Putting the health of Atta-Mills under the microscope (2)

As a matter of fact, in America where the Mills-Mahama administration is obviously so mad in love with to the point where running mates were comparing themselves with a substantive presidential candidate Barrack Obama, the president undergoes a comprehensive annual medical check and the result is always made public. The reason being that, once the president, you then become a confide property of the state and therefore, except what you do with your wife behind closed-doors, every other aspect of your daily life becomes a legitimate issue of discussion by the citizens.

Atta-Mills’ physical transformation

Openly, every Ghanaian can seen the physical transformations of the president but his handlers were loudly silent on the issue until Matilda Asante questioned him at the second encounter with editors at the castle. And instead of the president coming out to show a modicum of respect to current tax-weary Ghanaians whose sweat and toil pays his astronomic medical bills, he rather chose to give us a slap in the face with his impertinent and now infamous “we all have hospital cards” debacle.

I’m a medical radiology professional and for your education; cancer can also spread to every part of a person's body, including the brain and render him/herdelusional, hallucinating and ultimately mentally deranged. This spreading of cancerous cells to other vital organs of a person’s body is what is known in medical jargon as metastasis.

And since our constitution debars persons with mental insanity to aspire to the presidency, it is therefore incumbent on us, as a people; to also comprehensively interrogate the mystery surrounding the health of Atta-Mills. This point must be constantly made on all media-platforms by every member of the NPP.

We must insist that Atta-Mills' medical records are made known to the ordinary Ghanaian tax-payer whose sweat and toil is currently paying for these astronomic medical bills of Atta-Mills. This is our constitutional right and it is incumbent on us, as true citizens of the nation of Ghana and avid democrats too, to demand for this disclosure.

Our nation’s constitution requires a prospective president to be a citizen of Ghana, not less than 40-years of age and of sound mind. So for example, if at any point in time, it is found out that a sitting president had lied about any of these three key prerequisites of a prospective president, then the citizens reserve every right under the constitution, to openly question such development and make sure the appropriate sanction is applied.

Forinstance,if it is found out that a sitting president had lied about his/her age and that he/she had not attained the constitutionally mandated age of 40-years at the time of contesting for the presidency, he/she can be duly removed from office. If it is found out that he/she is not a Ghanaian, the same sanction will apply. In much the same way, if it is found that he/she had lied about the sanctity of his mental faculty when contesting for the high office, this will again, attract the same sanction.

So, where from this absolute nonsense of trying to seal the mouths of full-blooded and tax-paying citizens of this nation from exercising our legitimate oversight responsibility of probing into the president’s visible health problems which are obviously impacting negatively on his performance?

Capitalizing on Atta-Mills’ health woes

I was not matured enough to see and appreciate the public performances of our nation’s leaders until the era of Jerry Rawlings’ pseudo-revolutionary days. He emerged on our nation’s political landscape wielding his own type of rules and regulations and therefore nobody was in the position to question whether he was matured, a full-blown Ghanaian and of sound mind, to run the affairs of state. The longsuffering character of the Ghanaian was able to contain all those oppressive times.Ironically, the likes of Kwesi Pratt who vociferously campaigned against Nana Konadu’s flagbearership aspirations, were the very same people sneaking into Burma Camp to betray their fellow commerades during the days of struggle against the PNDC.

In the end, the will of the people finally prevailed when the decision to revert our nation’s system of governance to the multi-party constitutional rule. And even that, the retreating military despots were held hostage by the gluttons around them and encouraged to strip-off their military uniforms, use state resources to form a political party and organize an election in which they were the coaches, team captains,referees,lines-men,match commissioners et all. As such, they ‘won’ the game, and again, ended up perpetuating themselves in power for another 8-uninterupted years.

Inspite of the fact that our nation has practiced the current fourth republican constitution for close to 2-decades, affording us the luxury to choose our leaders through the ballot box as enshrined in the constitution, you will still find some of these apologetic political-hermaphrodites who rabidly despise our chieftaincy institution, making dramatic u-turns to compare the status of a constitutionally elected Atta-Mills of Ghana, to that of an ‘Odikro’ of an infinitesimal cottage somewhere in the Atiwa forest, whenever Atta-Mills is put under the spot-light, vis-à-vis issues concerning his health.

Whenever a purely constitutional issue boardering on the health status of Atta-Mills comes up, these sycophants will come out, with all guns blazing, that it is unethical to openly talk about the health of an elderly person in our Ghanaian cultural setting and that our ‘amambre’ (cultural practice) frowns on it. But what these ‘nkwan deewa’ boot-lickers forget is the fact that Atta-Mills became a president on the tenets of our nation’s constitution and not by the dictates of our Ghanaian ‘amambre’.

The president is a total embodiment of the direction in which the nation goes and his/her health status at any point in time, particularly in the developed nations, can even have effect on the stock exchange and other socio-economic activities. Nonetheless, when such incidents happen in these civilized nations, they make sure to apprise the citizens whose taxes pay for the medical bills of their president.

As a matter of fact, in America where the Mills-Mahama administration is obviously so mad in love with to the point where running mates were comparing themselves with a substantive presidential candidate Barrack Obama, the president undergoes a comprehensive annual medical check and the result is always made public. The reason being that, once the president, you then become a bonafide property of the state and therefore, except what you do with your wife behind closed-doors, every other aspect of your daily life becomes a legitimate issue of discussion by the citizens.

Blowing the lid off Atta-Mills’ illness Now, the people of this nation were peacefully sitting their somewhere and minding their own ‘bitter Ghana’ calamities when gurus within the NDC went public with revelations concerning the deteriorating health status of Atta-Mills.

The people who came out with the revelation are not just some of these disappointed and hungry NDC fooled-soldiers, but rather, people who were very close confidants of Atta-Mills during the 2008 electioneering campaign and are therefore very much credible as to what they revealed about the president’s health. But typical of Ghanaians, we made some noise immediately after that revelation and swiftly went to bed.

Openly, every Ghanaian has seen the physical transformations of the president but his handlers were loudly silent on the issue until Matilda Asante questioned him at the second encounter with editors at the castle. And instead of the president coming out to show a modicum of respect to current tax-weary Ghanaians whose sweat and toil pays his astronomic medical bills, he rather chose to give us a slap in the face with his impertinent and now infamous “we all have hospital cards” debacle.

And to propagate this act of utter impertinence, the unrepentant apologists of Mills-Mahama administration whose bread is currently being buttered with huge layers of ‘blue-band margarine’ and therefore see absolutely nothing wrong with whatever Atta-Mills does, are going about making stupid statements to the effect that he can go ahead and rule the nation even if he is confined into a wheel-chair, as long as his mental faculties remain intact.

They argue that they themselves are not even 60-years old but cannot read without the aid of a pair of glasses and that considering the age of Atta-Mills; it is even a novelty for him to be reading with glasses when he has attained the same age status as the biblical Methuselah.

They have been shouting their heads off to the effect that, these days, even babies in their mothers’ womb are using spectacles therefore it is no news if Atta-Mills who falls within the same age bracket as Methuselah, reads with the aid of glasses, scripts printed in elephant-sized fonts.

These plain-faced NDC apologists have constantly been bothering our ears with Atta-Mills’ professorial academic qualifications, maturity (age) and solid Fante roots (Ghanaianess).However, these very same people quickly jump at the throats of other equally full-blooded Ghanaians who dare to raise questions about his state of health which is also a constitutional prerequisite to the presidency.

Justice Abeeku Newton-Offei

E-mail: justnoff@yahoo.com