Beyond the criticisms that President Akufo Addo has created several needless ministries, he needs to be applauded for assembling his team with speed. I stand to be corrected, but I think he is the first President under the Fourth Republic to have named his substantive Ministers in less than a week in office.
That alone tells us that he means business. I mean real business! It cannot be gainsaid that President Akufo Addo has been angling for this privileged position for several years. He has demonstrated that the several years he spent wandering in the political wilderness was to prepare him for the job.
Some may argue that he has hurriedly put together his team in order to attack sonorous applauds from supposed neutral governance experts. Whatever that was meant for, the President has done one of the difficult jobs in governance that many in his shoes would have taken months or years to do and he needs to be commended.
It is not easy identifying talents let alone assigning them specific tasks with timelines. In the case of President Akufo Addo, most of his nominees are people he has either closely worked with or known for several years. He knows their capabilities and where he thinks they can best be placed to help prosecute his agenda.
There is a price he will pay for what he has done. If these nominees are able to execute the President's mandate as he promised, the political dividend will put him ahead in the next presidential contest. However, if the opposite is recorded, then the President and his party must brace themselves for brimstone.
As Ghanaians, we must support the President and his team to deliver on his mandate. Let's play our role as "citizens not spectators". The little you can do, be it constructive criticism or what, do it dispassionately to help in nation building. Of course, the President and his henchmen then in opposition never had this spirit of patriotism to help the NDC develop Ghana.
All they wished for was the NDC government to fail so they could take over. But as a nation, we cannot continue journeying on this vicious trajectory. Governance is not only about " my party must be in power at all cost" and when "my party is not in power then I have to frustrate the government of the day".
We have practiced this kind of doomsday politics for 60 years and it has yielded no meaningful development. Opposition is not always about criticisms. Sometimes we must be honest with ourselves and give thumb up when it is due. That alone tells how honest a virulent critic is.
As for the number of ministers, nobody can convince me that we need it to develop. We don't need that number of ministers to develop. I foresee power play and struggle over supremacy in terms of some of the ministries with conflicting roles.
President Akufo Addo's men and women are not saints. They will definitely pinch each other. There are some few uncouth ones in there and they will cause the trouble. In a matter of time, these nominees when approved will start plotting the downfall of each other by leaking documents of shady deals to the media and the Civil Society groups.
That will mark the beginning of the downfall of President Akufo Addo's government. We elected him to deliver so if some of his own men will share with us some dirty deals in government, we will hail that person. As for the infighting, it will surely come.
Amos Blessing Amorse
Asabaham-Accra
[email protected]