The banter over what accounted for the headline grabbing and adrenaline-raising deficit expenditure by government has been resonating across the political plane since the duo of Felix Kwakye Ofosu, Deputy Information Minister and Minority Leader Osei Kyei-Bonsu engaged each other on the subject.
While the Minority Leader claims the whopping amount of GH�2.8 billion, part of a bigger amount, was sunk into the ruling National Democratic Congress� (NDC) campaign machine in the 2012 election season, the government appointee expectedly spat on the allegation.
For us ordinary Ghanaians, the engagement between them led us into details which we would have ordinarily not be privy to. It is instructive to learn that a government can decide, unilaterally with no recourse to Parliament, to divert public funds into an activity or activities whose bearing on national development cannot be defended in any decent and civilized forum and under no circumstances.
We have observed regrettably the tendency to leave such critical subject such as fiscal matters to the propaganda machinery of government when the reality is that this department has lost all credibility to function properly.
Perhaps President John Mahama might consider finding a way of transferring the rather difficult task of lying about fiscal matters to experts in the complex and scientific field of macro economics and above all, fiscal matters.
The apex bank handled the mendacity about the Merchant Bank sale so well that engaging them could be a better option.
While not being economists ourselves, we understand that when fiscal matters are handled by propagandists, the truth shall soon be out and the repercussions on the image of government is exactly what is manifesting in the lost confidence in whatever is churned out from the Information Ministry and eventually the newly installed Communications Directorate at the Flagstaff House.
We have had enough of the Single Spine Salary Structure (SSSS) being touted as the bane of the contagion that has afflicted governance today.
If Felix and his colleagues find another module, perhaps, they could save their faces from the ignobility that has beclouded them.
The SSSS is as nonsensical as the Election Petition Hearing being presented as the cause of the fiscal challenges the country is passing through today.
If so much money can be sunk into an election the government must be hiding something highly restricted knowledge about which could pose a national security challenge.
Inveigling us into believing that government is sincere in its management of our meagre fiscal resources is something beyond the ability of the deputy minister of Information. He has left us more confused about the true composition of those at the helm of our country�s affairs as we continue to wonder what they are made up of.
These appointees have lied so much that they are unaware that they are no longer being believed.
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