The piece below was forwarded by Dr. Kwabena Akurang-Parry with this
note: "I think that readers would benefit from the piece below
written Dr.Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe which was posted at www.ghanaweb.com:
FeatureArticle of Saturday, 23 July 2005 (Unfortunately, I have seen
Part 1)"


*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., teaches English and Journalism at
Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden
City. He was a regular poet of the Ghana National Cultural Center,
Kumasi, from 1979 to 1984, and the author of ten volumes of poetry and
prose, all of which are available from Amazon.com, Powells.com,
iUniverse.com and Barnes & Noble.com.


The Life And Times Of JJ Rawlings - Part 2
In the wake of the G-8 Summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, his Tyrannical
Eminence, Flt.-Lt. Jeremiah John Rawlings, had the impudent temerity to
subject the economic agenda of the world's wealthiest and most powerful
leaders to scrutiny. In a largely desultory one-and-half-page article,
Ghana's longtime tyrant and mass murderer alluded to the recent subway
and bus bombings in London by some young British-born terrorists of
Asian descent. "The atrocity inevitably diverted the attention of
participants and [the general] public, and it is impossible to know what
the G-8 [Summit] would have produced had the shocking events of July 7
not occurred," wrote the 57-year-old former Air Force pilot and career
coup-plotter.

Needless to say, the preceding quote which formed a part of the
aforementioned article, which was originally published in Britain's
Guardian newspaper - at least that was how Ghanaweb.com sourced it - is
patently condescending and outright sophomoric. First of all, it
presumes the intellectual and moral levity of the G-8 leaders by
facilely suggesting that the mere occurrence of the terrorist carnage
had unreservedly eviscerated any iota or modicum of conviction from the
collective agenda of these progressive - and we must significantly add
"Democratic" - leaders. In reality, as evidenced by passionate and
convicted statements from Prime Minister Tony Blair, of Great Britain,
the Chairman of the Gleneagles Summit, the July 7 terrorist mayhem
actually reaffirmed the hitherto immutable resolve of the summiteers and
their global allies in not only drastically meliorating the grind and
crunch of poverty, but also to unreservedly bear down on the
fast-encroaching culture of terrorism. Thus, attempting to glibly
characterize the leaders of the G-8 countries as being pathologically
afflicted with weak-will is rather unfortunate, to speak much less of
the unpardonably irreverent. For the well-meaning and nimble-witted
people of Ghana, no remark, coming at the time it did, could be said to
have been more embarrassing. And here, we mince no words in celebrating
the fact that Mr. Rawlings is a quondam, rather than the substantive,
premier of the Democratic Republic of Ghana (DRG).

And when Mr. Rawlings, rather cynically, adds that "it is impossible to
know what the G-8 [Summit] would have produced[,] had the shocking
events of July 7 not occurred"(Ghanaweb.com 7/14/05), it is not quite
clear just what the founder of the Provisional National Democratic
Congress (PNDC) means. In sum, what "impossibility" is there and whose
"epistemic temperament" are we talking about? In other words, is Mr.
Rawlings trying to second-guess the G-8 leaders or is he simply engaged
in intellectual masturbation? Indeed, the keen reader does not have to
venture any further in order to uncover the motive behind the preceding
observation. The writer himself glaringly lets on such motive in a
flagitiously egocentric tenor as follows: "As one of the few African
leaders to resuscitate a collapsed economy, I would have preferred
unconditional debt cancellation for all sub-Saharan Africa, with a
monitoring system to ensure that the released funds go into basic
infrastructure, health, education and [the] provision of good drinking
water - and not deposited in banks in donor countries"(Ghanaweb.com
7/14/05).

It goes without saying that if, indeed, Mr. Rawlings has any clinical
evidence pointing to the opprobrious fact that any African leader -
particularly that of his own nation of Ghana - has "deposited [moneys
received from the G-8 leaders] in banks in donor countries," to speak
much less of the concerned leader's own personal bank account, let him
come out right now and prove his case or be sued by the target of such
innuendo and vitriol in a court of law.

