Ekowrites: COVID-19, Mockery political donations and the coming ghanaian apocalypse

The novel Coronavirus pandemic is turning things around in ghana as politicians are donating their own resources to charitable causes.

The general public started praising President Akufo-Addo for donating his "three months’ salary" which is approximately GHC87,000 into the “COVID-19 Fund” which he established.

Subsequently, former President John Mahama donated "one month's salary".
This generated discussions amongst the rivals of the two main political parties on social media as they compared the president's donations to John Dramani Mahama's.

John Mahama’s donation on Saturday, April 4 has turned the debate completely.

Mahama’s donation is estimated at GHC390,000 and has generated huge political conversations since they are not from state coffers.

Since active political campaigns are not effective due to the coronavirus, social media has become a key battleground for the December elections.

Trending on social media, many are questioning the paucity of the government's GHC100,000 worth of food items donated to the poor and vulnerable in the society recently.

In a country where frontline health workers have started contracting the coronavirus, the least expected of the politicians is sound moral judgement while subjugating their leadership to technocrats who present the society with facts, evidence and reason.

On March 29 Ken Ofori-Atta, the financed minister was quoted in ft.com as saying that Africa is at a “break the glass moment”, because the masses who live from hand to mouth cannot be expected to obey the lockdown orders. Clearly he is suggesting that he foresees a social revolt – a political apocalypse – sooner than later in ghana.

During the final three months of the presidential and parliamentary elections, over the past three elections, Ghana's two main parties spent about USD2mn each on the presidential election alone. Therefore, the donations we are hearing about are a big joke.

Ghana's COVID-19 Fund is chaired by Her Ladyship Sophia Akufo, the chief justice.

If there is one odd thing about this fund, it is the fact that very little is known about how the fund operates.

The chief justice may have been handled an already poisoned chalice.

And it may be too little too late when she learns to run the fund transparently.

Compare all of these to Morocco which has raised over USD3bn in a similar fund since HM Mohammed VI personally donated about USD200 million into the coronavirus fund he established.

In the case of Morocco, the trend unlike ghana, has not leaned toward ministers donating salaries; the ministers, therefore, are making personal donations from their own fortunes.

In the said financial time's interview, ghana’s finance minister warned that our crowded markets are not fit for purpose and added that ghana has asked the IMF for a bailout to arrest the falling productivity, GDP rates, debt to GDP ratio and all the so-called better economic indicators.

The finance minister’s chilly reference to folk in Africa living from hand to mouth and hence needing cash transfers before a revolt happens brings into sharp focus the much talked about Communist Manifesto.

In the manifesto, Marx and Engels wrote that in the final class struggle, the proletariat (low class; labour) will rise against the bourgeoisie (middle and upper class) who are the owners of capital and other factors of production.

Marx and Engels’s proposition was premised on a clash of thesis and antithesis, until the distillation of ideas based on a better moral order creates a new thesis which subsists until a new antithesis emerges to challenge it.

As our mentor has observed in the fight for PPEs, ventilators and medical supplies across Europe and North America, “The next battleground will be food”.

We predict that when the COVID-IOT MPs and ministers see citizens ignore the lockdown order and gather in their homes, it will be unsafe for them to even ride their tinted glass SUVs.

The solution? Mend your COVID-iotic ways, sit your black arses down and prevent the coming apocalypse based on the moral imperative “to do right to all manner of persons”.

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