He belongs to the most thoroughgoing corrupt political party in the country, namely, the Rawlings-minted main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), a statist or state-corporatist juggernaut that believes in the indispensable, and imperative, exploitation, of the public purse – or the taxpayer – for the especial comfort of the key operatives of the State or Government. Which is why the longest-serving Member of Parliament thinks that market-oriented democratic political culture is the bane of Ghanaian democracy (See “My Good Friend Nana Addo Cannot Fight Corruption – Bagbin” RainbowRadioOnline.com / Ghanaweb.com 6/9/17).
“I listened to Nana. He says that he is going to contain corruption. He fought three wars all funded by people. He thinks all the people are Father Christmas? It is not possible….” Mr. Bagbin was quoted as having made the foregoing observation recently. Maybe somebody more erudite in political theory and practice ought to explain to Mr. Bagbin that his so-called Social Democracy ideology is nothing but the mischievous and populist practice of “State Capitalism,” the miscreant or villainous political culture that was until very recently doggedly pursued by Mega-States or countries like Russia (and the erstwhile Union of Soviet Socialist Republics [USSR]) and China. It is State Capitalism because unlike the traditional capitalist economies of most of the Western Hemisphere, the resources of the masses of the people are put at the disposal of the most powerful in society, the largely self-appointed leaders, who claim to be using these resources for the interest of the primary producers of the collective wealth of the country.
But as was brilliantly depicted by the legendary and immortalized British novelist Mr. George Orwell (aka Eric Arthur Blair), State Capitalism is a nauseatingly clever process of governance of cutthroat Darwinian proportions in which the collective wealth is divvied up among the strong and powerful, while the rest of the marginalized members of society are hoodwinked into believing that all of their basic needs and necessities are taken good care of. Otherwise, how can career political sponges and downright parasites like Mr. Bagbin conscientiously justify the “Cash-And-Carry” healthcare policy of the National Democratic Congress, especially in the Pre-Kufuor era?
To be certain, if there were ever any major political party in Ghana that genuinely practiced what may be aptly described “Social Democracy” or social-democratic principles, it is definitely the Danquah-Busia-Dombo-inspired New Patriotic Party (NPP) and not the National Democratic Congress. Indeed, contrary to what the 2nd-Deputy Speaker of Ghana’s Parliament would have the rest of the country and, in fact, the global community believe, the NDC has absolutely no meaningful or progressive ideology besides what Supreme Court jurist, Justice Jones Dotse memorably described as “Create, Loot and Share.” And this has been the standard practice of the key operatives of the National Democratic Congress for the past quarter century.
Needless to say, it was the key operatives of the National Democratic Congress, led in pecking order by Chairman Jerry John Rawlings, the party’s founding-patriarch, who established the unwholesome tradition of selling state-owned real-estate properties to themselves and their cronies. For party Methuselahs like Mr. Bagbin, it is the State that is Father Christmas or Santa Claus, and not the sort of volunteer donors that then-Candidate Akufo-Addo relied upon to help scale the maximum-security wall of the Flagstaff House.
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