Nations are built with vision and drive by leaders who have the capacity to take pragmatic decisions and ably convince his people to buy into the vision. And an example of Mahathir Mohammed readily comes to mind in the nation of Malaysia. Talking is good because it enables any group of people to be open with one-another by way of sharing ideas in order to come up with a consensus that all will rally around, put it into practice and actualize it for ultimate benefit of all.
Dr.Mahathir Mohammed took over the governance of Malaysia at the same time Dr.Rawlings assumed reigns of our dear nation. And 20years latter, Malaysia was described as one of these Asians tiger economies while Ghana was declared HIPC.Here; I’m certainly not seeking to lay blame on any particular group of persons or an individual. Our spectacular failure to lift ourselves out of socio-economic slavery is a collective failure since we have had the opportunity as a prople, to make decisions as to who manages the affairs of state but have failed to choose people with competence.
Our decisions at the polls have largely been dictated by how close we are to a prospective president, an MP, DCE, MCE or a minister. Tribal considerations have also played a large role in our decisions at the polls on Election Day. This kind of strange Ghanaian character is what has been capitalized on by block-headed politicians who have no message for the people.
Workable policy alternatives
I have always said that when it comes to fashioning out a workable policy alternative that can transform lives of the masses, it takes a great deal of hardwork, hours of burning the mid-night oil, deep intellectual capacity and unprecedented amount of personal sacrifice. This is something that is obviously very difficult to do and therefore very few people in our society will be prepared to pursue.
On the other hand, when it comes to empty promises, insults and sleeping on the job while enjoying all the comfort associated with political office, at the expense of the suffering mases, it is a venture that can be undertaken by any foolish person. This is because; to be the best amongst your peers to be crowned as the king of insults and spewing of garage does not require an individual to have any qualification. To be hailed as a master of insipid propaganda only requires the ability to string together a collection of incoherent ramblings in the studio of a TV/radio station.
Rewarding shallow mindedness
It has now become an established norm in Ghana for anybody who gets access to the studios of TV/radio stations just to spew garbage over a given period of time, to then aspire to contest for a seat in our nation’s august house of legislature; and examples of such rather retrogressive phenomenon was abundantly displayed during the recent NDC parliamentary primeries.Juvenile delinquents who were sleeping with their single-mothers in ramshackle structures in neighborhoods of our nation’s slums just a little over 3years ago, have now been able to marshal so much resources to actually contest sitting MP’s and ultimately dislodging them.
Those whose unfortunate mothers were eating from garbage dumps of Malata-market because there was no money to give them proper health-care and also feed them are today cruising comfortably to the legislative chamber of our dear nation. Those whose mothers, out of abject impecunious lives and human instinct to survive, ended up having so many partners to the point where these mothers could not even tell which of their children was for which partner, have now become so wealthy that they are able to buy multi-billion cedi flashy fuel-guzzling 4WD vehicles for their bastard sons as birthday presents.
The president is not in control
All these monumental rot and reckless display of state-sanctioned armed-robbery is blazingly taking place simply because we have a leader whose level of weakness, by way of discharging his duty as head of state, is simply unprecedented. And the weakness of Atta-Mills can be viewed in just one perspective;
1. The man is not very healthy at the moment and considering the work-load of an executive president as we have in Ghana, he is clearly not up to the task. For example, we have all been witnesses to the gargantuan font-size of his scripts which points to the fact that he is not able to read any official documents on his own since no governmental correspondence is written in that huge fonts. This then brings us to the reality that his correspondents are read to him and all he does is simply append his signature.
The essence of strong institutions
Now, nobody should get me wrong here since I’m not trying to suggest that a physically challenged person can’t be a successful president of our dear nation. As a matter of fact, under the administration of Anthony Linton Blair who was affectionately called Tony Blair, as the prime minister of Britain, his secretary of education, David Blanket, was not visually impaired, but a completely blind person.
I lived in Britain at the time and it was David Blanket who actually muted and clinically actualized the concept of improving academic standard of the girl child. Girls were found to be lagging far behind boys in academic performance so he instituted specialized programmes to make the study of science, in particular, attractive to girls and within just a period of one academic year, all best national performing students at the basic level were girls!!!
Now, David blanket was successful neither because he is a white-man nor has more brains than any education minister Ghana has ever had. The difference, however, is the strength of their institutions and also the sincerity of leadership. In otherwords, David Blanket was not prepared to cheat the system and the structures put in-place to enable him deliver as a public official being paid with the taxpayers’ money, was also not ready to tell him a goat is a cow. This is why Barrack Obama came all the way from America to tell us we must build “strong institutions and not men”. When the institutions are strong and always focused on their core mandates, any corrupt official who is appointed as a political head will definitely no survive.
Lessons from the French elections
As a result of current wave of change sweeping across the world, eleven incumbent leaders in the Eurozone have been swept aside; but rather foolishly, apologists of Atta-Mills continue to site the Eurozone economic crisis as a justification why he(mills) must be given a second term since what we are experiencing in Ghana is a global phenomenon.Now,if these Eurozone leaders have been swept aside by their citizens for failing to competently tackle the crisis, then what in God’s name must Atta-Mills be retained for performing much worse than these defeated Eurozone leaders?
Again, these Atta-Mills apologists are making erroneous assertion that a socialist party has won elections in France and for that reason Atta-Mills is also going to win in Ghana. Now, according to BBC report I monitored on the day of French second round of voting (6/5/12), Sarkozy was voted out for his failure to fulfill his numerous campaign promises. Effectively, French people rejected Sarkorzy because they saw him as incompetent and not because he is a liberal democrat. In anycase, who says there are even socialists in Ghana?
Indeed, describing this crop of NDC officials and their ‘nkwan deewa’ apologists as socialists, is in itself, an insult to socialism since the taste of these people for the best things of life, far exceed that of adherents of purest form of capitalism on this planet. So, NDC propagandists must be real and cut-out their usual insipid cacophonous cacophony.
And now for the records, Nicholas Sarkozy has become the first one-term president in French history since 1981 and the last time an elected president served just one-term of office in Ghana was also in 1981 when president Dr Hilla Liman was overthrown in a coup.Therefore, when saint Atta-Mills is voted out on 7th december, 2012, he will also become the first president in Ghanaian history to be a one-term president since 1981 just like Sarkozy of France.
Atta-Mills doesn’t deserve a second term
Now, juxtaposing the David Blanket experience with what we currently have on our hands here in Ghana, we have a president who is physically challenged due to ill-health and therefore needs very sincere people around him and also strong and efficient institutions to actualize his now extremely blurred vision. But rather unfortunately, this man has virtually been taken hostage by a cabal of high-grade gluttonous bastards with stomach capacity akin to a bottomless. The worries of these people are not to help the physically challenged leader to fulfill his numerous illusionist 2008 campaign promises, but rather, how skillful they can outwit each other by way of frantic looting of state coffers.
The case of “woyome-gate” robbery, for example, couldn’t have occurred if Atta-Mills was really in control of affairs and this is why he must be voted out on 7th December, 2012 because Ghana is fast sinking under his care!!!
Justice Abeeku Newton-Offei
E-mail: justnoff@yahoo.com
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