A Call For Leaderhip: Is The Falcon Hearing The Falconer?

Submitted By Korsi Blafo

It’s becoming clear that the NDC government is set on a path of self-destruction unless it reverses course. I concede that this is a rather strong statement to make so early in the life of a four-year term. But I maintain that unless the government reverses course pretty quickly and the president begins to lead boldly, my bet is that is exactly where they will end. Certainly, the government seems to be turning and turning in an ever-widening gear (to paraphrase W.B. Yates) with such feeble leadership that it may just end up lodged in a spiral of self-destruction.

For a party/government that has been in power before, it’s hard to fathom why some in this government seemed consumed with nothing but a sense of vengeance and a pathological tendency to waste their energies and squander their political capital, slim as it is, on a relentless pursuit of real and imaginary malfeasances/foes by the past government instead of getting to work with zeal. I think decisive, bold leadership on the part of President Mills is needed now. I hold no brief for anyone. I am all for people answering for their stewardship. What I am against is the usual tendency of Ghanaian and most African politicians to see everything with a “them versus us” mentality as soon as one government replaces the other. We are a nation of laws. At least we are supposed to be. And that means that no arm of government should be used to harass anyone in the name of accountability. I think there is a need for a more decisive leadership on how the government proceeds with this accountability program. Arguing that the NPP did the same thing just buttresses my point. It’s a mark of immaturity and pettiness. For a country being celebrated as a model of democracy in Africa, this is a stinging indictment.

What is sad about it is that, in spite of all his weaknesses, President Mills, by many standards, is a very decent man (perhaps too decent to survive in a den of vipers some would say). It will be a tragedy of Greek proportions if this good man is allowed to fail. If he fails, he would have been done in by the very people he hoped will help him accomplish some modest things for the country. I hope that the President wises up and leads from the front not from behind. When leaders fail to lead, they risk losing their moral and legitimate authority. The history of political leadership is replete with examples of petty government functionaries, or even private citizens who worked their way into important positions of influence, only to help bring, or at least contribute to bringing governments down by their very excesses. Of course, this sort of thing only happens when leaders either knowingly or unwittingly cede their authority and power to others. Passive leadership is one sure way of surrendering power and legitimacy. Some lessons from history. There was Gregorio Rasputin during the reign of the last Czar of Russia. An ordinary man, Rasputin parlayed his friendship with the Czars’ wife, the Czarina to become a de facto policy maker for Russia at the onset of the First World War. In Germany, Hitler’s propaganda secretary Goebbels became very powerful by virtue of his ability to twist facts and sing the tune his masters wanted to hear. Indeed, he was not shy to believe his own lies. In more recent times there was a Tariq Aziz in Iraq before the ill-advised US invasion. Tariq Aziz as the government spokesman continued to believe his own lies even when the truth was looking him in the mirror. In Ghana’s recent history, there was a Victor Smith, who probably thought he knew Mr. Rawlings so well he could literary complete any sentence the later started. Lately, we see a deputy minister of information who all of a sudden feels he is a prosecutor, a town-crier, besides his job as an assistant minister and feels a compelling itch to comment on everything. I am not sure if this guy has a job description. I guess he does not and someone ought to write him one before he degenerates further into a Goebbels. Youth has its vices and virtues and the wise person seeks the virtues as both Plato and Aristotle remind us. I am not done yet with this point and will digress to talk about the president’s spiritual adviser, the Nigerian pastor, T. Joshua. Everyone knows that the president is a religious man and no one can fault him for that. He probably gets his anchor from his faith and I applaud him for it. President Obama is unabashed about his faith and neither should the president be. What worries me is his public declarations of faith in this man, T. Joshua. Publicly declaring that T. Joshua had “prophesied “ his victory tells me that the President really believes in this guy. I go back again to Rasputin. Rasputin was said to be a magician who helped the Czar's son deal better with his son’s hemophilia and that paved his way into the heart of the royal family. Besides seeing You-Tube videos of this man preaching, and doing “miracles” I do not personally know him, nor do I have any desire to meet him. I think the president will do himself a big favor to stop his open endorsement of this guy. If he wishes to seek spiritual mentoring from him, it should be done privately, not under the glare of TV lights.

Leadership is not as complicated as it is sometimes made out to be. A leader is the person who the followers look up to for direction and guidance. At some level, he is the cheerleader. If his/her followers are competent and well-motivated, they can actually lead themselves. This way, the leader is merely a symbol, albeit a powerful one, whose main job is to make sure that people work not as a disparate collection of men, women, politicians, ministers and petty ideologues each going off in all directions, but a committed body polity for the good of the country.

