Sometimes, one despairs. It seems that because of personal ambition, there are people on the face of this earth who would do everything possible and conceivable to advance their own interests.
So there are experts and one in our society who would like the world to know that he is an expert in fighting corruption is the person am focusing on today.
Over the past few years, the very honourable Paul Collins Appiah-Ofori (my MP because my mum comes from Brakwa ) has been throwing his weight about all over the place, claiming that he is an apostle of anti-corruption.
Some say he was sponsored by the National Democratic Congress (NDC) through patronage, Appiah-Ofori was responsible for making himself out into a nuisance on all manner of issues, but the matter for which he is possibly going to go down into the record books, is his allegation that his colleague New Patriotic Party (NPP) members took five thousand dollar bribes to vote for the approval of the sale of seventy percent shares of GT to Vodafone.
Now, the conditions around which he made this claim are very interesting. Apparently, and according to him, he had heard on the grapevine, through Deputy Speaker Edward Doe Adjaho, who was then Deputy Minority Leader, that the NPP members took the bribes.
Upon hearing this rumors peddled by a leader with nothing better to do than to spend his time spreading scurrilous allegations, Appiah-Ofori quickly wrote a letter to then Chief of Staff, Kwadwo Mpiani demanding his share of the ‘loot’, and when he was denied because there were never any such payments, Appiah-Ofori went public with the accusations.
When he was confronted, he said that he had never said anything like that, but in another breathe, he has proof and that if he is challenged, he would bring out this so-called proof out.
My brothers and sisters, would any serious campaigner against corruption wait to be challenged before he brings out proof against corruption? No.
Again, he says the evidence will destroy his party and so he is keeping it close to his chest and I cite with Randy Abbey that if he has any evidence he should produce it and not think of his party because Ghana comes first.
Now, the members of the NDC are screaming to the high heavens because he has accused them of corruption.
According to him, Associate Professor John Evan Atta Mills is unfit to rule this nation because he told him that some of his ministers and people around him have gone to take bribes…again he Never presented any evidence.
Should Atta Mills just get up and call Ayariga, Koku or the Communications Minister and hand them over to the Police or the faceless Yaw Donkor’s BNI because PC Appiah -Ofori says so?
As we the Akyems would say, otwea! They (NDC) have created a monster called P.C. Appiah-Ofori, and now, they are going to have to deal with him!
I was not surprised when I saw a news item on myjoyonline with the caption “Ayariga schools PC Appiah Ofori on fighting corruption”.
Ha! But what can you expect of a man who says that his wife infected him with gonorrhea and lives with two married wives in one house?
These are some of the experts in our society and the claptrap they serve us sometimes!
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
The Anti-African Racist Insults Obama Got Away With In Ghana
President Barack Obama has by now firmly established a reputation (or, if you like, a notoriety) as someone who is smoothly agreeable and courteous, even excusatory, when he talks to America’s supposed “enemies” and friends but condescending, even insulting and downright rude, when he talks to his own friends and “family,” especially if those friends and family happen to be descended from his absent father’s bloodline.
Read Obama’s speeches to African Americans and compare them with speeches he gave to other groups in America, such as Jewish Americans, for instance. You will notice that speeches to Jewish Americans are usually remarkably polite and politic while speeches to African Americans are often deficient in refinement or grace and generally hallmarked by a repulsively pompous arrogance. His admirers call this “tough love” to family.
But nowhere does this dissociative presidential identity disorder become more apparent than in a comparison of Obama’s Cairo speech and his Accra speech.
In the Cairo speech, he was deep, engaging, admirably nuanced and above all, deferential. In the Accra speech, however, he came across as patronizing, impertinent, pedestrian, and avuncular in an offensive way.
To be fair, there is much to be admired and celebrated in Obama’s Ghana speech. Except for its bland and simplistic formulations, it was earnest, inspired and well-delivered. And, although the speech sounded and read more like a paternalistic rebuke to errant and obstinate children than an address to a sovereign nation’s parliament, I frankly have not the littlest sympathy for the clueless and inept African leaders Obama so thoroughly infantilized.
However, what we should not allow him to get away with was his studied and gratuitous racist dirty plow at Africans or, as he called us, “sub-Saharan” Africans. Now, what is this racist dirty plow? Well, it’s his revoltingly nauseating references to us as “tribes,” to conflicts in our continent as “ancient tribal conflicts,” and to incidences of ethnic discrimination as “tribalism.” Obama should know better than to be that objectionably ignorant.
Until relatively recently, am told by a friend, for instance, the Irish, Obama’s relatives on his mother’s side, were systematically discriminated against in employment opportunities in America and Britain by people who looked as lily white as they. Was that, too, “tribalism,” similar to the one you said your father allegedly suffered in Kenya, Mr. Obama? Oh, I forgot, that is called “anti-Irish racism,” even though the Irish belong to the same “race” as the people who discriminated against them. Ethnic discrimination is “tribalism” only when it happens in Africa, oops sorry, sub-Saharan Africa I mean.
It’s curious that it was a white-owned American newspaper by name the Politico that first called out Obama on this racist putdown of “sub-Saharan Africans.”
“While the presidents’ messages were broadly similar—touting democracy, deploring corruption, and calling for a new approach to development aid—-it’s hard to dispute that Obama gets away with criticism of Africa that other U.S. presidents could not,” the paper wrote.
For a contrast of contexts, the paper cited the example of Clinton’s travel to Africa in 1998, which was preceded by an impressive assemblage of a panel of scholars on Africa who briefed the press and the president about do’s and don’ts.