Needless to say, the days when Mr. Rawlings' AFRC-PNDC regimes
predicated their persecution and summary executions of innocent
Ghanaians whom the former dictator routinely designated variously as
"enemies of the revolution" and "enemies of the state" are over. The
tragedy, however, is that Flt.-Lt. Rawlings and his fanatical disciples
do not seem to appreciate the salutary fact that the Rawlings-Tsikata
Tribal Reign-Of-Terror is over and done with! And that any brazen and
dastardly attempt to take us back along that primitive, Stygian and
troglodytic alley would be met with a kind of deadly force the likes of
which would, almost certainly, make Baghdad and Kabul seem like a royal
vacation in the Bahamas. And, indeed, many of us, including this writer,
are willing to lay down our lives to ensure that the Provisional
National Democratic Congress does not make the judgmental error of
attempting to force itself back into the august Osu Castle.

It is also rather paradoxically absurd for the former Chairman of the
AFRC and PNDC to smugly claim that: "The debt-relief debate has,
however, engendered the false impression - dangerous for Africa's
development[al] prospects - that the G8 concession means more access to
more foreign, and free, funds for national development. The reality is
that no funds are coming from external sources. Debt cancellation
[simply] means the removal of the obligation to transfer financial
resources to the creditor," and then in the very next paragraph
mischievously and disingenuously assert that: "I would have preferred
unconditional debt cancellation for all sub-Saharan Africa, with a
monitoring system to ensure that 'the released funds' [internal
quotations added] go into basic infrastructure, health, education and
[the] provision of good drinking water - and not deposited in banks in
donor countries."

If one may aptly ask: Just what aspect of the adjective "unconditional"
is so difficult for Chairman Rawlings to comprehend? And just what does
the NDC high priest understand by the quite limpid expression of
"unconditional debt cancellation" for him to also call for the
establishment of a "monitoring system to ensure that the released funds
[ whose existence he categorically denies, by the way] go into basic
infrastructure"?

Furthermore, when the NDC-Mafia capo profusely lauds the World Bank and
the IMF, the very exploitative institutions vehemently denounced by such
political and intellectual superiors as President Julius Nyerere, late
of Tanzania, Dr. Adebayo Adedeji, the renowned Nigerian economist;
former President Kenneth Kaunda, of Zambia, and celebrated novelist
Chinua Achebe, of Nigeria, just what is Mr. Rawlings thinking and
talking about? And, indeed, did the "People-Power" demagogue once
consult with his longtime economic mortician - or undertaker - Dr. Kwesi
Botchway before sitting down to pen such ideological poppycock?

And for those of our readers who might not have read it, this is exactly
what Mr. Rawlings asserts in his rather incoherent article flamboyantly
titled "Africa Needs People Power - JJ"(Ghanaweb.com 7/14/05): "Working
with the World Bank and IMF, my government halted Ghana's decline; we
inherited a near[-]collapsed state and built a 5% growth rate before
handing over to the present government. This would not have been
possible if I had presided over a corrupt, dictatorial and exploitative
government. In other words, true democracy works - you can't go wrong
when the people become part of the decision-making process and take
equal responsibility for successes and failures."

And just what "True Democracy" is Mr. Rawlings talking about, since
barely two or three months ago, Ghana's longest-ruling former tyrant and
"benign dictator" held a press conference in South Africa, of all
places, and bitterly lamented the fact that military coup detats were
fast becoming a historical relic. The two-term elected pseudo-civilian
leader also fails to observe in his article that more cabinet members of
his government have been convicted and imprisoned on verifiable and
provable charges of corruption than any other government in Ghana's
half-century of post-colonial existence.

And when he fatuously gloats over a purported "5% growth rate before
handing over to the present government," the writer, sophomorically
banking on the short memories of his countrymen and women, deliberately
fails to add that he had reluctantly handed over to President John
Agyekum-Kufuor an economy running at a dismal capacity of about
45-percent, with an unemployment rate hovering around the 50-percent
mark, and an accumulated debt of some $6 billion, coupled with an
inflationary rate of about 20-plus-percent.

Interestingly, the whole point of Mr. Rawlings' article was to take
unreserved and singular credit for the G-8's African debt-cancellation
initiative. Needless to say, such a brazen claim could not be more
scandalous; and, indeed, rather than being an integral part of the
solution, Mr. Rawlings has actually contributed to the steady and
protracted impoverishment of Ghana in a way that no leader before or
after this veritable abomination of a leader could. Which is not to say
that we, for our part, had no idea about the undisputed master-brains
behind the indubitably auspicious G-8 debt-cancellation initiative - has
anyone ever heard of such illustrious names as Paul Boateng - my homeboy
- Kofi Annan, Gordon Brown, Tony Blair, Charles Rangel and the
Congressional Black Caucus of the United States of America? And how
about Nelson Mandela?