Letter to Jomo: A Jomo bash at the B.C.

Years ago, I attended Mass at St. David’s Cathedral in Cardiff city in South Wales and when it came to the Gloria, I levitated in the pews, mind, body and soul. You don’t believe me, do you?

I had been nostalgic for the Catholic Latin Mass since liturgical changes replaced it with the English and local language Masses decades ago, see? Now here I was listening to the Latin Mass again.

It gets to the Gloria and the deep-throated church organ has the floor vibrating and trembling beneath our feet, then just as everyone is going “qui tollis peccata mundis, suscipe deprecationem nostram” … your old buddy just levitates, oh yes he does.

The only other very rare occasions on which I have ever come anywhere near having an excitement of the ions of electricity in my soul, have been those occasions when I have devoured the works of a select group of grandmasters of English literature. The work of John Updike, for example. Updike who wrote an average of one book a year for more than 50 years, died outside Boston last month aged 76.

Time magazine Senior Writer Lev Grossman described Updike’s style in a tribute, as “that thing Updike did with words that other writers couldn’t.” To him, Updike had always managed to “string together, words which in anybody else’s hands would not belong together.”

Grossman also said of Updike’s style, that “folks loved it, they quoted it, they studied it and some tried to rip it off”, whatever the last bit means.

If re-incarnation truly exists beyond the fringes of speculative metaphysics, Jomo, then I certainly would like to write like Updike my next life around.

There is this TV ad about doing our best with passion the Updike way. A modest collection of the noisy prose I have managed so far in this column in the past one-and-a half decades will be launched by His Excellency, Vice-President John Dramani Mahama at the British Council Hall in Accra next Tuesday, God willing.

If you meet all the good folks who have been deluging me with complimentary email, tell them the launch of Letter to Jomo provides the grandest opportunity ever for them to come around and show some solidarity with the old boy and get a copy.

I am back to the day’s business Jomo: President Mills has directed that members of his incoming administration declare their assets even as they take up office. It is an interesting subject, this business of assets declaration by political appointees.

Have you heard of “anticipatory declaration”, my good lad? Here is the scenario: Someone is appointed to high public office. A glint immediately appears in his eye in anticipation of the pickings that will come his way. Declare your assets, he is told:

He has a brick house, three goats and a backyard garden, but declares four houses, three plots of land, two articulated trucks/four cars and two buses.

He has set himself the ambitious goal of acquiring all these through abuse of public office for private profit, see? The name of the game then, is to ensure that all declarations made are verified by trained people, so that if accountability comes tomorrow it will be dispensed without error.

Any detection of falsehood in the course of verification of declared assets is sufficient ground for an immediate impeachment. Bye, bye, my dear bad man and see you in more ethical political practice in your re-incarnated life.

There are a few questions dancing about in my skull: Were previous assets declarations by public officials painstakingly verified? Were subsequent declarations made at the end of their terms in office and comparisons between the two declarations also verified?

If the answers to both questions are unsatisfactory then there must be an assets declaration circus going on and we might as well sit back and enjoy it for better or for worse.

Anti-corruption activity may not be as easy as boiling an egg, which come to think of it, some folks cannot even do, but it is not as overly daunting as it is often made out to be:

Unexplained wealth monstrously out of conceivable proportion to a public officer’s declared sources of income should be enough ground for Lifestyle checks:

What is the net weight of the load sitting in the chap’s bank accounts? How many cars are sitting in the man’s garage? How did he manage to build five mansions for himself and two each for a concubine and spare concubine? How did he fund three foreign trips with a female friend last year? What is his verified daily family expenditure?

You can be triply sure that some will register property and businesses in the names of relatives to escape detection. Since these relatives are not public officials it is not easy to apply lifestyle checks to them without appearing to breach the law, but hey, that is the challenge.

Every investigator will tell you that the more challenging an investigation the more exciting the hunt, besides we have to find appropriate ways around all legal obstacles in the war against “ways and means” in the corridors of power.

Here is a secondary update on the rumpus over the disbursement of US$ 20 million dollars in ex gratia payments to former President Kufuor and members of his administration: Wizened geezers in some sections of the public services are up chanting “we want our share.”

Civil servants are asking why after decades of service they should retire with grade three peanuts in social security payments while MPs and members of the Executive who serve for short periods should go home with cartloads of hot cash.

I want my share too, Jomo. Should I be denied an ex gratia payment when it is my turn, I shall raise hell and bring the sky down on everyone: I have already been in professional public service for the past 37 years, in some of the remotest parts of Ghana, first as a teacher and then as a journalist.

That is why I was mad when one of those nocturnal creeps who hide in holes during the day and who can barely wait for nightfall so that they can melt with the shadows, tried breaking into my car on Tuesday night Finding it difficult, he broke the handle in frustration.

Then the creep of darkness crept back into the shadows as they always do, driven by the very demons that will eat him up one of these days.

Only God and the policeman can catch a thief, Jomo, and since the policeman often appears to be having problems of his own, we must trust in God to catch the thieves one by one. Amen.

Author: George Sydney Abugri
Email: georgeabu@hotmail.com
Website: www.sydneyabugri.com

Source: Daily Graphic