President Mahama lectures his critics!

Today, the epistle will cover in the main the launching of the book on the physical achievements of the government of President John Mahama. It was a magisterial performance, seeing our President on his feet, and showing dexterity and depth of knowledge about every nook and cranny of this wonderful country of ours, and putting to an emphatic rest, the ridiculous charge that he is incompetent.

Have you heard anyone since this book launch, saying President Mahama and the government are incompetent? With one masterful stroke, he has consigned this criticism to oblivion.

President Mahama becomes the second President in our history since independence in 1957 to stand and explain what is what to Ghanaians, the first being the man he calls his father, the man he succeeded on his unfortunate death, President Atta Mills in 2012.

None of our earlier Presidents, from the famous President Nkrumah from 1960 to 1966, to President Kufuor from 2001 to 2009, found it appropriate to subject themselves to such a physically and intellectually tasking exercise. That should in itself tell us about who is qualified to be President in our time and who is not. It was definitely the people of this country who gained from this illuminating public encounter.

Events of the week

But the epistle will do more than that to give a more rounded picture of the events which filled our week, from my perspective of course. I will touch briefly on two other events that captured our attention this week; the Ameri agreement duly passed by Parliament in March this year, and the Amenfi West parliamentary by-elections held last Tuesday in which the ruling party, the National Democratic Congress, maintained its dominance.

Much ink has been spent on writing a lot in the past few days about the Ameri power agreement. As a serious historian, I started my entrée into the whole debate with a very elementary question; the source of the so-called revelation of the corrupt nature of the agreement, and the ‘’handle’’ or bias of the source. I do not share the view of some that the Ghanaian media failed because they did not discover what we now know. Because what we now know came from Norway, a country in no way connected to the agreement, except in a curious, roundabout way, the witness who signed for Ameri.

The witness

Yes, the witness. And that is where my interest was piqued. A witness no matter his bona fides, is not liable in any claim arising out of an agreement according to our laws when I asked in spite of the fact that the said Umar Farooq was the Chief Executive Officer of Ameri. The so-called angle of the Norwegian paper was because Umar is a wanted man in so many countries for a tall list of crimes. I asked myself, is that sufficient to drag in a contract in which neither Norway nor Umar is accused of anything?

This of course led to the bona fides of the paper itself, and I discovered this was the same paper which claimed in 1999 or so that President Rawlings owned shares in a Norwegian cement company with links to GHACEM in Ghana. Of course, this was proven to be utterly false even at the time. Only this time, the story in Ghana was not broken by the Ghanaian ally of the paper, Comrade Kweku Baako and his paper The Crusading Guide! Immediately I knew this whole expose is hollow, unless claiming your own country is corrupt is a valid engagement for any Ghanaian journalist. Similarly, this too would be proven to be a wild goose chase since no outright corrupt act was pointed out in the Norwegian paper.

The Amenfi election

The Amenfi election is curious in several respects. The NDC candidate, chosen 30 days earlier, had a month to campaign whilst the NPP candidate was selected a year previously and this was his second chance. The trend analysis did not disappoint. The statistics, nearly 50 per cent turnout and a nine per cent point difference, translating into around 2700 vote difference between the winner and the runner up, as compared to 74 per cent turnout and nearly 10,000 vote difference in 2012, implies nothing has changed. Especially, since a united NPP in 2012 and a disunited NPP in 2015 did not affect the trend. The only thing that stands out is voter apathy in NDC ranks, but that did not affect the trend. In short, go figure for 2016

Professor Jega

"Which reminds me of the visit this week of Professor Jega, former EC boss of Nigeria. He annoyed me greatly with some of the things he said in spite of his claim that he learnt a lot from our own Dr Afari Gyan. How can we compete in electoral transparency with Nigeria? Ghana became independent before Nigeria. Nigerian soldiers staged a bloody coup against a multiparty democratic government on January 15, 1966, five and half weeks before our first coup against a one-party government in February, 1966.

The Igbo officers who murdered the Northerner Prime Minister Tafewaa Balewa ensured by their brutality the certainty of the civil war and the continuous denial of the top prize in Nigerian politics to an Ignore.

Despite our challenges in Ghana, since the Fourth Republic we can say with pride that we have elected an Ewe, an Ashanti, a Fante and now a Guan gentleman as President. We have also had opposition parties elected into office and vice versa. They are the ones following in our footsteps.I am a proud Ghanaian.

The book on the achievements of President Mahama is a timeless document, and a record to place alongside similar publications in our history of the Fourth Republic. Indeed, the Communications Minister referred to the NPP document of 2004 when he was introducing the President. To show how far we have come in democratic maturity, he did not refer to some of the clearly risible things in that earlier document.

Who was it who said after the book launch that the President is the principal asset of his party and government? Of course, this is backed by solid evidence adduced at the election petition trial two years ago when plaintiffs argued strangely, that President Mahama had substantially more votes than his parliamentary candidates, and that ,therefore, this was something the court should note as part of their arguments. The people of this country know instinctively who they want to be their President. He combines youthfulness, dynamism, vim and energy in a charismatic bundle. It is really difficult for some of us to accept that all that is catalogued in the book have been achieved in the face of severe IMF strictures. What would have happened without those conditionalities?

As a champion of Abura matters, I noticed with satisfaction that the new Cape Coast Stadium is situated at Abura in the town. As for, the new market complex rising up in the place of the old one opposite Cape Coast Zongo, I was amused to no end when a friend of mine vigorously denied its existence because she had been in the town the previous week for a friend’s funeral and had not seen it!

Being a doubting Thomas these days make some of us feel sophisticated and discerning, and asking for the cost or value of a project whose existence one has cast doubt on is cleverness when in fact, it is the height of stubborn obtuseness and obscurantism. It is so rustic and provincial that one wonders wherein lies the alleged sophistication and discernment.

Health and educational infrastructure

It is noteworthy that the emphases on new health and educational infrastructure mirrors the everyday concerns of Ghanaians, the quality and accessibility of health and educational facilities when they fall sick, and when their children go to school. Kwame Alorvi and Miezah Edjah, both from my alma mater, are now heads of the first two Community Day SHS at Otuam and Bamiankor, and I am thus satisfied that the requisite experience and quality is being brought to bear on these fledgling institutions. The President’s critics of course do not come close to his performance in this regard and yet praise what their champions did in office. The question that this book obliquely seeks to answer is; what exactly did those champions do as compared to mine? Not a single hospital or school.

If this book serves only as evidence that we have an elected government which is fulfilling its mandate, serving the people of Ghana, delivering on its promises, and doing so in an atmosphere of freedom, then the book launch would not have been in vain.