Ultimate meaning of the Atta Mills Presidency; Some observations

Thursday will be the second anniversary of the death of Professor John Evans Atta Mills while he was serving as the third President of Ghana’s Fourth Republic.

I can confidently assert that no one in the history of colonial and independent Ghana had been given the funeral that the President Mills was given. 

I am not referring to the full panoply of state resources committed to the funeral, but the comprehensive participation of Ghanaians from all walks of life in the ceremonies. 

Even more remarkable was the fact that the ceremonies were not only restricted to the capital but it seemed that all of us in every nook and cranny of the country found something to do in our own corner to honour the man who came to be known as the Asomdweehen for his transparent love of peace.

I was very much alive during the funerals of past leaders of this country like President  Nkrumah in 1972, Prime Minister Busia in 1978, President Edward Akufo-Addo in 1979, and President Limann in 1995. None of them came close to Professor Mills in securing the universal participation in their funerals when he suddenly died in July 2012.

United in grief

It is remarkable that the popular unfeigned affection that was shown him in death did not rest on overwhelming electoral acceptance; indeed, he had been elected in 2008 by the thinnest of margins in our post-independence history as a nation. That well-deserved victory was even procured in the second round of the presidential elections held that year.

So is it a valid question to ask what accounted for the massive and unprecedented show of love that marked his funeral two years ago, and to seek further and more durable explanations for the political significance of this calm and gentle academic in the tumultuous politics of Ghana?

Most of us used to the freedoms that our constitutional dispensation has granted us still shamelessly employ the language of military regimes to seek to cow our adversaries. Our words are full of ultimatums and peremptory exhortations even when we are debating the issues of the day. 

Professor Mills was the opposite of that. It is even more surprising that it was the revolutionary President Rawlings who chose him to be the second Vice President of the Fourth Republic.

In spite of what is available in the public domain, it still beggars belief that this quiet man agreed to throw in his hat with President Rawlings in 1996, in the process introducing himself into the very public sphere, in the company of the charismatic air force pilot. 

I recall clearly two staunch anti-NDC friends exclaiming in 1996 after Professor Mills had been chosen to partner President Rawlings that they would vote for Rawlings because of the choice he had made.

Destiny

It is historical moments such as this that invest the word destiny with meaning. Meaning for who? President Rawlings, Professor Mills, or for Ghana as a country struggling to find its way forward into stability and peaceful development of her human and material resources after so many years of political instability? It would take us the distance of time to fully appreciate the real meaning of these things.

I long ago gave up apportioning blame in the rightness and wrongness of what has taken place in our political past. Firstly because the blame game cannot change the past. Secondly, each and every regime we have had in this country, no matter how objectionable we find it from the lenses of today, enjoyed some level of appreciable support from Ghanaians, the same Ghanaians who are our compatriots today, our own brothers and sisters. 

You cannot claim to be always right and your compatriots always wrong, especially since we have the rare luxury of knowing who some of the initial supporters and participants in so-called objectionable regimes were. An example here would suffice; who was the special assistant to Adaly-Morty, as the first PNDC Secretary for Information in 1982?

Vengeance futile

I am always amused when some of us preach extreme vindictiveness to be visited on opponents as if that would satisfy the demands of justice, howsoever defined. We Ghanaians have absolutely nothing to prove to anybody, not after all the civilian regimes, coups, the executions and the wanton and fearful abuse of our rights by fellow Ghanaians who enjoyed the support of us all. To quote the religious lesson, everything that has happened was for our own good. Because we can always agree that today is the fruit of yesterday.

It was the unique contribution of President Mills to teach us the futility of political vengeance. Because he had a non-military predecessor who used  all the tools of democratic jurisprudence to extract vengeance. In our part of the world, if a government is determined to harass and persecute, and jail you at all costs, it will succeed. What is the essence of our common citizenship if leaders of one half of the population expect to do time in jail when the leaders of the other half win elections?  

We learnt from him

Of course, we have a lot of lessons that speak to more immediate concerns than the time-resistant claims of immortality. Because of Professor Mills, a number of our politicians in the opposition have become virtual local preachers and choristers as they seek to imitate his convinced, yet calm religiosity. Ghanaians can easily distinguish fakery from the genuine product. Because of Professor Mills, some of us are trying very hard to forcefully appropriate the cloak of peace he wore with so much confidence and self-belief.

As we mark the second anniversary of his sad passing, may we all be reminded of the futility of arrogance and pomposity in office, and may we all strive to accept that service to our fellow man, in the name of God, is the highest calling of our existence here in this country. May he rest in peace.