The Founder and President of IMANI Ghana, Franklin Cudjoe has sent a nice but challenging letter to President John Dramni Mahama congratulating him for doing extremely well on the international scene.
But Franklin is among the western world who are against Zimbabwe President, Robert Mugabe appointment as the chairman of the African Union [AU].
The IMANI Boss described the long serving African leader, Mugabe as a “narrow-minded” person when it comes to thinking.
Read below Franklin’s letter to President Mahama
Dear Mr. President,
Let me congratulate you on the excellent strides you have made on the international scene. Your commitment to a working ECOWAS in particular is unrivalled. My only disappointment is that you took part in a decision to make the illiberal President of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe the next Chairman of the African Union.
I do hope that you will tower above all African leaders and boldly tell the African Union that no remote ideals of regional or continental unity will, by some undefined and unprecedented magic, lift Africans out of poverty.
The real issue is the lack of practical and everyday economic freedom that would allow Africans to lift themselves out of poverty, with well-defined and historically-proven sound economic policies.
Zimbabwe is simply a bad example. Let us look to Mauritius, Botswana and even South Africa for inspiration on how to get it right. You also deserve commendation for closing new power deals for General Electric and Eni. However, I recall that the Eni deal was hurriedly passed in Parliament under a certificate of emergency.
Sir, I have the following questions for you.
1. Is your government providing sovereign guarantees for the Eni deal? And why?
2. Did Government provide similar guarantees for the development of the TEN oil projects by Tullow oil and partners?
3. Has the General Electric deal been passed in Parliament yet? I do not recall Parliament debating the deal.
4. And by the way, are there any off takers for the GE deal already? I believe the lessons from the Balkan energy contract should be guiding us and Parliament must be encouraged to dispassionately debate and ratify all energy related contracts, indeed all contracts negotiated on our behalf by any government.
As we continue to experience erratic power outages, there is free money, almost US$500M of the Millennium Challenge Corporation’s to be accessed by your government in order to fast track reforms to deepen private sector participation in the electricity sector.
We were to begin the process for drawing funds in October 2014! The procurement processes take six to eight months to complete after the RFPs have been announced. This means if we completed what we should have done in October 2014 in February 2015, we will see MCA cash in December 2015 or in early 2016! This will have implications for your reelection bid.
In spite of the outcome of the election, we simply do not have time to waste as businesses are collapsing due to the absence of electricity
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