It’s often said the one who cuts the path does not reckon the straightness of its trails. This must be the reason why the President, His Excellency J. E. A. Mills should be commended for choosing to create on annual basis, apex of social platform for national debate for the tall and short of movers and shakers in the social surveying industry called the mass media at the beginning of every year of assessment to help his National Democratic Congress (NDC) government reconcile its performance’s balance sheet of the past, and to update itself with whatever there may be hiding in public domain that the government might not know.
Thus on Monday, the president had to avail himself at the court of public opinion to be scrutinized on questions of the mysteries of good governance, and its benefits to ruler and the ruled; and at the serene atmosphere of camaraderie.
President Mills has thus demonstrated once again his readiness to submit his government’s policies and programmes to public scrutiny; an accepted norm and important ingredient in maturing democracy.
Although some of the questions coming from some journalists on supposed ‘socio-politico-economic’ intercourse between the president and media leaders sounded personal, the president in his usual matured way of handling such issues looked his usual best.
Some journalists out of the meeting though believe they were not satisfied with answers to some questions, but all in all, the spirit of democracy seems to have been served.
Whilst supporters of the ruling NDC government tout that the government ‘Better Ghana Agenda’ is starkly on course, critics taunt that the Mills administration could have done better, in terms of social intervention.
It was the view, however, of the Informer newspaper that all hands be put on deck to get national interest served, than politics’ accusation and counter-accusation.
To the government, it is an election year, when it must impress electorate the more; and to the opposition group, it is necessary to present its alternative policies which must convince the electorate to prefer them to the sitting government; and for which the benevolent electorate could be ready to consider, come the December, 2012.
It has, indeed been a meet with the mass media which dissect the issue of kenkey and fish, clothing and shelter. It discussed the issues of oligarchism and its resultant oligopolism that could impact positively on only few, and negatively on the greater masses; and its antidote?
The President, however, must be given thumb-up for throwing up that necessary and impressive platform. But this paper believe, that the media being the fourth estate of the realm of governance needs as necessity, the rare opportunity, as at such for a as the Executive often throws up, to be meeting regularly with the last two of the realm – the Legislature and the Judiciary.
