Yes, Osafo Maafo Condemned Kufuor Politely

As a parting shot to newly-elected premier John Evans Atta-Mills, our now-former president, John Agyekum-Kufuor, reportedly, announced an increment in salary for various categories of public workers, ranging between 16.5 and 34 percent. It was a parting shot, a pugilistic jab, almost, because we learn that the two-term leader bypassed civil-service protocol which enjoined the publication and circulation of circulars to heads of ministries, departments and other relevant agencies informing them of the new salary reconfigurations, thus affording such personnel ample time “to prepare well-defined payrolls for the various categories of workers” (Ghanaian Times 1/14/09).

Now, I don't know much about payroll preparation and all the technical details that go into streamlining salary scales in order for poorly paid government workers to be able to keep abreast of ever-skyrocketing inflationary rates. But since I am a government employee myself, and thus a civil servant by definition, I suppose I can readily identify with the dire economic situation of the Ghanaian worker. In contextual terms, the ordinary American civil/public servant is not very different from her/his Ghanaian counterpart. It is, really, all a matter of varying and respective degrees of bureaucratic efficiency.

What bothers me quite a bit – and this is in no way to suggest that I overly care about the fortunes of the Atta-Mills government – is the fact that for eight years Mr. Kufuor appears to have studiously followed civil-service protocol regarding salary increments for Ghanaian civil servants. So why would the now-ex-President decide to play politics with the salaries of Ghanaian workers at the very moment in his political career, and stewardship, when thinking about his legacy ought to have been uppermost in his mind?

First of all, Mr. Kufuor ought to have realized that playing with the emotions of Ghanaian workers the way that he recently did, is highly unlikely to enhance his already spotty legacy. For starters, by giving the chance for Togbui Afede's transitional team to promptly and imperiously override his salary increment directive, Mr. Kufuor has set a very bad precedent, whereby future lame-duck presidents who issue an identical order would not be taken seriously. In sum, it is the former president's credibility that has been allowed to take a rude and unnecessary hit.

Then also, precisely what message was the former president trying to send the Ghanaian public servant? That s/he had not deserved such salary increment all along until on the eve of Mr. Kufuor's handover of the reins of governance? In other words, what the immediate-former president did clearly and embarrassingly amounts to an infantile spit-ball throwing by a disgruntled elementary school pupil at his strict and mean-spirited teacher.

Thirdly, as an Oxbridge-trained economist who is fond of making capital out of the latter fact, Mr. Kufuor ought to have seriously factored the global economic crisis into his decision to raise the salaries of public servants. After all, did not the former premier flatly refuse to reduce the prices of petrol at the fuel pump, when the price of a barrel of crude oil on the global market had tumbled nearly 50% of what it was barely a month before, and when doing so could have remarkably altered the outcome of the 2008 presidential election?

Actually, while it may be politically inexpedient for the former Finance Minister to publicly acknowledge his having animadverted – or mordantly carped – the former president and former leader of the New Patriotic Party, a critical examination of what Mr. Maafo, reportedly, told the Network Herald newspaper indicates the temperament of a respectable statesman who does not mince words, especially where it matters most.

On the preceding score, this is what the man who took the Ghana Black Stars on their maiden trip to the coveted World Cup tourney had to say about Mr. Kufuor's apparently mischievous attempt to economically railroad the emergent Atta-Mills government to Peace Fm's Kwami Sefa Kayi: “I only said that I don't agree with him because [the] proposal to increase salary [sic] should have been done earlier and taken through Parliament, as we have been doing, because if he proposes it so suddenly for the newly-elected president to discharge it, it might bring controversy[,] since we don't know their budget [as] yet” (1/13/09).

In sum, according to the MP for Akyem-Oda, in so acting, Mr. Kufuor has demonstrated a gross and reckless disregard for democratic protocol. It is almost as if increasing the salary of government workers were a primarily punitive act to be unleashed against an incoming government of which the meter of such punishment disapproves.

We also learn that such unorthodox increment in the salaries of public servants may be a payback to the NDC, whose then-outgoing premier, in either 2000 or 2001, reportedly, increased civil service salaries by a whopping 45%. It may, therefore, be that in the putatively vindictive imagination of Mr. Kufuor, one good turn may well deserve another. Even so, for a premier who loudly campaigned on setting higher moral standards and behavioral code than the P/NDC had maintained for some two decades, playing such mischief lowers Mr. Kufuor's own ethical standards to the level of those of his political opponents.

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is the author of “Ghanaian Politics Today” (Atumpan Publications/lulu.com, 2008). E-mail: [email protected].