“Keep in mind that the word ‘tribal conflict’ is extremely insulting to Africans,” the Politico quoted a certain Marina Ottaway of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to have told American reporters who would cover the presidential visit.
“Don't write about ‘century-old tribal conflicts in African countries’ because the conflicts that we talk about today usually go back 60, 70 years. The very definition of the ethnic groups that we know today is ethnic groups that were defined as such during the colonial period.”
The paper continued: “Yet, when Obama uttered the phrase ‘tribal conflicts’ at a press conference Friday as he discussed his planned trip to Africa, it went virtually unremarked upon. So, too did several references he made in his Ghana speech to battles among ‘tribes.’”
“Another president,” the paper concluded, “might have been accused of racism...but Obama avoided that simply by affirming the abilities of Africans.” Well, no! Affirming the abilities of Africans (whatever in the world that means) has not helped Obama to avoid the charge of racist denigration of Africans. If it was wrong for Clinton or any other past American president to deride Africans as “tribes” it can’t be right for Obama to do so simply because he is half African.
The truth is that in spite of what we might like to believe about Obama, he is culturally a white American and has, in spite of himself, internalized some of the prejudices that come with his cultural socialization.
So far, he has been getting away with his misguided “tough love” policy to a people who have had to contend with tough luck most of their lives. But it won’t be long before Africans and people of African descent everywhere start calling him out in large numbers and reminding him that perpetually showing tough love to people who, for historical reasons, need tender love isn’t bravery; it’s cowardice of the lowest kind.
I might be wrong anyway but your in-puts are welcomed!
Read Obama’s speeches to African Americans and compare them with speeches he gave to other groups in America, such as Jewish Americans, for instance. You will notice that speeches to Jewish Americans are usually remarkably polite and politic while speeches to African Americans are often deficient in refinement or grace and generally hallmarked by a repulsively pompous arrogance. His admirers call this “tough love” to family.
But nowhere does this dissociative presidential identity disorder become more apparent than in a comparison of Obama’s Cairo speech and his Accra speech.
In the Cairo speech, he was deep, engaging, admirably nuanced and above all, deferential. In the Accra speech, however, he came across as patronizing, impertinent, pedestrian, and avuncular in an offensive way.
To be fair, there is much to be admired and celebrated in Obama’s Ghana speech. Except for its bland and simplistic formulations, it was earnest, inspired and well-delivered. And, although the speech sounded and read more like a paternalistic rebuke to errant and obstinate children than an address to a sovereign nation’s parliament, I frankly have not the littlest sympathy for the clueless and inept African leaders Obama so thoroughly infantilized.
However, what we should not allow him to get away with was his studied and gratuitous racist dirty plow at Africans or, as he called us, “sub-Saharan” Africans. Now, what is this racist dirty plow? Well, it’s his revoltingly nauseating references to us as “tribes,” to conflicts in our continent as “ancient tribal conflicts,” and to incidences of ethnic discrimination as “tribalism.” Obama should know better than to be that objectionably ignorant.
Until relatively recently, am told by a friend, for instance, the Irish, Obama’s relatives on his mother’s side, were systematically discriminated against in employment opportunities in America and Britain by people who looked as lily white as they. Was that, too, “tribalism,” similar to the one you said your father allegedly suffered in Kenya, Mr. Obama? Oh, I forgot, that is called “anti-Irish racism,” even though the Irish belong to the same “race” as the people who discriminated against them. Ethnic discrimination is “tribalism” only when it happens in Africa, oops sorry, sub-Saharan Africa I mean.
It’s curious that it was a white-owned American newspaper by name the Politico that first called out Obama on this racist putdown of “sub-Saharan Africans.”
“While the presidents’ messages were broadly similar—touting democracy, deploring corruption, and calling for a new approach to development aid—-it’s hard to dispute that Obama gets away with criticism of Africa that other U.S. presidents could not,” the paper wrote.
For a contrast of contexts, the paper cited the example of Clinton’s travel to Africa in 1998, which was preceded by an impressive assemblage of a panel of scholars on Africa who briefed the press and the president about do’s and don’ts.
“Keep in mind that the word ‘tribal conflict’ is extremely insulting to Africans,” the Politico quoted a certain Marina Ottaway of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to have told American reporters who would cover the presidential visit.
“Don't write about ‘century-old tribal conflicts in African countries’ because the conflicts that we talk about today usually go back 60, 70 years. The very definition of the ethnic groups that we know today is ethnic groups that were defined as such during the colonial period.”
The paper continued: “Yet, when Obama uttered the phrase ‘tribal conflicts’ at a press conference Friday as he discussed his planned trip to Africa, it went virtually unremarked upon. So, too did several references he made in his Ghana speech to battles among ‘tribes.’”
“Another president,” the paper concluded, “might have been accused of racism...but Obama avoided that simply by affirming the abilities of Africans.” Well, no! Affirming the abilities of Africans (whatever in the world that means) has not helped Obama to avoid the charge of racist denigration of Africans. If it was wrong for Clinton or any other past American president to deride Africans as “tribes” it can’t be right for Obama to do so simply because he is half African.
The truth is that in spite of what we might like to believe about Obama, he is culturally a white American and has, in spite of himself, internalized some of the prejudices that come with his cultural socialization.
So far, he has been getting away with his misguided “tough love” policy to a people who have had to contend with tough luck most of their lives. But it won’t be long before Africans and people of African descent everywhere start calling him out in large numbers and reminding him that perpetually showing tough love to people who, for historical reasons, need tender love isn’t bravery; it’s cowardice of the lowest kind.
I might be wrong anyway but your in-puts are welcomed!