Mills and Ghana’s Day of Shame at the United Nations General Assembly. President Mills’s embarrassing speech and address at the United Nations General Assembly last month brings into focus the shoe banging incident on October, 12, 1960 involving Nikita Khrushchev, head of the Presidium and Chairman of the Politburo of the USSR.
Khrushchev had appointed himself head of the USSR delegation to the United Nations General Assembly. In his address, Khrushchev decried colonialism by the Western Powers. Lorenzo Sumalong, the Filipino delegate accused Khrushchev and the Soviet Union of engaging in double standards by decrying colonialism while dominating Eastern Europe. The Soviet leader demanded a right to respond and accused the Filipino delegate of being a “fawning leader of the American imperialists”. This resulted in heated verbal exchanges between the two. All of a sudden, Khrushchev yanked off his shoe and began to bang it on his desk. He was joined in this show of shame by his Foreign Minister, Andrei Gromyko.
Now come to Ghana. Nearly Forty One (41) years after this show of shame incident, we have President John Evans Fiifi Atta Mills, leader of the First black African Nation, South of the Sahara to obtain her independence going to the same General Assembly to make an uninspiring and less unenthusiastic speech. They have heard so much about Ghana. They recollected Nkrumah’s inspiring addresses at the same venue which had attracted standing ovations. They recollected Busia’s impressive speeches delivered in a calm mien which got the white man enthralled and became the topic of discussions for many weeks on end. They recalled that Dr Sir Alex Quiason Sackey had in the early sixties been elected the First African to preside over deliberations of the United Nations General Assembly. They never failed to recollect that in the early sixties, Dr Nkrumah’s stance on many international issues so exasperated France so much so that President Charles de Gaulle referred to Ghana as that “small football nation in Africa”. Rawlings came to the scene and carved a niche for himself because of his oratorical skills which he employed to his advantage. Even though, he was a military turned civilian leader, he was accepted by the international community because of the way he carried himself. The powers that be have also not forgotten the exploits of the Head of the World’s International Civil Service, Bosomuru Kofi Annan who happens to come from Ghana.
Kufuor came and the powers that be realized he was not a pushover. With the support of Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, Kufuor made great strides and became a force to reckon with on the international scene. The “Shakers of world events” recalled with satisfaction the way and manner Ghana’s Foreign Minister, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo had chaired the Security Council deliberations at the time the Arabs and the Israelis were at the brink of war. That was the first time a Ghanaian had been bestowed with such honour. All these culminated in the writing off our debts and being given opportunity to access the Millennium Challenge Account. I make bold to state that all these gestures came about as a result of good governance by the Kufuor led NPP Administration.
True, the movers and shakers of affairs in Africa and the rest of the world had expected to hear of a moving and passionate speech of the new world order that we are aspiring to create. But what did they hear? They were treated to a speech about how a government that promised to take care of its citizens had imported fabric from China to sew school uniform for its pupils. They heard about how a government which claims to be security conscious attempted to bring in some foreigners without any expertise to construct building for its security forces. They were subjected to the boring spectre of how the NDC Government which claims to have probity and accountability as its bedrock had thrown these principle into the nearest garbage basket by awarding a contract for a six classroom block for between Ghc240,000.00 and GHc250,000.00. This same contract had in a year or two before, gone for between GhC69, 000.00 and GhC80,000.00. He talked about many irrelevant things. There was even the talk of how Shakespeare of Kibi in attempting to justify his supposed seizure of the NHIS facilities in town gave an insight into what a husband should do if the wife decides to prepare abenkwan whilst the husband wants to enjoy “nkate- nkonto”. The recipe was simple. Seize or hide the cooking utensils.
He went on and on. In fact, the speech was boring, uninspiring and a total deviation from the agenda of the United Nations. It was more of a political propaganda a party elder will issue to his subordinates. No wonder, by the time the speech ended, more than half of the members had left their seats, and of those who remained, about a third of them had gone off to sleep. A friend in Kenya called to tell me of how our President had led Africa and for that matter all Black people down for being petty by engaging in local partisanship at a time the whole world needed concerted efforts to tackle major issues confronting the planet. “Your President exhibited his unpreparedness for the job by engaging in the theatre of absurdities. If this is the man you call your President, then I am ashamed to be an African”, he concluded.
But do I blame him? No, I won’t! Neither must you! You see, the President has a problem with his sight. Instead of acknowledging it publicly, he has resorted to memorizing his speeches and delivering them ex-tempore. When I imagine the number of man hours his tutors led by Ato Ahwoi and others spend to “polish” him for delivery of such speeches and the ordeal he goes through during rehearsals and practice, I don’t envy him for the job. If he has done it the normal way by reading from a prepared address, a new world record would have been set and he would have gone down in our history books as the first leader of a country to read his speech from letters whose font sizes were almost a hundred times the size of normal letters. So what does he do? He had to fall back on the same address he delivered to the Ghanaian Parliament months ago.
And so, on the day President John Evans Fiifi Atta Mills delivered his address to the august United Nations General Assembly, every African and for that matter, every Blackman and woman that mattered in the United States and the rest of the world bowed down his/her head in shame. The Ghanaian President had done the unthinkable and the unacceptable by international standards.
Mills uninspiring address is similar to the show of shame enacted at the same venue by the Russian Leader, Nikita Khrushchev nearly forty one years ago. Who says man no dey? Man dey!
And to avoid any such embarrassing spectacles in future, I urge you all to vote for a man of vision, a polyglot, a goal-scorer and rain-maker, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo. Mills is a spent force and in dire need of rehabilitation. Nana all the way!
Daniel Danquah Damptey ([email protected]) 0243715297.