Political leaders here are risk averse and focused on the short term, with little sense of vision for the next decades. Over the longer term, Ghana needs to make significant progress in economic development. It desperately needs to diversify its economy to reduce its current vulnerability to cocoa and gold price shocks. It needs to boost investment to create jobs for its youthful population (50% of Ghanaians are under age 18 and predicted to increase by 50 percent by 2025) #WIKILEAKS I encountered this latest round of Wikileaks a week before it broke in the Ghanaian media. At the time, a group within the international media was lamenting the planned disclosure of the identities of so called protected sources. Wiki leaks has me both fascinated and perplexed; with secrets of big people in high places, with clueless sociopolitical leaders in sensitive positions suffused with a beguiling sense of self importance at the opportunity to hobnob with American diplomats and losing sight of their limits, with governance focus gone hay wire and with the negligent talk of agenda-less political leaders suffused with apparent low self esteem in the fawning bid to please the American diplomatic master! I have not swallowed all the ‘truths’ of Wikileaks hook, line and sinker. I have concluded however that there is enough material to portray a certain established level of interaction between Ghana’s political elite and the foreign diplomatic community that betrays at best naivety on our part or at worst futile obsequious exertions with indeterminable benefits to our country. First of all, we as a people obviously don’t talk to each other enough, don’t trust each other enough and perhaps don’t respect each other enough. If anything, we have proved to be much too willing to run to the Americans with our secrets for reasons that are still unclear to me. If a former President is suspected of plotting a coup or there exists attempts to subvert the will of the people in the 2008 elections through bribery of polling agents, who do you think wields the greatest leverage in asserting the will of the people? We, the good people or the Americans? The former would be my unequivocal answer! Why then this rush by our leaders to confess to American diplomats? If the Mills government is not adequately resourcing NACOB to fight the drug menace, the President’s strident anti-drugs rhetoric notwithstanding, why should the Americans be the first to know this? There must be something I am missing badly here. Mr. former President allegedly struts around feeling good he has confided his security concerns to the Americans. Your predecessor ploteth a coup! They in turn receive it in polite pretence seriousness and then in the comfort of their Wikileaks, describe his assessment as “overblown” while describing his government as “nervous.” Meanwhile you think you have friends who are using “their network to see if something is brewing.” Reading through the cables, one has got to admire the American diplomats for their sheer sense of focus and discipline. It is unmistakable how clear the agenda for them is. While pretending to be taken in by wining and dining opportunities offered by Ghanaian leaders, they gather data in its rawest form – verified, unverified, rumours, gossips, real and perceived. The attempt in certain quarters to discredit Wikileaks on the basis that they constitute wicked gossip amuses me no less. What do people mean by “this is gossip which should not be taken seriously”? That is precisely the point. What you call gossip forms the very basis of intelligence gathering. The data reported in this manner will subsequently be sieved through many layers in America’s intelligence apparatus until it becomes actionable information to be used at the right moment. So our leaders are just doing a pretty splendid job splaying our legs wide open for these people to gather intelligence on us. What did we think we were doing anyway? Being nice? Another former President allegedly invites Dutch diplomats to spend a privy weekend on a Presidential yacht. This man quickly briefs the American ambassador with accompanying unsubstantiated allegations of drug use, who then reports dutifully to Washington. Clearly, they will smile, wine and dine but they know they are on a mission which is why they will so easily insult the same former president thereafter. Of you they will say that you “seem profoundly uninformed on Economic matters” and of your team, “None of his entourage offered intelligent opinions on economics or Ghanaian politics …WIKILEAKS”! Mr. Politician, you are not the diplomat’s friend although you strut around with a halo of satisfaction that you are hobnobbing with the American ambassador! You have finally arrived, you think! Go and ask one former Attorney General invited to a dinner and described in Wiki leaks as engaging in “self promotion!” Wikileaks appear to betray an element of inferiority complex at worst or crises of confidence at best among some of our leaders. What is the purpose of one Ghanaian president allegedly running to the American ambassador to tell him his predecessor is psychotic while the predecessor responds with enchanting allegations of his own? What is our agenda in telling the Americans the gory details of party political strategy? What do we gain by recommending to the Americans to verify a Presidential candidate’s wee smoking capacity from German intelligence? What business is it of a 2008 Presidential aspirant to inform the American ambassador that “… the Asantehene (an important power broker in the NPP and close to Kufuor) dislikes Akufo-Addo because of his ties to a rival traditional leader? WIKILEAKS”. Does it add to your sense of self importance when you have these conversations with the diplomats? Assuming without admitting that the President has throat cancer, what at all is the sense in a Ghanaian Minister offering this information to foreign diplomats? This is the kind of information that any foreign intelligence agency will kill for. Here, we offer it on a silver platter. Do you think that the American Secretary for Homeland Security will ever tell Ghana’s ambassador in Washington that President Obama suffereth benign prostatic enlargement and this after consuming a big bowl of fufu in the ambassador’s residence? So, why not ask ourselves some basic questions; why does the foreign diplomat need this information; will providing it further Ghanaian or American interests or both; how much should I say and what does Ghana also need to know in return? In Wikileaks, one does not get a clear sense of a Ghanaian national agenda among Ghanaian government officials. Perhaps it is because it is reported from American perspectives. The Americans appear to be the ones arranging meetings, pushing for information while advancing the interests of American companies in high places. In one cable, when the opportunity is presented to our Attorney General somewhere in 2005 to pitch his case, it is reported that so bereft is he of any useful ideas that his best shot is to request the US ambassador “to fund a backup generator for his office!” This is the kind of Ghanaian behaviour described elsewhere in Wikileaks as “a knee-jerk ’what can you give me’ mentality.” Au contraire, did you know that the US has a “source” in the Bank of Ghana that regularly feeds them with information on Ghanaian money laundering from illegal drug activities or terrorist funding? “According to our source in the Bank of Ghana …WIKILEAKS”. Where are Ghana’s sources in the Bank of America and how are we currently cleaning up our system of these moles who are not serving our national interests? So then, are we mere pawns in a chess game with no clear sense of what constitutes the interests of project Ghana - especially given the painful observations of the former Canadian High Commissioner below? “Canadian High Commissioner Bobiash criticized the international community for hobnobbing almost exclusively with the Ghanaian elite, based primarily in Accra. He commented that this elite group, comprised of well-off and highly educated people is out of touch with the other 95% of Ghanaians. The elite have little understanding of or sympathy for the difficult conditions under which most Ghanaians live, and Bobiash argued they lack a sense of urgency to do much about it. WIKILEAKS”. And again, “According to French Ambassador Jacquemot, Ghanaian elites are isolated and do not understand the scope of poverty in their country… WIKILEAKS”. This is what they really think of you. And you know what? They may be right!