Mills is disgusted… over what? (1)

Originally, Ti-Kelenkelen serialised this article over two Mondays, February 14 & 21, 2011 after top investigative journalist, Anas Aremeyaw Anas, and his team had exposed stealing by Tema Port officials and their private cohorts.  After the exposé, then President John E.A. Mills (MHSRIP) visited the port.  Talking to the port workers Mills was angry, but Ti-Kelenkelen thought it was neither the right nor adequate response to the rot Anas revealed.

The question, Dear Reader, may already be asking is: Why go into the “archives” to bring out, edit and republish this article?  We will see why at the end.

There is so much confusion in Ti-Kelekelen’s system.  This time, however, it is not in his big head, but in his emotions.   And the acceleration of the confusion is threatening to reach a crescendo that could – not to blow it up but – to freeze his emotion.  A blow up kills, but a freeze turns one into a vegetable.  And Ti-Kelenkelen is at risk all because an investigative journalist has put his life and those of his team members on the line to unearth gross abuse, corruption, graft, causing financial loss to the state, and the first reaction President Mills could show when he visited the location of these negative acts is open disgust?

What?  Why such a reaction to such an issue in this eleventh year of this 21^st Century when Ghana needs so much money so quickly?  Is that part of the package Ghanaians voted for?

The Issue

On Thursday, February 3, 2011, Ti-Kelenkelen watched President Mills at the Tema Port, ranting and haranguing public workers who had gathered to listen to him.  He was there following revelations of massive cases of fraud, graft and corruption.  The specifics include under-declaration of imported goods, under-invoicing by public officials who must check and charge the right amount of taxes and tariffs for the state, collecting of bribes to reduce what the importing company must declare, serious slacks in destination inspection making the state lose titanic sums of money, the use of names of the Office of the President and of Parliament of the Republic of Ghana on fake documents to extract (for cronies) undeserved exemptions that go into billions of Ghana cedis…

All that and more were revealed in Part One of the latest documentary, Enemies of the Nation, by Anas Aremeyaw Anas and his Spicy Girls.  Our television networks started broadcasting the documentary on Monday, February 1, 2011.

Judging from sampling public reaction, a good number of people watching the president four days later were impressed by his show of anger.  However, in terms of what this page represents – the welfare and progress of the people – it is not in the least impressive, and for two reasons.  One, the problem is multi-faceted and the talking and ranting will not solve any one aspect, and two, it reminds Ti-Kelenkelen of a ploy used by politicians a lot if they are not interested in dealing with the fundamentals of an issue with the goal of truly solving the problem the issue represents.  The only thing that solves a problem is the appropriate solution, one that attacks the problem or challenge at the roots and results in outcomes that inure to the welfare and progress of the people. Such solutions endure; unless intentionally reversed they are irreversible.

Experience

But how many times has Anas not done his thing, and how many times have people who genuinely worry about Ghana not been disappointed by how top public officials have received and commented on his work?  Or worse, how many times have people who genuinely worry about Ghana not been shocked by the disappointing ways in which national administration officials have handled the information he gave them, or messed up what it (national administration) tried to do to solve the problem he raised in his documentary?

Dear Reader may recall some official reactions to the previous work Anas did, on the Osu Children’s Home.  When he was interviewed on radio, the [then] Minister for Employment & Social Welfare, Mr. E.T. Mensah, said the video violated the rights of the children shown in the audio-visual.  That was interesting, for he was right in a wrong way.  If someone was sexually abusing a child, denying that child the right proportions of a basic necessity of life, or (like a frustrated adult) was beating up and hurting him or her is there a better way to make it known other than filming?  Thus, it is true that the ethics of journalism affirms that we do not show children when they are being abused.  However, in that instance, Anas waived the right of the child not to be filmed in an unsavory situation (as a secondary right) in favour of the higher principle of revealing the serious violation of his or her fundamental human rights.

Other public officials commented that Anas had used special effects at the editing table to obtain some of the gruesome deeds the film showed adults doing to the children at the Home.  When asked about that comment in a radio interview, Anas wondered if special effects are what put the authority figures of the Home (who those public officials know) in the video in the first place.

We need to ask: What does that tell you about the thinking and disposition of such public officials who take decisions for our country?

It says two things, at least.

One, those defensive but wrong comments simply show that the top public officials were embarrassed at the revelations, which exposed rot in a state agency they are supposed to be supervising.  Put that in the broader context of the NDC’s frustration over not knowing what to do about the problems bedevilling the state, and their desperation over trying to hold up a crumbled impression that they came to meet rot (left by Kufuor) and that they have and are cleaning it up and so there can be no rot in their era, and here is what you have: A national administration with a complex of paranoia syndromes.  In the grips of such a complex, one can bet your last pesewa that, they will deny the matter, even before they see the video/documentary.

Two, some of those top officials could have been involved in acts that contributed to the rot or could be beneficiaries of it, and since the rot is out in the open and the president is going to ask questions, those public officials appear to be the first out of the door to discredit the credible information.

They simply pushed the matter off the table.  Yet that is not the end of the people’s experience of disappointment.

Worst Experience

Dear Reader may also recall the work Anas did and broadcast before the one on the Osu Children’s Home – on cocoa smuggling at our borders.  Audiences saw how public officials, paid with the taxpayer’s money to control activities at our borders to protect the interest of Ghana, were actually benefiting personally from helping dirty characters to smuggle cocoa into La Cote d’Ivoire.

Highlights

“…The problem is multi-faceted and the talking and ranting will not solve any one aspect…”

“The only thing that solves a problem is the appropriate solution, one that attacks the problem or challenge at the roots and results in outcomes that inure to the welfare and progress of the people.”

“those defensive but wrong comments simply show that the top public officials were embarrassed at the revelations, which exposed rot in a state agency they are supposed to be supervising.”

Ti-Kelenkelen

…with Yirenkyi Lamptey