An Open Letter to President Mills

Britannia Village

4, Bosomtwe Avenue

P O Box WC117

Beposo - Wenchi B/A

Ghana – West Africa

19th October 2010

H E John Evans Fiifi Atta Mills

Christiansburg Castle

P O Box 1627

Osu - Accra

Ghana – West Africa

Dear President Mills,

State of Affairs in Ghana and Your Better Ghana Programme

I am a Ghanaian national thinking the way a greater majority of concerned and forward-thinking Ghanaians are thinking. I am impelled writing to you feeling rather attristed and heavy hearted regarding the state of affairs in Ghana under your Presidency since you assumed the reigns of office approximately 655 days ago.

During your campaign tour throughout the country, you promised a Ghana better than what it was under your immediate predecessor H E John Kufuor. It is presumed that in your comparative analysis, Ghana was relatively good under H E John Kufuor which you promised to up-grade to a higher and indeed better standard. As a reflection of how incredulous your promise sounded to voters regarding your Party’s previous performance in government, you could only inch out your opponent by pipping him only just at the post.

On assuming office as America’s President, for whatever reason, H E Barrack Husain Obama phoned you and later chose to visit Ghana sooner afterwards. His visit to Ghana was neither a joyful and fanciful solidarity frolic nor was it for site-seeing in the country rather it was on a serious minded and determined high powered mission to advice and ensure that the rule of law in good democratic governance in Ghana as it had been witnessed world-wide in the just ended preceding government would be continued and strengthened. This was in simple plain English in his speech made in Ghana’s Parliament. In their turn, Her Majesty’s government of Great Britain, led by the Rt Hon Gordon Brown, then Prime minister invited you to 10 Downing Street and hopefully discussed serious governance issues with you in anticipation of delivering your “Better Ghana” deed of saying for peace and tranquillity to abide with the people of Ghana.

It may be recalled that in the months preceding the 2000 elections, both Her Majesty the Queen and H E President Clinton visited Ghana not on a pleasure trip as Ghanaians were made to believe but on an eirenicon mission to ensure a peaceful election and probable transition. Today we are back to square one with the same NDC in power however this time with John Mills and John Mahamah instead of John Rawlings, so this time who should we expect as the irenical ambassador?

With precisely 807 days more to end your mandate of 1461 days, your better Ghana promise has always been a bitter Ghana delivery ab initio. Our lachrymal glands have and continue to over-work hence most Ghanaians are tearful all over. To sum everything up succinctly, Ghana is in a state of anomie with the worst political division reminiscent of the jungle politics of the yesteryears dictatorship regimes of antiquity. It doesn’t appear like there is any President whose authority is felt to be in control in Ghana. Instead of constitutional democracy, organised thuggery and mob rule are prevailing. President Obama called on you to strengthen the various organs and institutions of State but you have chosen to snub him by doing the opposite, ie weakening the self same organs meant for strengthening so that you can impocket them. In effect, where Presidential authority seems to act at-all on especially the police, since you and your cabinet zap them from above, such an important State organ can only demonstrate overt discrimination in their duties by favouring one section of the community against the other or show abject incivism.

It may be recalled that there have been three bye elections in Ghana since you became President and I can say on very strong authority that you Fiifi Atta Mills as President have pretermitted your role and duty to protect all citizen of Ghana alike by choosing to shield only a section of the Ghanaian society who are of your political persuasion. By pretermission anarchy has broken out in various forms of lager loutery by your Party boys against opponents in the presence of your security forces when citizens who owe it as a duty are out to carry out their constitutionally mandated plebiscite exercise. Your Party men and women commit crimes against humanity at your pleasure with impunity.

Many celebrated concerned citizens of Ghana most currently including Mr Emilie Short of CHRAJ have expressed serious concerns about the security-wise state of affairs in the country. They all univocally surmise that through political activities and particularly during the up-coming 2012 general and Presidential elections Ghana may slip into a similar bloodbath that swept through Rwanda yet these concerns appear to fall into your apparent deaf ears presumably because you don’t care.

Here in Ghana under your stewardship we see the reverse of constitutional rule. You and your cabinet apply rule by law to push through policies and proposals, whiles the minority opposition rather apply rule of law and nous to challenge and defeat your government. These are manifested in attempts by your apparatchiks to curb citizens’ freedom of objective expression. The STX Korea deal cannot be left out unmentioned as a manifestation of naked and daylight corruption condoned by your government.

Freedom of expression is a right of all citizens which your immediate predecessor H E John Kufuor cherished and preserved. You heard your Party Chairman unwittingly overshoot himself by threatening Ghanaian judges in the “Many ways of killing the cat-gate” saga but refusing to honour Police invitation for questioning. In your apparatchik’s usual surquedry your Chairman’s retort implicated your entire Party by inviting the Police to rather arrest the entire Party whom he represents as Chairman. This suggests a revelation of what your Party has plotted to do to our cherished Judges as a repeat of what your Party did to three High Court judges in 1982 in which the main plotters of the abduction and murder were spared unquestioned, let alone being prosecuted and punished accordingly with the actual perpetrated executors of the plot.

As to whether you will be re-elected for a second and final term is the business of the Ghanaian plebiscite depending on your good work, style and quality of stewardship delivery. We expect to go into elections in the manner just as it was in 2008 under J A Kufuor that brought you to power. Ghanaians appear to have every good reason to regret and be angst for a change hence for the remaining 807 days to go for your presidency to end, we want you to change with a mutatis mutandis to encompass your upstart killer cabinet and haughty officials who show gross disrespect towards everybody including nurses and all workers across the country.

Your regime has registered a whole lot of damages but my concern like that of any other Ghanaian has been with your empowered discriminative National security apparatus. All other ravages that have been and may further be caused by you can be repaired at the cost of time with a better administration in place but a single life lost in you and your Party’s planned pogrom will be lost for eternity. Ghana has been a leader in African democracy and we would want to continue priding ourselves with that hence Ghanaians want you to at least maintain it at the level you came to meet it. Ghanaians deserve and expect better not bitter governance. We want a forward-looking political leadership not a leadership with nostomania and neotenic tendencies such that our elders and peers alike would continue talking to us because at age 53, Ghana is supposed to have passed talking-to.

We appreciate that you attended the same political ideological institute at Winneba here in Ghana with Robert Mugabe hence you share same political and ideological principles and policies with him however it is imperative to note that we Ghanaians detest despotism absolutely. We neither want any Iran-style politics and elections in Ghana nor do we want any Rwanda-style bloodbath pogroms because we want to enjoy our freedom here in Ghana. The people of Ghana need the police and all other National security apparatus to treat and protect them with equanimity irrespective of our political persuasion. Ghanaians therefore finally enjoin you to wake up from your deep slumber and demonstrate your ability to protect and defend all Ghanaians irrespective of and according as you swore to do on 7th January 2009. We love our country sir.

Yours very truly

XX

Adreba Kwaku Abrefa Damoa

1 Cc: Secretary to Her Majesty the Queen

Buckingham Palace

London SW1

2 H E Barack Obama

President of the United States of America

The White House

Washington DC

3 Rt Hon David Cameron

Prime Minister

10 Downing Street

London SW1