Editorial: President Mills should wake up and take charge

This month marks the third anniversary of the assumption of office of President John Evans Attah Mills and his NDC government. Exactly eleven months from now, Ghana will embark another political journey to decide the future direction of the country: another Presidential and Parliamentary election slated for December 2012. This means that President Mills is in the last quarter of his four-year mandate.

It would have been worthwhile to take stock of the performance of the President and his government towards the very end of his term of office but we are compelled to take issue now with the way the country is being run and the dangerous portends that are showing up in the country. The first major issue is the culture of political insults and threats that have dominated the political atmosphere in Ghana since the President took office in January 2009. The airwaves and print media in Ghana are saturated with political opponents throwing dirty diatribes at each other which have poisoned the peaceful atmosphere Ghanaians are used to. President Mills himself has expressed concern on a number of occasions about this state of affairs. It is sad to note that members of his party and government are leading this dangerous trading of insults and threats but despite his expression of concern, he has done absolutely nothing about them. His official spokespersons and top officials insult and threaten their opponents with impunity and he says and does nothing. Over the past two months the nation has been engulfed in a serious controversy over an obvious illegal payment of state funds to someone known to be a top financier of the ruling NDC party. Circumstances surrounding this payment are so bizarre that they call for the President to publicly come clean on where he stands on the issue, what he knows and does not know. And he has said and done nothing.

Of even more serious concern for the stability of the nation is the issue of the development and encouragement of “mob rule” and violence from his own party members. There have been constant agitations from his party members to dismiss public officials that they have issues with. And each time that these roaming mobs have attacked public officials and demanded their resignations or firing, the President has succumbed to those pressures. These are very dangerous trends for the stability of the nation.

And just last week a group from his party led by one of his Ministers marched to Parliament threatening opposition members. And after agitating for the firing of the Attorney General of his government which the President sadly succumbed to once again, another group from his party is demanding that all public officials in the Attorney Generals Department who are known to relate anyone belonging opposition political parties should be fired. If the President stays true to his form, he will surely succumb to this threat as well.

We wish therefore to advise President Attah Mills that he was elected as President and Father of the whole nation called Ghana and not only for members of his party. And he needs to refrain from constantly giving in to the dangerous demands from his party folks on retributive justice. Ghana has come a long way. We should not descend into chaos and mob rule...again and ever!! Source: