Editorial

THE IEA AND GHANAIAN POLITICS

There is no doubt that the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) is well entrenched in our young democratic dispensation of late with its programmes aimed at political parties in the country and of late the sub-region.

Even though there are a few NGOs mingling in our political process, the IEA has assumed a leading role and describing itself as a political think tank for the country.

Because of its resourcefulness, the Institute has been able to get the main political parties in the country to undertake programs aimed at nurturing them into the type of political parties found in the advanced democracies.

The IEA, no doubt, has become powerful because of its external support and with its financial power, has been able to co-opt some very influential members of the country’s academia to work for it in pursuit of its objectives.

The IEA because of the general public support it is receiving, has a few times over stepped its boundaries as an NGO and gone beyond its mandate.

The IEA is involved in almost every sphere of our national development to the point that one is tempted to ask if the IEA and their foreign collaborators have taken over the shaping of our democratic process.

The IEA is even very prominent in our elections and has become an authority on Ghanaian elections and therefore organizes periodic seminars and holds workshops for political parties, which according to them, is to strengthen the Ghanaian democratic experiment.

At this time when opposition political parties are financially bankrupt, the IEA is known to be financing the political parties in the day to day running of their offices and the payment of utility bills.

They are also known to be paying some allowances to the General Secretaries of the Political parties and this is why the IEA seems to be wielding so much influence over the country’s political parties (we stand to be corrected if that is not the case).

It was therefore no surprise that the IEA, an NGO, can assemble General Secretaries of the political parties and get them to append their signatures to a document that they themselves can not explain to the understanding of many intelligent Ghanaians, the reasons for agreeing to what IEA want them to do, testing the pulse of the public on a very sensitive issue as the repeal of the Law on Willfully Causing Financial Loss To The State.

What “The Ghana Palaver” would like to know is what is the IEA’s interest in the repeal or amendment of the Law on willfully causing financial loss to the state?

The IEA and the General Secretaries of the political parties claim that the continuous stay of the law on “willfully causing financial loss to the state” on our statute books in its current form is inimical to any genuine effort to promote reconciliation among political parties in the country.

By the meeting with the General Secretaries and the documents they have put out, will anybody be right to say that the IEA is trying to negotiate the exit of the NPP administration, because part of the document is suggestive of that move.

“The Ghana Palaver” is fully convinced that the Law on willfully causing financial loss to the state is not what has divided this country and if there will be disturbance in any future elections; it is not because this law is still on our statute books.

This country of ours has been divided ever since independence and “The Ghana Palaver” does not believe the IEA is in the position to do anything about it.

Likewise, it is not this law that will promote lawlessness in our future elections, what will bring about civil strife during elections is when the incumbent tries to rig the elections in its favour.

We saw this in 2004, when virtually all the NGOs in the country rallied behind the incumbent administration but because the leadership of the NDC handled the whole elections maturely, the country was saved from any civil disturbance.

It is the People of this country that will decide how our transition should be handled and not any foreign sponsored NGO that will come and tell us how we should handle our transitions from one regime to the other.

The Law on willfully causing financial loss to the state does not apply to only politicians and therefore the decision to amend or repeal it does not even lie with the politicians of this country alone and so before anything in that direction can be done, views of the general public are needed to be taken into consideration first.

In this regard, “The Ghana Palaver” would like to associate itself with those who think the IEA is biting more than it should and must not mingle too much in our politics the way they are doing currently.

The two most sensitive issues the IEA meeting with the General Secretaries touched on, being the Law on willfully causing financial loss to the state and transition of political parties after elections are matters for Ghanaians to decide without any foreign interference and “The Ghana Palaver” believes it would do this country a lot of good if NGOs like the IEA stay clear of them.