted? Or do they really mean to say that the minority’s action threw unwelcomed light on their stealthy e-levy agenda, which they otherwise meant to spring as a surprise on a dim-witted unsuspecting people?
- The hiding of the true state of Ghana’s debt burden under the so-called below-the-line items. As long as that fiscal trick was in vogue, the government failed to wake up and smell the coffin. But as the local saying goes, you ignore the fact of your mother’s death to your own eventual detriment and ignominy.
- The face-twisting, reality-denying and totally reckless delay in going to the IMF until far too late. The reader would recall that as late as the waning days of June 2022, just days before the President forced an announcement on July 1, 2022, a Deputy Finance Minister, Hon. John A. Kumah, proclaimed in parliament of all places that “we will not go to the IMF today, we will not go to IMF tomorrow, and we’re not going as long as the NPP remains in power”. What we didn’t realise he meant was that ‘tomorrow’ was up until June 30, and the following day, the NPP government was no longer in power!
The inexplicable delay was solely to avoid licking up their own vomit and handing the opposition ammunition against their infantile waywardness. In the end, the government fell flat on the face and went back to the IMF, but not before tanking the economy and subjecting citizens to the most far-reaching appropriation of personal savings and private wealth so as to save fiscal space. But for exactly what? Yet more nebulous government expenditures?
This list of things for which one could call this government out is inexhaustive. Indeed, one could write a bible of President Akufo-Addo and Dr. Bawumia’s failed promises and false assertions, which in hindsight, were for not much other than to look good.
Like the President, his Veep and Finance Minister, government communicators would say anything except admit blame. To them, the government has never faltered and never responsible for any consequential policy failure. Everything was running smoothly until the rude intervention of a force majeure. The COVID-19 pandemic and Russia-Ukraine war neatly and satisfactorily explain all our current woes, you only need to discount the billions Ghana got on account of the pandemic and the fact that our neighbours’ situations are not as dire.
And so for the government and its defenders, it goes as Zeynep Tufekci said: “It is easier to keep adding exceptions and justifications to a belief than to admit that a challenger has a better explanation”. Shorn of admitting error, and therefore blame, they are left with the alternatives: obfuscation, equalisation, tangentialism and outright lies.
Some of these ‘defence mechanics’ run into the realm of absurdity, such as proclaiming an avowed resolve to fight illegal mining, and yet claim that the absence of a transmittal letter constitutes profound obstacle to taking necessary action on a report’s damning revelations. The dismissive response of Jubilee House to Prof. Frimpong-Boateng’s long-submitted account of his erstwhile work as chairman of the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Illegal Mining (IMCIM) is the equivalent of shooting oneself in the foot. No, the groin.
But the deflective tactics have become a stock in trade, and whether the scales on their eyes were fixed intentionally or incidentally, they would take quite a falling off.
In the meantime, we are still yoked to PR governance instead of a nation galvanised to the wheel. The government is in its lame duck period, so it could all be down to an ebbing of will. But given the evidence of our eyes, I am more inclined to chalk it down, in the words of Mr. Kwame Pianim, to the government being AIR: arrogant, incompetent and reckless.
There are other contenders, but the Free Senior High School (FSHS) policy best illustrates this AIR attitude. With its hasty, all-in roll out in the presence of inadequate infrastructure and uncertain source of reliable funding, no soothsayer is needed to predict the challenges that would befall the long-held promise of the then Mr. Akufo-Addo. In its current form, the programme’s well-publicised shortcomings hold long-term deleterious effects for the nation’s entire educational system. Therefore, this should ordinarily mean that we take a relook at it for the better, but the policy has been fashioned into a capricious deity before which no citizen dares utter the taboo word “review” or speak any ‘black speech’. The IMF, though, is allowed this privilege by the gods, and so a review may be on the cards, but I wouldn’t bet on it. For it seems that the government’s prideful ego is all wrapped up in FSHS, and so it is likely to see a review, at least to necessary extents, as an admission of failure. Left alone, it would rather see standards of education fall than permit itself to run a targeted FSHS policy for enhanced effectiveness and efficiency.
Among the catchphrases widely used to sell candidate Akufo-Addo in his long presidential campaign up to eventual victory in 2016 was that he had a strong personality, was incorruptible and was decisive. Even now, I could hear the voice of Mr. Sammi Awuku ring in my ears bellowing that Nana Addo is a decisive leader. I don’t know if that is still the case or has ever been the case. I do know, however, that a belated opportunity came for him to amply demonstrate decisive leadership.
Maybe I am naïve, but in the famous ‘sika mpe dede’ address in October, 2022, I would have advised the President to display true national unity by having former Presidents Kufuor and Mahama in the background as he faced the camera and the nation. After, he would reach out to Mr. Mahama to bring the suggestions of his earlier address at UPSA along with his people, as well as people from all segments of society, aboard a national dialogue on charting a path forward. Maybe I am naïve indeed.
Breaking The 8?
A decisive foot put forward after election 2020, such as facing its shame and going to the IMF sometime in 2021, would have spared us much of our current excruciating cost of living crisis. We would have received the inevitable blow meant for us and would have been relieved of it by now. The climb to breaking the eight would still be steep, but absent domestic debt exchange, it might not be as steep as now. If the saying that Ghanaians have short memory is to be believed, what better way to take advantage of it than bitter decisions taken much earlier that would have faded into the past by now?
For the President, one wonders what really the matter is? What has come of his well-trumpeted decisiveness? Despite the missteps of his first term, and because he no longer had an election to run, one would expect his focus to shift firmly onto legacy building. This should have meant that from January 2021, he would truly rise to the occasion, relentless in driving a national consensus and agenda on the way out of a pandemic and into the future. Wouldn’t his party then be standing a better chance of breaking the 8?
For example, this nation desperately needs a drastic reduction in government expenditure as basis for deep tax cuts that reduce the stifling weight of a bloated government on the back of individuals and businesses. In the instance, this would be in accord with their own professed political philosophy, whatever it really means. The imperative of a drastically-reduced government expenditure is well analysed by experts and recognised by ordinary millions. And given how deep, and certainly painful, the expenditure cut would be, there is need for unprecedented national consensus, a carrying of everybody along. The President, however, does not seem willing to initiate steps towards building such consensus.
But why? Why has he gone the other way, increasing expenditure and, therefore, the current IMF-prodding to slap more taxes? Why does he appear to have shrunk from the task of leadership during crisis? Why does he seem to have given up on his legacy?
The overall effect of his lack of decisive action, especially in his second term, is that he is dragging his party down with him towards December 7, 2024 but probably not across the line; not with any effectual narrative with which to prosecute what will be a tough campaign for the party.
But you can’t rule them out at this point, can you? They are the supposed masters of the dragon called ‘media’ and will huff and puff all the way to the polls next year. The ‘complex’ is deeply embedded and might unleash all kinds of tactics we are yet to see.
The 8, though, may just be too hard for the breaking.
