2013 was a remarkable year, because of the variations of activities and events that happened in it and, more importantly, what they mean now for the Republic of Ghana, Africa and the world at large plus what they portend for the future of those same three sets. This is a review of some of those events from the perspective of the out-pouring from the big head of Ti-Kelenkelen.
The fortunes of Ghana began with the outcome of the December 7 & 8, 2012 General Election not necessarily because it marked the start of a new term in our Fourth Republic. Every General Election does that. There was no change in the face of the president, since President Mills died on July 24, 2013, and Vice President John D. Mahama, who took his place thereafter, was later declared winner of the presidential election by the Electoral Commission and sworn in as president on January 7, 2013. Also the National Democratic Congress (NDC) continued to hold majority seats in the expanded Parliament of 275 members, raised from 230 in 2012. The fortunes of Ghana for 2013 began with the outcome of the General Election, because for the first time in this country’s history, the declared results of a presidential election were challenged in the Supreme Court.
Very early in January, three personalities of the New Patriotic Party (NPP,) its presidential candidate, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo; vice presidential candidate, Dr. Mahamadu Bawumiah, and; the party national chairman, Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey, filed at the Supreme Court a case now known as the 2012 Presidential Election Petition. In that case, the three challenged as invalid the presidential polls results declared by the chairman of the Electoral Commission, Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan. Because of what Ti-Kelenkelen saw and heard in December and what his big head told him about what he saw and heard, he decided to wait and see the evidence of the petition before commenting.
Ti-Kelenkelen thus turned his attention to other matters of equal importance, because of their implications and the eventual impact of those implications on also Ghana and Africa. The first issue Ti-Kelenkelen picked to worry his big head is what he set as Partiality in punishing global banking scandals- Comparing IBCC to HSBC/Standard/Barclays. In December 2012, banking and financial regulators in the United States of America (USA) punished French international bank, HSBC, for serious violations, including cooperating with and conducting money laundering ( from 2006-2010) for known drug lords and agencies, such as the Sinaloa drug cartel of Mexico and the Norte del Valle drug cartel of Columbia. According to the Assistant Attorney-General for the U.S. Justice Department’s criminal division, Lanny Breuer, the two cartels sent “more than $881 million… through HSBC’s US unit,” She adds: “In total, the bank’s US and Mexican units failed to monitor more than $670 billion in wire transfers and more than $9.4 billion in purchases of US dollars from HSBC Mexico. During research Ti-Kelenkelen discovers regulators in both the US and UK had over several years fined Barclays and Standard Chartered Banks huge sums of money for the same and other violations. The violations also included intentional non-monitoring of transfer of large amounts of cash, manipulation of liboror inter-bank lending rate, (i.e., the rate at which banks lend money to each other,) and doing business with countries or organisations their governments have listed as terrorist entities.
Barclays was fined in excess of $670 million; over several years Standard Chartered paid $967 million in fines, while; HSBC was, in one instance, fined a record amount in excess of $900 million in 2012. Apart from the fines these western banks were simply warned and monitoring programmes set up to ensure they obeyed the rules. Also no single official of the three banks was sanctioned for the grave, multiple violations. And so a New York Times editorial said the regulators and Justice Department had taken the non-deterrent position that the banks are “too big to fail.”
Immediately, Ti-Kelenkelen recalled how western financial regulators, to the contrary, closed down the international operations of the (Islamic) International Bank for Credit and Commerce in 1991 for similar violations. In the article therefore, Ti-Kelenkelen points out that western regulators were partial in the separate ways in which they solved the same type of violations by western banks and by an Islamic bank. Indeed, Ti-Kelenkelen avers, they closed down fast-growing IBCC international operations, because the western banking concept based on charging interest was fast losing ground to the Islamic concept of banking. The Islamic banking concept insists charging interest is “riba” or usury, hence does not charge interest on deposits or loans, but is based on the lender taking a stake in the transaction or the profit thereof. If western regulators foreclosed IBCC in 1991, they should have done same to HSBC, Standard Chartered and Barclays in 2012. The fallouts of that partiality have vast implications for Ghana, Africa and third world countries in general, but Ti-Kelenkelen did not include those in the article, since it did not fit the context.
The second matter Ti-Kelenkelen deals with is contained in an article with the headline Political party men in uniform. By the first week of January 2013 the Ghana Police Service had placed a police war tanker on the junction just outside the gate of the Electoral Commission along with policemen, some of who were also stationed outside the back wall of the Commission. Curious, Ti-Kelenkelen went to them for a chat. In the ensuing conversation the ulterior intention why they were stationed there became clear. An over-zealous policeman verbally attacked Ti-Kelenkelen as if he was among those who sent the Election Petition Case to court. Ti-Kelenkelen thus points out that such (NDC) party men in uniform are sorry excuses for policemen and dangerous to the mission and responsibilities of the Ghana Police Service, because fanatics like him may have been given a clandestine agenda apart from the general open order to the police unit stationed there to protect the Commission from potential vandals.
One of the first minister-designates President Mahama named was known lawyer, Nana OyeLithur. Immediately, her nomination and another issues raised in Ti-Kelenkelen’s mind a red flag. One, she is also a well-known proponent of homosexual rights. And two, the president changed the name of the Ministry of Women and Children’s Affairs (created by Kufuor) to Ministry of Gender and Social Protection. Women and Children’s Affairs has specific mandate, but Gender and Social Protection is vast and vague that it is easy to throw in making a law to protect the civil rights of homosexual and then charging the ministry to protect that right. In fact,before the 2008 General Elections, Ti-Kelenkelen heard from impeccably reliable sources that the NDC had promised homosexuals that they would legalise it when they win the presidential election. It was in 2013 when Mahama nominated Oye Lithur and changed the name of the ministry that it became clear where in the NDC that “promise” must have come from.
In private conversations therefore, Ti-Kelenkelen has predicted John Mahama has an agenda tolegalise homosexuality in Ghana before his time in office is done. Almost everyone he says it toinsists Ghanaians will resist it, but revelations that Mahama is a friend of US gay rights activist, Andrew Solomon, who financed the book launch of Mahama’s biography in the US, does not help matters. Remember also that Mahama has bought the conscience of top pastors and imams. Also the December 19, 2013 edition of the Daily Graphic reports the deputy minister for Tourism and Creative Arts, Dzifa Gomashie, as saying homosexuals have rights that must be respected. She even waxed ridiculous by saying you don’t solve problems with violence. While that exposes the hidden agenda of the Mahama administration, it portrays the ridiculous extents to which politicians will go to push their agenda. To comment on her statement, Ghanaians detest homosexuality, but no one denies them anything or uses violence against them. Even President Mills stated that clearly when he pointed out that no one bothers homosexuals in Ghana.
Highlights
1.
“If western regulators foreclosed IBCC in 1991, they should have done same to HSBC, Standard Chartered and Barclays in 2012. The fallouts of that partiality have vast implications for Ghana, Africa and third world countries…”
2.
“Ti-Kelenkelen has predicted John Mahama has an agenda to legalise homosexuality in Ghana before his time in office is done. Almost everyone he says it to insists Ghanaians will resist it, but revelations that Mahama is a friend of US gay rights activist, Andrew Solomon,… does not help matters.”
Ti-Kelenkelen
Yirenkyi Lamptey