The Media Encounter with the President
It appears that some of us, confident about the extremely negative agenda that has been set for our country since the last elections, are very unhappy that the tables have turned in favour of the person and government we put in place as a result of that election.
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Our chattering classes, caught flatfooted as the President quit the ropes and came out swinging to the centre to mount his effective offence, are aghast that their game has reached a dead end. We were promised that President John Mahama would wilt under the heat that their questions about his one-year stewardship would generate at last Tuesday’s media encounter.
In the event, the only heat that was generated was the warm glow of confidence in the firm and knowledgeable leadership of our President, and the hope that things would get better, but only if we persevere in following the rules of governance and saw each other as our brother’s keeper.
It was an opportunity for the President to display his unique seriousness of purpose cloaked in his usual knowledgeable folksiness.
Personally, I do not see the need for the President to stand to answer questions for two or more hours. It will be far better in my view for him to sit down, after all, it is his office.
What were those questions? The usual intoning of corruption, ‘dumsor’, flawed elections, conflict of interest, Merchant Bank, and the generalised characterisation of a seven per cent plus growth economy as an ‘enkoyie’ economy.
You would have imagined that these matters, some of which formed the forcing-ground for our electoral choices in December 2012, would have given way to the larger question of how the manifesto pledges have fared in the face of unplanned and unbudgeted incidences both local and international. Maybe the questioners were aware that major manifesto pledges cannot be assessed with any degree of fairness in the first year — flush the thought, they were intimidated by the first President we have had to be born in independent Ghana?
But honestly, I do sympathise with President Mahama when he is compelled by the political system we have to interact with us via the media in this way. Perhaps, there is wisdom in the suggestion by my editor that quarterly encounters of this type will remove the cobwebs in public policy communication and cleanse the system of the irresponsible speculations and rumour mongering.
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Others here and elsewhere do believe that too much information is the bane of free, open and democratic societies.
Let me illustrate with just one tit-bit that the President dropped in passing to answer the several questions fielded on the Merchant Bank saga. Andrew Awuni actually petitioned President John Mahama to use his good office to intervene in the sale of the bank, but went to court shortly thereafter, thereby preventing the President from doing what he has all along been accused by opponents of the sale, that is, interfering in the investment decisions of SSNIT to favour his brother Ibrahim.
It occurred to me that Andrew Awuni, by petitioning the President, was doing exactly what he was busy accusing others of doing. I am sure many of us have conveniently forgotten that the Centre for Freedom and Accuracy was launched by then Vice President Mahama to howls of protests by NDC loyalists in the time of President Atta Mills.
The protests were to the effect that by lending his office to the outdooring of the CFA, Vice President Mahama was giving needless oxygen to a confirmed critic of his party and government. It was an unearned bonus that gave a certain profile of legitimacy and acceptance to the politics of this former spokesperson of President Kufuor.
As far as I am concerned, the revelation by President Mahama last Tuesday about the Awuni petition to his office, coupled with the fact that President Mahama personally outdoored the CFA and the flak he took from his party, paints Awuni as an ungrateful person who lacks simple manners. How does Andrew Awuni justify this malicious conduct? That he is more patriotic than the President?
The Presidency must be a lonely office indeed when service to all can sometimes result in this wanton personal betrayal.
I am sure my readers would be surprised that I disagree with the President in his characterisation of our universities as job-training centres. I believe that universities only teach us how to think in a rational and logical manner around problems, to conceptualise and present ourselves to the outer world as people who have been exposed to the highest levels of erudition in any field, including Roman Civilisation.
Universities everywhere are trying very hard to alter their core mandate to provide what they call relevant education, that is, what the world of the workplace requires. All that is good, but how to proceed to confront a problem and resolve it in a certain manner defines the graduate from the non-graduate.
Our President showed a depth of thinking on the ramifications of the galamsey problem which surprised me. Most of us believe ridding the country of foreigners engaged in illegal mining is the only solution to this.
I heard the chaps at CSIR proclaiming that all that we need to do after shutting down the activities of the illegal miners, was to allow the rivers to return to their pristine, non-polluted state by leaving them undisturbed for a year. The answer President Mahama gave brought it home to me that other facets of the problem unnoticed by us in the urban areas required resolution.
The response to the public clamour for unconstitutional methods to deal with corruption demonstrated that some of us prefer to live in military regimes. Ironically, that section of the population are the very people who preach the virtues of the rule of law and the democracy that underlies it.
If it took an NDC President to reiterate and teach us once again, the correct, deliberate and lawful way to tackle the problem of corruption, then this media encounter was worth the time and attention we all gave to it.
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