The former Soviet Union (USSR) was one big toilet with its thousands of State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) playing the role of toilet paper. The USSR collapsed largely because its leader, Joe Stalin, had spent trillions on constructing SOEs that made absolutely no returns to the national treasury. From 1929 when he came to power, to 1953 when he died a horrible death watched by his so-called friends (they were actually irritated because in their view he took too long to meet up with Satan), Stalin constructed more SOEs than any other ruler in the history of mankind (he was run a close second by that other economic ignoramus Mao Tse Tsung of China but more about him later).

On the surface this was a mark of the superiority of the Communist system over capitalism as the so-called workers state showed early signs of rapid industrialization; in reality Communism was digging its own grave. As trillions of dollars were poured into SOEs with no return, the Soviet Union gradually ran out of money until, unable to build roads, hospitals, equip schools etc and so meet the expectation of its people, it in effect filed for bankruptcy at the end of 1991.You see SOEs do not belong to "the state" or "the people" - they never have and they are not supposed to. Instead SOEs belong to the organized gangs that happen to run their day to day activities at a given time. It is these gangs, basically the management, Trades Union bosses, and the staff that reap the profits of the SOEs. Ownership of an asset means you have the right to use, abuse or dispose of the asset as you so wish. I dare anyone who does not work at Ghana Telecom (GT) to go there and take away a computer for personal use and I can assure you that you will not get beyond Corporal Bosiako of the Ghana police service who happens to guard the place. However, the Pajeros, the subsidized lunches, the air conditioning on a hot day etc are all appropriated only by the people employed by GT so why keep on telling me that GT belongs to the people. It does not. Thus why does anyone buy the fiction that a SOE is a national asset when the facts tell us it is not!

In my primary school days I remember living near a number of Ghana Airways clerks. Now these lads, pound for pound, were the richest men in Ghana. Based on their salaries as clerks and their expenditure, they lived lifestyles that only Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt enjoyed. They travelled to the US, Canada and the UK virtually every other month, they were chauffer driven to work, they entertained lavishly and they wore the finest clothes. Yet, salary wise, the assistant headmaster of my primary school earned far more than they did. However, these chaps managed to live extravagantly because they worked for an asset we the people supposedly owned - Ghana Airways. They could travel for free and they could cook the booking register and so extract large bribes from anxious traders. This practice gave them so much money that they had problems spending it! Someone I know once said a member of Ghana Airways staff had registered 21 people as his family and thus all of them took advantage of the free flights schemes that the Airways offered to its staff and family members. When Ghana Airways collapsed in a heap of debt, I danced a merry jig!

Now perhaps I owe Joe Stalin of the USSR an apology because in the view of many, he was not the most useless economic decision-maker the human race has had to suffer. That honour goes to Mao Tse Tsung of China who buried that country in a heap of debt, disease and despair from 1949 when he came to power, all the way to 1976 when he died. When Mao came to power he ran China on orthodox Communist principles. He wiped out private enterprise and nationalized all factories. His collectivization policies in which peasants now worked for the state instead of tending their own farms led, by the Communists' own admissions, to about 14 million dead. This folly in its totality was known as the Great Leap Forward (into darkness I must add). Prior to Mao, under Chiang Kai Sheck (the man who fled to Taiwan and transformed it into a prosperous society in just 15 years) the Chinese peasants had their own farms. Also, private factories flourished as Chiang would have no truck with Communism. Had Mao not come to power, China would probably already be at par with Singapore or even Canada today. Instead, for 28 years the Chinese endured a system that ensured there were more flies in that country than humans on account of the grinding poverty the system produced! When Deng Xiao Peng came to power after Mao he took one look at the confused stew that was Communism and proceeded to wind it up with his capitalist revolution and today China takes large doses of foreign investment. Capitalism has triumphed in China so why should we in Ghana still grovel in front of the discredited god called Communism, its high priest, Karl Marx and its temples, SOEs?

The Danquah-Busia clan should not back down on the sale of GT. Tell the world you are going to sell GT because you want to, because you can, and because you! If we can't sell it, then dynamite the building so we the people cease to lose the millions of dollars a month that GT costs us! After you have done so, after you have relieved us of this troublesome SOE, organize a big party so we can dance amongst its ruins!