The uneasiness we are experiencing under President Mills’ leadership should not push us to take flight from our troubles. Rather, it should revivify, and strengthen, our spirits to fight on like a truth-seeking defense force to hold our leaders to account. President Mills led NDC is mutually assured of its political holocaust and it is an eye-popping and jaw-dropping experience to watch how fast the NDC’s political capital which was acquired right after the election is completely being used up and how gradually it’s destroying itself from inside out. The failure of the Mills’ led government to clean its house and get rid of the bad apples within is worrying. The actions and inactions of close associates of the President and the failure of the President to crack the whip is also a great source of concern.
President Mills has so far divided and polarized the NDC more than he has united it since he became President. The NDC is not any better than it was in the 1990s, and now is the time to huddle as one people and ask serious questions. Who is really in charge of affairs? Is President Mills aware that the NDC is dissipating day in day out? Why the blind loyalty to the NDC and the extraordinary allegiance to the CPP? Is President Mills saying he is unaware of the visible criminalities of his policy advisors? And again, is President Mills writing the NDC’s obituary?
Since assuming office, some insiders within the Mills government have denigrated the Rawlingses without any reservation. In exercising their constitutional rights, a subset of these political greyhounds who are bereft of substantive ideas on national development have called for the total alienation of the Rawlingses and at the same time projecting Kwame Nkrumah to the high heavens. Which party’s mandate brought President Mills to power? Was it the CPP or the NDC? Was it necessary for the government to spend 4million dollars to celebrate Nkrumah’s centenary when indeed the legacy of Jerry John Rawlings is being torn into shred? I seriously wonder if Mills is really running this country or a bunch of sycophants who have his ears are the ones ruling Ghana. What has President Mills done to protect the heritage of his party’s founder? Instead of protecting the ideals on which the NDC was founded he has rather encouraged his appointees and his trusted median contacts to run down the ideals of June 4th.
Is Mills really an NDC or a mole within the NDC? How can you be a Christian and not be Christ like? How possible can somebody claim to be an NDC and not believes in the principles and ideals that gave birth to the party? Mills is a traitor. I am willing to put money on that; he is a charismatic traitor however only MRI scan will prove this. Everything he is doing points to the resurrection of a dying CPP and to the demise of the NDC. In the eyes of many party faithful, President Mills has lost his credit worthiness. I honestly don’t know if I even believe in the honesty of President Mills. And seriously President Mills is beginning to look like the pretender I suspected. Great speeches, but false promises just like the erstwhile Kufuor administration.
Rawlings has sacrificed so much for the NDC and does not deserve this from the people he brought into political limelight. There are many “idiots” in our political landscape. Jerry John Rawlings is definitely not one of them. You may hate him, but you can’t take it away from him. He has the ability to see into the future. If he did not envisage Professor Mills could lead his party to power, he would not move heaven and earth to ensure his selection as the presidential candidate for three consecutive times. You don’t ostracize people like that. President Mills must rather be grateful to Mr Rawlings and stop destroying his legacy. Mills is presiding over a dying party and he lacks the charisma of a great leader. He is unable to call his recalcitrant and intransigence ministers to order. President Mills has been a major disappointment to most people.
Ghana since Mills’ inauguration as President has resembled a “spoot movie” and yet they want former President Rawlings and the rest of us to keep quiet and pretend all is well. The President and his advisors think we should uphold their principles, principles we may not believe in but which serves their parochial interests instead of advancing the cause of the collective. Why is it acceptable to elevate Kwame Nkrumah’s ideology above Rawlings in an NDC administration? Yes Nkrumah deserves recognition but must we do that at the expense of the NDC?
I weep when l hear outrageous verbal attacks on former President Rawlings. What makes these verbal assaults and distortions all the more painful is that, they are being orchestrated by nomadic minds in government who have abandoned our nations many problems and are making unsolicited careers out of a perverted politics. All of a sudden, groups have emerged in the NDC. These groups comprise people of all sorts; influential, not so influential, praise singers, ego masseurs, mischief makers, liars, plain thieves and yes saboteurs. Some of these people are quick to attack and insult anyone who dares offer constructive criticism of the Mills administration. And they believe in the fallacy that Rawlings is no longer relevant to the NDC. What a crushing ignorance.
Strangely or perhaps, not so strangely, the presidency appears to have introduced elitism into the ranks of the NDC. What does social democracy mean to President Mills and his advisors? The most dangerous thing for a leader to do is to surrounds himself with intelligent-sounding educated fools who will do anything in their power to earn his trust. Presidential advisors such as Ato Ahwoi, P.V. Obeng, Kojo Tsikata, and Totobi Quakye are good examples. What is the value of a governing concept that promises equitable distribution of resources yet rewards a few cabal and selected party patrons with pillages, while the majority bear the wrinkles of social adversity? The nation chose the NDC government with the thinking that they could offer a better alternative to the NPP administration. Sadly we are confronted with idiocy, arrogance, waste, duplicity, colourful lies and unbridled corruption. Is the removal and replacement of an emaciated alligator with a gluttonous crocodile a better Ghana? Or is better Ghana the de-sitting of the choking centre and the re-clattering the same centre with pungent filth?
What does better Ghana and good governance mean to these neocolonial political boys and girls club? What exactly has the government shown to the nation that it does not tolerate? If anything, this administration is more permissive in tolerating corruption and deception than any government in our nation’s postcolonial history. In Ghana, only a few would risk their intellectual credibility to discount the role our nation’s culture plays in our sorry state. Ghana’s underdevelopment stems from the fielding of many brain-deed politicians in positions of trust, and we know who they are. Don’t we? In President Mills’ Ghana, the benefit of keeping silence and tolerate the high level corruption, incompetence, treachery, sycophancy and unbridled arrogance, even when one’s moral conscience states otherwise far outweighs the benefit of letting out the reek within the current administration. After all since January 2009, we have seen midgets become Kings with an insatiable taste for foreign goods, whilst the party activists whose toil brought the party to power are mocked for their pauperism. There is a huge leadership crises in both party and government and someone must rise up and take up the challenge. I challenge the good folks in the NDC to take their party back and polish it to reflect the lofty ideals that they spout. A healthy NDC will reflect in the way it governs. And President Mills, if indeed he is a true NDC must live the ideals of the NDC and not just spigot it otherwise, he must give way to a true NDC loyalist to take over as President.
We shall be back! Emmanuel Dela Coffie www.delacoffie.wordpress.com