Configuring a robot as President

I have been toying with the idea of a robot President since the news item in early July of a pilot project of the BBC and Google to create robot journalists.

The initiative, with a grant from Google’s Digital News Initiative (DNI) fund is investing €150 million (£132 million) over a three-year period to "stimulate and support innovation in digital journalism across Europe's news industry".

The robots will crank out up to 30,000 stories a month for distribution by the Press Association to hundreds of news outlets and it will be launched in 2018.

Some benefits

Having a robot as President, particularly for Ghana, will have much benefit. It will save Ghanaians a lot of emotion.

For one thing, the robot President would not be dogged by any human weakness to warrant medical bills and expenses on trips abroad.

Being inhuman, allowances for food, clothing, entertainment, etc. would be eliminated, saving tax revenue.

The robot President will care less about people’s affections, loyalties or disloyalties.

Thus, party foot soldiers, supporters, sympathisers and hangers-on will be out of the jobs of idolising, effusively adulating or excessively venerating a President when there is no cause to.

With his functions of the execution and maintenance of the Constitution, the exercise of all executive power, etc., as outlined in Chapter Eight of the 1992 Constitution programmed onto the chip embedded in its memory (brain), there will be less talk, more analyses, less dominance and better results in our public institutions.

In essence, the robot President will work with mechanised precision for the solutions to the developmental challenges of Ghana.

@50

The inauguration of Ghana’s robot President would be with less cost and fanfare.

It would be an opportunity for all citizens to watch solemnly as it is programmed to do exactly as the 1992 Constitutions says and as Ghanaians wish.

His first 50 days would be to analyse administrative challenges, systemic inefficiencies and institutional lapses. The next 50 days would be to churn out solutions.

Thus, halfway into its tenure, it will be implementing, not still thinking through policies.

There will be no picture-perfect photo opportunities for the robotics frame President nor will we have its picture in public offices.

@100

Since the robot President will be unreceptive to cacophony, there will be an aura of peace and quietness over the whole country in the first 100 days.

There will be no political macho men or women seizing public toilets, storming the courts or beating up people because of their sense of alliance or power because there will be no such thing.

There will be no fanfare when ministers are appointed and vetted.

In fact, I believe the only key ministers would be at most five system administrators just to put our President in good shape to do all the work of the many ministers, deputy ministers and executive appointees we now have.

There will be no pomp and pageantry durbars in regional capitals when the robot President tours as the focus would be to work, build a road, drill a borehole or construct a building overnight.

As soon as that is done, citizens would not have to wait for a special sod-cutting ceremony before using that life-saving bridge.

By the first year of the tenure of the robot President, Ghana's infrastructure would greatly improve, the economy would grow better and our institutions will be as efficient as clock work.

No opposition party would cry foul over incompetence.

Heart of issue

But alas, I have to discard the idea of a robot President. What I have is a human one, still striving to fulfil his promises to me.

I have a President whose six months in office seems to be characterised by a lot of talk about policy and perhaps some incremental steps to their realisation.

Perhaps, that is the heart of democracy, talking, mobilising for or against decisions, shouting in a frenzied manner at the sight of the President you support and bitterly disavowing him in your heart when against him.

Indeed, in Africa, we feel our politics!

Hence, a robot President would be a long way in coming.He would not jive to our tunes!

Writer’s email: caroline.boateng@graphic.com.gh