Is our President our Great Communicator?
I was in America in the concluding years of the Ronald Reagan presidency, and I recall vividly the nicknames he acquired during his term in office as President. He was widely known as the Teflon Man, because criticism by his opponents both home and abroad rubbed off him without leaving a trace or sticking onto him. Teflon is a substance used in coating non-stick materials and pans we ordinarily use in the kitchen.
Advertisement
However, the other nickname that stuck to him as a politician was The Great Communicator, in direct reference to his excellent powers as a public advocate for causes he believed in. Lovers of American history will readily recall this gift of Reagan was first showcased to the world in 1964 when he was designated to introduce the Presidential Candidate at the Republican Party convention that year, Barry Goldwater. Some Republicans actually after his sterling delivery, suggested he should have been the candidate, but Reagan made his first presidential foray in 1976, but won eventually in 1980.
One of the things most Americans remember about Reagan, and which came to mind when President John Mahama was speaking in Parliament late last week, was the unique way in which Reagan will pull out letters written by ordinary Americans about their President and his policies when he was addressing Congress and other gatherings. This unique style cemented his reputation as a great communicator of popular desires and feelings, and indeed, there was some movement during his Presidency by his admirers to repeal the Twenty-Second Amendment to the US Constitution which restricted their President to two four-year terms of office.
Giving realism to rendition
President Mahama, in his State of the Nation address, took the Reagan example one step further; he had brought into the chamber some beneficiaries of his policies and programmes being pursued by his government to give realism to his rendition of those policies and programmes. This device of course gave life and blood meaning to his words. And this is where and why his adversaries completely lost and misconstrued his purpose, or to be counterfactual, they understood his natural connection to voters that this device cemented in the popular consciousness.
The President was assailed on all sides from the propriety of the presence of fellow Ghanaians in the chamber of Parliament being against the rules which accusation made those making them to be insufferably elitist and pompous, to the truth of his assertions about the achievements of his government. Then of course, since this is an election year, and the president was running for re-election, there was the necessity to respond to him in an appropriate manner.
Opposing address
The favoured response was another so-called State of the Nation address to be given by his presumptive main opponent in the upcoming elections, the flagbearer of the New Patriotic Party, Nana Akufo-Addo. So-called because only the President at any time has the constitutional mandate to so speak to us from Parliament. The Americans have the convention of the opposing party choosing a representative be it a Congressman or a Governor of a state to give his party’s reply usually that very night of the State of the Union address, and I must hurriedly add that these opposing addresses are always drowned in the discussion and debate after the President had fulfilled his constitutional mandate.
Not so in Ghana where the early selection of candidates mean the presumptive opponent of a sitting or incoming successor to the outgoing President gets the chance to sell his message by doing the reply himself. Of course, the danger is that, just like happened last Monday, responding to a given speech by a President cannot take place in the same forum, neither would it be debated in Parliament afterwards like it is being done now with President Mahama’s speech.
Worse, the ideological differences between the President touting his achievements and the reply claiming the contrary cannot be starker. The NPP has effectively claimed the presidential description of political quantity surveying for their party. It has shown, rather unfortunately, that it believes government and the exercise of power to be just a profit making venture, just as the President has demonstrated that his calling is one of service, and not crabby petulance. I mean claiming the NPP government of President Kufuor constructed around 37,000 kilometres of roads, nearly the length of the equator, and several times the distance from Accra to London, is certainly a case of misinformed inexactitude.
To demonstrate this difference in approach to the appreciation and solution of national problems, and the democratic ethos which underlies our collective efforts, President Mahama actually contributed further to the public debate on the address and the expected reply by saying thus;
‘’I have always believed in the tremendous power that exist within every single Ghanaian; the power to influence the course of events and the power to shape the future of this great nation of ours. The opposition is exercising its democratic right to criticise, which is proof that we are living in a healthy democracy. However, it would be wrong to minimise our achievements and the depth of Ghana’s transformation in the last three years. For me, as President, these last three years are a story of hope – hope shared by so many of us. This is because what we have been able to achieve so far is for all of us, and it was made possible through the continuous participation of all of us.
The most important fact about the transformative stories I shared last week, the most fundamental truth about them is that they are not my achievement, they are our achievements! They are Ghana’s achievements!
Step by step, we built something important, something that lays the foundation for the irreversible improvements in the lives of all of us!...
This is why I will keep talking about them – because when I talk about them, I am honouring each and every one of you!’’
It is this elevating yet humble style that those who chronicle our history may yet call our President the Great Communicator.
aburaepistle@hotmail.com