Mills Stays On: Pros And Cons

If We Want Things To Change, Things Must Stay As They Are: Prof. Mills Stays

The same day Professor John Attah-Mills was re-elected NDC flag-bearer, the capricious president of Turkmenistan, Saparmurat Niyazov died. Niyanov is renowned as the only despot in modern times who renamed the month of January after himself and April after his mother. At the height of his buffoonery, he named the days of the week after his children and littered the country with 10,000 statues of himself, including a golden one that rotates so that it faces the sun every time. He declared a national holiday in honour of melons because he loved them, and banned men from wearing beard. Drivers could not play music in their cars. He also banned gold teeth.

Niyazov was not born a president. Like Mills, he had worked his way through approval elections and secured voters’ respect. He led Turkmenistan through hard times when it was a soviet republic and stabilised it when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Like Mills, his people loved him, even when he failed to constitute himself into the conscience of the citizenry as the conscientious one. They supported him when he declared himself president for life, and also added unto him the position of prime minister. Like Mills, he had continuously enjoyed landslide support when sheer marketing wisdom meant that, presenting the same old goods over and over again to a changing market was a cruel assassination of political wisdom.

When I looked at the calm, humble face of Fante born Attah-Mills on my internet, oozing superfluous, yet childlike innocence, I flipped through the obituary pages of the Times (UK), to see the photograph of Niyazov one more time, and I asked: Is there an intoxicating ingredient in the potion of power that could see a promising, unassuming Mills become an arrogant Niyazov one fine day? For Niyazov had come seeking power a promising and humble chap with fine egalitarian ideals. He had become a phenomenon as president and personified the very meaning of narcissism.

For the umpteenth time, the people of the National Democratic Congress have decided that if the party wants things to change, things must stay as they are. So Mills must continue to lead them for the 2008 presidential elections, instead of Ekow Spio-Garbrah, Mahama Iddrisu or Eddie Annan. The NDC has concluded that it does not make marketing sense to pursue the virtue in new products when old products promise enough virtue. There might not be any virtue in new products after all.

The thing about elections and voters is that you cannot always be sure whether landslide support connotes absolute likeability or mistaken expediency. It is usually the same people who voted Yes yesterday who will stamp a veritable No tomorrow. Voters do not usually have a middle way, unless they decide to disenfranchise themselves. So it was interesting that Rawlings had a middle way in the election that produced his favourite professor as winner. Without his vote, the NDC has relived the ‘Swedru Declaration.’ Perhaps, it was a proclamation well thought through at Swedru.

So how will a Mills presidency sit with Ghana? Is the electorate ready to accept those same rejected goods when there are no convincing signs of re-branding or repackaging? And has the professor himself changed very much, except that he was reported indisposed in the run up to this year’s congress? Is Mills worth the gamble? Prof J.E.A. Mills looks capable, even his detractors will concede. He didn’t disappoint much as vice president. He did what many right thinking veeps will do in a democracy-being his boss’s man and supporting him to prosecute his political agenda.

The problem with being a vice president is that you are not supposed to be your own man. A Veep is somebody’s man handpicked to help a political course. Being your own man will be changing the rhythm of the president’s music, and it normally results in a kick in the groin. Voters do not vote for a president because he has a good vice. Voters vote on a president’s vision and ideas. The Veep is not an idea. He is Mills.

Leadership requires a subtle range of desirable qualities; it is difficult to describe all of them in the word capable. Like Nayizov, people are capable of doing the unthinkable when they become leaders. Politicians are not a third sex; they are like you and I: strong yesterday, not so strong today and weak tomorrow. The feeling that people’s very humanity depends on your wife’s preferences makes the presidential feeling a little enviable to the gods. When put to the test, leaders prove untrustworthy. So I hesitate to use the word capable. Instead, I talk of strengths and weaknesses.

Mills is articulate. You would not expect a professor to confuse the difference between listening and understanding. Listen to Mills speak, and you know exactly what he is saying. Listen to him again, and you would understand what he is not saying. He does not stutter nor waffle. He has a rare ability to dig into his stock of information and succinctly present his thoughts in clear English. He does not do the ‘I mean’ or the ‘you know’ thing. He knows that we don’t know what he means until he has told us what he knows. He does not betray any signs of uneasiness: he doesn’t fiddle with fingers or solicit reassurance signals from prompters. He is his own man.

Mills has a good grasp of the country’s socio-economic problems. He is not one of those weird academics who were saved the never-ending boredom of poor university life with the tantalising offer of vice president. He had been commissioner of tax and consorted with important stakeholders in industry. His CV shows that he has been vice president of a democratic country, and his boss is reputed to be one of few African leaders who did not do what Nkrumah had wanted to do or what Mugabe of Zimbabwe is doing: Rawlings handed over after his term. The reason for the boom is that John Rawlings had wanted to hand over to John Mills, not John Kufour.

Mills has a warm and welcoming personality. He does not wear his professorial credentials on his sleeves. When he was vice president, he would honour invitations from the Graduate Students Council of University of Ghana, which included the likes of me. He does not appear to have a combative nature in his character. He appears respectful and respectable. So the NDC had no problems deciding between the professor and the international telecommunications supremo- Spio Garbrah. Mills’ 81.4% win is emphatic, but he has also recorded two emphatic rejections by the people of Ghana. Will a discerning electorate make his final attempt worthwhile?

But Mills will be done in by the same rare marketing wisdom that saw his NDC lovers prefer him to youthful Spio. Look at Mills carefully and you feel a subtle ‘greater art thou but shall never be King’ twist to his fortunes. He does not look ‘unpresidential’ but he appears vulnerable in a very dignified way. He comes across as an intelligent person who is pushing through to make a statement rather than win a national election. He is a rare breed of a tragic hero who will plunge to his fall without a flaw.

I was in the thinking of Dr Kwaku Danso of the Ghana National Party, USA, when he remarked recently that the ‘be your own man problem’ still hangs around Mills. I will complete Danso’s thoughts by adding that it is a problem that may even be evident beyond politics. It is not unusual for a president to endorse a successor. Clinton did it in Al Gore and Tony Blair ended his rather pretentious nonchalance about the person of his successor, by recently endorsing Gordon Brown. But these gentlemen never suffered the ‘be your own man’ disease. Why is Mills still not quite his own man?

Even if he becomes his own man this time, will his NDC party give him two firm balls which will not be crushed again by another crushing defeat? Like its flag-bearer, the NDC appears pregnant with something promising, but it is not difficult to tell the size of that thing, even without a scan. How many people are singing Akatamanso at present? We don’t know. It remains in the womb of time.

But there are things that we know that we know: we know that a man is a man, whether he is somebody’s man or his own man. There are also things we know that we don’t know: we don’t know that Ghanaians will reject Mills because he is not his own man or because they don’t trust his party any more. Still, there are things that we don’t know that we don’t know; that is the unknown unknowns: we don’t know that we still do not know who will be president for 2008. There is no heir presumptive.

Happy New Year!