A PAC of Questions

Another week, another column:

I’ve been thinking a lot about the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) lately. In particular, I’ve been trying to figure out what effect the Committee’s public hearings will have on Ghanaians’ perception of their current government, as well as what effect I hope the hearings will have. More than anything, these lines of thinking have left me with a lot of questions.

Last week’s statements by members of the opposition—speaking via the Committee for Joint Action (CJA)—represent one possible reaction to the findings of the PAC. The CJA referred to the misuse of public funds that has been revealed by the PAC as “disgusting,” and they’re not wrong. As one of the World Bank’s 22 Heavily Indebted Poor Countries, Ghana hardly has the resources to be able to afford public funds going unaccounted for (not that that would be acceptable in a country with resources to spare).

Evicting Ghana’s Entrepreneurs

My arch-nemesis, the Accra Metropolitan Assembly, has been pursuing its favourite hobby (eviction) lately, and I wrote about it in my column, which was published here, and can be read below:

Passing through Tema Station on Friday, I found myself surrounded by chaos. Not that the station isn’t always chaotic, but Friday’s chaos was of a new variety. People were milling about in groups, piles of wood obstructed lanes, sounds of hammering reverberated among vendors’ shouts. Those shouts were also of a new variety. No “Obroni! Obroni!” to attract me to buy their wares. The vendors weren’t interested in selling to me, or anyone else. What was going on?

Decongestion, that’s what.

In Search of the Information Age

Lord knows why, but they keep publishing my column:

Thinking back on the columns I’ve written so far, I realise that many of them have been focused on the dissemination of information: information about Ghana’s legal system, the president’s whereabouts, load shedding, recycling light bulbs, the flooding in the north. More often than not, my concerns have been with difficulties accessing that information—mostly within Ghana, but also beyond its borders.

Journalists are in the business of finding information, analysing it, and presenting the important bits to their readers. Anywhere in the world that journalism is practiced, some information is easy to obtain, some is difficult, and some impossible.

If an important person or organisation refuses outright to answer questions or grant an interview, their refusal can constitute news, or at least part of a news article. As a general rule, though, we reporters are a lot happier publishing articles with facts in them rather than accounts of the difficulty, or impossibility, of tracking down the information we hoped to publish.

As I said, there are facts that are hard to track down no matter where you are. That said, here in Ghana I have frequently found it surprisingly difficult to obtain information that I would normally assume would be readily available.

My Beef with the President

Another week, another column:

I’m annoyed with President Kufuor. I have been for a few weeks now. Because he’s not my president, I waited to write about my annoyance until I had gauged the Ghanaian response to the issue that has me irked. I didn’t want to put in my two cents until I had a sense of how locals felt about the President’s behaviour. It’s possible, after all, that my reaction wasn’t appropriate or proportionate in a Ghanaian context.

What behaviour, you must be asking, is she so upset about?

FYI 4

No sooner had I gotten this thing in order, than my internet connection at home went kaput, swiftly followed by the wireless hookup I’d been using at the office. That means I can only go online on the computers used to put out GO, so I have very limited access. Basically, I get to read e-mail and that’s it. I’m writing on my laptop, so when the net decides to come back, I’ll post a bunch of stuff (don’t worry, it’ll be in order this time). Sorry!  Thanks for your patience!

Justice For All?

I decided to talk about my friend’s legal problems in this week’s column, which was published here, and is posted below. I also appear to have gone slightly batty, which you will be able to tell by my proposed solution to the crisis in Ghana’s justice system…. Enjoy:

Recently, a Ghanaian friend of mine quit her job because she felt mistreated by her boss. The owner then accused her of theft, and had her arrested. Once she was released on bail, my friend told me that the police had instructed her to pay her former employer the total sum of money she was accused of stealing by the end of the week. She was trying to figure out how to collect such a large sum in such a short time.

I wanted to help out, but was not about to cough up hundreds of cedis (new ones—so millions of old ones) to give to a woman who had, to my knowledge, untruthfully accused my friend of a crime. At first I didn’t know what other help I could give her. The situation she found herself in was just so different from anything I would ever encounter at home.