The Bawumia Effect

The cold which infected Mr. Fiifi Kwetey as it did his other colleagues in the NDC after listening to Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia’s treatise was expected.

The effect of the infection on him was amply displayed when he laid out his impish and warped analysis of the discourse which we have learnt caused the party worrying insomnia as it has always done.

In our earlier commentary on the subject, we wondered why such a reaction was late in coming. We rightly thought that the propaganda team was working on a response which turned out to be both appalling and merely impish.

If the analysis, according to Fiifi Kwetey, represents the NDC position, which it is anyway, then we empathise with them for the predicament the discourse has put them in.

When an incensed propagandist – in fact, a de facto director of propaganda of a ruling party – leads a charge against the person of Dr. Bawumia after a rendition of the state of the economy, the result is the effusion of Fiifi Kwetey: high in cacophony and low in substance.

Refusing to limit his response to the content of the discourse, ‘the Bawumia gospel’ – as someone described it – and attempting to run down the gentleman’s enviable pedigree, regarding him as a doctrinaire economist, is to state the least a melancholic lesson in political ranting and ignorance.

For a person who has worked with a Bretton Woods institution to be described as a theoretician as Mr. Fiifi Kwetey did Dr. Bawumia, is ridiculous and silly.

Former Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana responsible for landmark innovations in the banking system in the country and leading later a massive re-engineering project for a distressed Zimbabwean economy, are some of the attributes of the man Fiifi Kwetey claimed is not worth a farthing.

It was entertaining listening to Mr. Kwetey trying to downplay the crisis-ridden Ghanaian economy, describing it rather as a challenge.

His decision to describe the 2008 economy as a crisis-ridden one and not the current situation – which for him is only facing some challenges – made interesting listening. It did expectedly provoke a lot of laughter among those who were patient enough to listen to his disgusting slangs.

His refusal to regard the inability of government to make statutory payments, erratic electricity supply and uncontrollable state borrowing in the face of dwindling revenue as a crisis situation, represents the height of denial and irresponsibility.

As for the deputy Finance minister’s journey in semantics over whether what the country is encountering today is a crisis or not was a failed attempt at whitewashing a dire situation, and should be considered as such.

Source: Editorial/Daily Guide