President’s Question Time: Enter Prof John Atta-Mills

For the umpteenth time, I would emphasise that our institutions of state are adequate for our purposes. We don’t need a bicameral legislature, where thinkers with ‘relevant’ brains, like P.V Obeng, K.B Asante, and if he would be willing to mix liturgy with politics, visionary Mensah Otabil, would be Lords of an Upper House. We do not also need a strict separation of powers between the legislature and the executive, so that parliamentarians would not be able to hold portfolios in government. Ours is the third way: it takes inspiration from both the presidential and parliamentary systems. We still need a lot of improvements in the way things are done, but not a drastic overhaul.

Recently, a media practitioner proposed a British style debate on the floor of the House, where the president would periodically account for the operations of the various ministries. It would not be a yeeyee or walk out affair; the leader of the majority in parliament (different from the majority leader) would lead his party in fierce debates. He would sweat it out, continually renewing his mandate by winning arguments and presenting the alternative that works. It is a whole art; a genre that must be learnt and mastered. When he fails to win the argument all the time, his party would ditch him and elect a better speaker. That is how Ian Duncan-Smith lost the leadership of the British Conservative party. That is how David Davids lost to present Premier David Cameron.

Ours would be called the President’s Question Time. Seated on the front bench will be President Mills, flanked by his Finance minister and the minister of Foreign Affairs, or whoever has the power of words to win an argument. He is armed with facts and figures which must be forcefully presented. And he must not get them wrong. Even when he gets them wrong, he must carry on, as if he was right. It is not just about politics and the language of propaganda; it is drama, poetry and prose put together. It is tough. It is fierce. It is intellectual. And he must carve out a style for himself, his own style.

Good British Prime Ministers always survive. But they confess that it is a scary adventure. It is like carrying your own Golgotha. Every Prime Minister’s Question Time is a referendum on a PM’s stewardship. Since Prof John Atta-Mills became president, reviews of his style of leadership have not been encouraging. He has had criticisms from his own party, and has been bashed continually by the opposition and even politically neutral persons and institutions. What would you say he stands for? He hasn’t exactly been a Mr Bean, as British MP Vince Cable described former Premier Gordon Brown during a PM’s Question Time. Mills hasn’t cut a picture as an effective president. The calm, peaceful gentleman persona he has tried to project is rather portraying him as a man with no gravitas. Where he has shown power, he has just done it as a figure who presides over an executive, not as a president. He doesn’t affect you as anything. He doesn’t tick.

How would Mills fare at a President’s Question Time, if we had one? Perhaps, the danger President Mills faces is not so much the confidence crisis in his own party, or even the likelihood that he would be a first term president (even Obama faces that); it is so much his consistent inconsistency in giving Ghanaians a leadership quality (just one) to associate him with. Let’s ask him that during the President’s Question Time.

Kwesi Tawiah-Benjamin, Ottawa, Canada

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