Opinion
So, I finally had the chance to listen to the President’s State of The Nation Address (SOTN) yesterday night. Thankfully, I had my dinner before I did.
Quite simply, there are best practices for speech-writing but even more so, for a specialised area like the SOTN address. I feel very strongly that whoever wrote the speech….. "and whoever read it" contributed to making it a “normal speech” and NOT a SOTN address.
As a very very very basic rule, there are 5 core elements that should make up a SOTN address, ALL of which were substantively missing from the President’s reading and it saddens me that someone must have been paid some tens of thousands of Dollars for what was never a SOTN Address. Here is what I mean:
RECOGNIZE REAL ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL ISSUES
This should always be the first section that should allow the president to identify and CALL OUT the real HARD economic and social issues. It is an opportunity to prove that he is NOT out of touch with realities and that he and his team are aware of happenings. Here, there should have been issues identified on the Cedi exchange rates, inflations, unemployments (which we sadly don’t have the real system to measure), the high debt situations, the power situation, security fears (for example the GITMO deal – it was not enough for the President to have said the MoFA had briefed paliarment already – truth is the citizens would have loved to hear it from him), corruption, threats to our cocoa production and export, etc etc. THERE WAS NONE OF THIS IN THE SPEECH.
DEAL WITH NATIONAL CONFIDENCE AND INVESTOR CONFIDENCE
It is election year, there is political heat and investors are beginning to freeze their economic activities because they cannot predict the horizon post the December 2016 elections. The states in its current position needs economic fluidity. If investors stay frozen for too long it could start to harm the economy right after election. Here would have been an opportunity for the president to address this investor fears or confidence issues and the general moral of the country and identify with them. People want to know that the president is in touch with what they feel daily or the way they feel about making investment decisions in the case of investors. THERE WAS NONE OF THIS IN THE SPEECH.
SHOW DETERMINATION, RESOLVE, STRENGTH AND FOCUS
With everything going on, people want to see and know Ghana has a tough and focused government, implementing tough policies, making tough decisions to tackle all the tough issues identified in the 2 earlier paragraphs. Even if it isnt, it can appear to be for the sake of easing the growing disillusionment of citizens. This is not where you list all the projects you have done – it is where you can prove that you have made and continue to make the toughest decisions in the interest of Ghana, which none of your political opponents would or could have made. It is where you showcase some of the further tough decisions that will be made in the coming months to keep the country steered and solicit a buy-in,, into the need for them to be mmade and the benefits to accrue therefrom. I DIDN’T SEE MUCH OF THESE IN THE SPEECH.
NOW IS THE OLIVE BRANCH OF COLLABORATION.
OK, the president paid tribute to the NPP MP, JB Danquah, who just recently murdered (and of contracts to some NPP stronghold companies)….. or so, I thought he was implying!! I may be wrong. But again, he missed the opportunity to extend an olive branch to all opposition parties in a very STRONG way and of course to the rest of our development partners (who by the way were present) - It was an opportunity to let them know they were all still needed in the journey ahead, e.g. the Foreign Aids, the Technology transfers (if we have any) and to the opposition, their critique and advice and inputs etc. THERE WAS NONE OF THIS IN THE SPEECH.
THE INSPIRATIONAL CALL TO ACTION:
Well, to be honest this has been missing from a lot of our presidential speeches, not just this one so this wasn't too much of a surprise. The need to say something so profound, that inspirationally RALLIES an entire nation to follow a singular path. There is a reason why this section is usually left for last (with hints of it scattered throughout the speech) – it is so that, it is the last thing people take away – a section that speaks to the HEARTs of listeners. Something that Ghanaians can all walk away with irrespective of political lines but agree on and together say, “I agree this is the direction we should indeed be heading” – Something undeniable, even by politics. SADLY, THERE WAS NONE OF THIS IN THE SPEECH.
MY CONCLUSION
The entire speech from start to finish for me, was merely a RECITAL of a catalogue of a so called evidence-based achievements. What can I say, whoever wrote the speech must be a Monitoring and Evaluation Expert. But the real essence to show government’s engagement with economic and social realities as well as its resolve to DEAL with it for the good of all, both local and foreign, failed in absolute terms.
Well, it shouldn’t be surprising – the government knows the majority of Ghanaians are too illiterate to bother what he says, whether it had depth and whether it was said in the right format. He probably wast even speaking to you or I – he was probably speaking to “HIS AUDIENCE.”