A leader needs to be to be visible to serve as a guide. I need not remind the President of how Moses and his brother Joshua led the Israelis of old out of Egypt as the scriptures recorded. Joshua was always reminding Moses to go up in front of the multitude or stand atop something so the people can take their inspiration from him just by laying their eyes on him. Symbolically, the message here is a leader needs to be seen and heard. Of course, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the President as leader needs be present everywhere, all the time. At the same time, the leader should not be shy to step up and show that he is ultimately the one people should look up to as a guide as they work toward the vision he has laid out. This reminds me of the President’s announcement last week that he is giving up his “per diem” allowances. This is a laudable and courageous decision. The president then calls on his minister to emulate him. That is fine, but leading also required him to tell all his ministers to give up their per diem allowances, not ask then to choose. I suspect that if he demands this, no minister will dare refuse. This is not the place to discuss this per diem issue. But it is enough to mention that it’s only one of the many immoral and reprehensible benefits politicians allocate to themselves. Perhaps per diems are one of those legacies from our colonial past, but now too self-serving for politicians to have the moral courage to drop.

Oh yes, and recommending the following week that government guarantee $50, 000 each for parliamentarians as auto loans just about destroys any goodwill he earned in my view. This is at a time when a mother whose daughter suffered third degree burns is asked to go to the pharmacy and buy some pain killers for her daughter. Worse, the poor child sleeps on the hospital bench because there is no mattress at the hospital in Accra (Source: Recent Al Jazeera program on “Going Back: The Story of a Ghanaian Nurse in the UK”). Whether it is arrogance of leadership or simply a failure to set priorities right is open to question. Moving along to the next issue. I am always suspicious of any so-called security apparatus in any developing country that runs in parallel to the judicial institutions or law-enforcement. There is no doubt in my mind that no matter what anyone says or what the mandate establishing the BNI says, it was set up to protect the government that originally set it up. And in Africa, that means hounding any one in opposition. We have the so-called Serious Fraud Office (SFO). What exactly is the role of the SFO and how different is that of the BNI considering that the BNI is chasing people at airports not for some treasonable acts but for alleged criminal behavior? The President must act quickly to reign in the BNI. My preference is for it to be disbanded. It is nothing more than a repressive organ of state whose members probably see themselves as guardians of some imaginary morality, but in our unique African context, it is a tool that is too easily amenable to abuse. Strengthen the police and the judiciary and do away with the BNI.

Every leader inherits both the assets and liabilities of its predecessor. Unless of course it’s a business and the last leader loses the business. The present government has inherited the mistakes, both big and small of the last government. We all know that. It is also true that they inherited some successes and assets that they can build on. The deputy minister of Finance, Mr. Kwettey declared last week that the government will clean up the mess of the previous government then consolidate. Surely, the previous government did not just leave all liabilities. Did they do anything right for which they deserve credit? I know there were certainly lots of mistakes made. Can you just learn and avoid their mistakes and build on their successes instead of just dwelling on the negative and making cleaning up the mess a precondition for your own success? There is no point dwelling only on the bad and creating the impression that things are so bad there is little you can do. In psychology, we call that self-handicapping. The kid who starts warning his parents about how difficult the exams are going to be and when he fails ends up telling his parents “I told you so”. Enough of that already. Just look across to President Obama. He inherited a lot of problems but he has since stopped b laming his predecessor. This is his turn and your turn Mr. President.

The government must focus on its own programs. These need to be clearly articulated. Each ministry needs to articulate its vision and tell us what it is they hope to do and how they propose to do it. The funny thing is that the aspirations of the vast majority of Ghanaians are so basic. People are not asking for handouts from the government. They will feed themselves. Everything they can do for themselves, they will do. What they cannot do for themselves, they expect the government to give them a helping hand. For example, they will be just glad if they do not have to bring the gauze, the bandage, the bucket, and pain medication, everything short of the surgical blade when they need an operation at the hospital. So we have heard of visions before. There was Vision 2020. The Manifesto of the NPP and NDC have their vision statements sort of articulated. The president needs to come out now and tell us what his vision is for the country. Making Ghana some imaginary gateway, raising the nation to middle income status by 2020 all seems fine but too grandiose. I suggest the president set a modest vision like making sure all hospitals in the country have basic suppliers at the end of his first year. That alone may be a winning proposition.

It’s sort of laughable to hear people talk of being kingmakers in the president’s election. The president is no king. He is our highest civil servant. He was elected by millions of people. I don’t think he has any obligation to repay anyone anything. If he meets the very simple and basic aspirations of the people, he will win again. Otherwise, there is a very good chance that he will be a one-term president. The president has to realize that it is his legacy and name that is at stake here.

To conclude, I do not think the NPP in opposition has anything to be ashamed off. Losing an election by a few hundred thousand votes tells you that it should not be too hard to win next time around if the electorate is convinced you can do better than the existing government. In the same breath, wining an election by a few hundred thousand means that you can easily lose the election next time around. Not that I care who wins the election as it will all be like moving musical chairs around anyway. However, at this moment, this time, what concerns me is that the government acts to provide the basic needs of the people: basic health care, fairly decent schools and a sense of security for the people. These are not too much to ask and I hope that our president, basically a decent man, is helped by his aides; that he asserts himself and leads from the front. The ability to lead is more a hallmark of wisdom rather than one of genius. I believe the president has wisdom; he just needs to lead. Not too quietly, but boldly, from the front.