Suicide Bomb Threat, A Wake-Up Call For President Atta Mills

Dear Mr. PRESIDENT,

I have tried very hard to restrain myself from commenting on the divisiveness that has engulfed the NDC but my tenacity has broken down under the weight of how long you and your internal opponents’ fingers have remained on the self-destruction button.

Let me first introduce myself. Until I become an active politician one day, I will remain one of those voters who believe in changing parties in power every eight years. My wish though is for a third political force to emerge so that such a change will cease to be an automatic switchgear flicking between the NPP and the NDC. Unfortunately, only time will tell whether a genie will ever appear on the Ghanaian political scene to turn such wishes into horses.

Mr. President, I don’t agree any bit with what your former boss is doing to you. It is amazing how he has failed to see the glass walls around him and continues to throw stones in all directions. Much as I disagree with him, I strongly believe you have the power and the temperament to successfully call a truce that will calm the situation down. First of all, I fear that your failure to make peace with Rawlings will constitute an indictment on the Asomdwe?hene accolade that Ghanaians have bestowed on you. Have you really thought about it this way? You have a name that defines who you are and you have to protect it. None of your advisers will appreciate this as much as you yourself will. Think about it.

Until you stepped onto the Ghanaian political podium, only Jesus Christ was ever known to our countrymen as the PRINCE of Peace. But you mesmerized us into believing you were a higher deity whose peaceful nature makes you love your neighbour more than yourself. We responded with our normal magnanimity in praise singing by elevating you to the high position of the KING of peace to the possible envy of Jesus Christ. I may have blasphemed but I am dead serious about the need for you to handle Rawlings’ feud with you in a manner that will consolidate the aura of a true King of peace around you rather than shatter it.

Let us look at it another way. My village folks have a saying that, if you hate the anthill then you should not lean against the wall for support or for relaxation. In years gone by, my village folks used anthills as raw materials for moulding mud bricks that were used in building houses. That is why they believe you could not despise the anthill and still want to use a wall. If you take the NDC party as a house in my village, Rawlings is no doubt the anthill from which it was built. Never mind that his signature was not on the application form that Afari Gyan approved to register the party.

I am sure you have always known Rawlings for the contradiction he represents. If you knew you could not deal with it, you should have politely declined the Swedru declaration which has since become the pillar on which you have built your political fortunes. Rawlings is a cross which the King of Peace has to bear in much the same way as the Prince of Peace bore the cross of salvation 2000 years ago. If you continue to run away from bearing it, you will end up in the political belly of the elephant just as Noah ended up in the belly of the whale in his attempted flight from God. Unlike Noah though, you may never be vomited ashore to re-take your rightful place.

I also guess you know better than I do that you have more to lose than Rawlings if the divisiveness sends you and the NDC back into opposition in 2012. You have a fine chance to build your own legacy that will stand you apart from Rawlings in your own right but you can only do so if you get the benefit of a second term. I see Rawlings at this stage as a suicide bomber who has nothing to lose and who Atta can for that matter, not fight and win. No matter what you do in the coming years, you need a united NDC behind you to win in 2012. The price to pay for this is to try to accommodate the untoward behaviour of Rawlings and find a friendly way of managing his ego. Did Jesus Christ not admonish the Jews to give Caesar his due? The naked truth is that Rawlings rightly deserves his due. Give it to him and peace will prevail.

I guess you seemed to have been overzealous in your bid to show everybody that you were your own man. In the process you badly bruised the fragile but politically expedient relationship you had with the former president. Haven’t you realised that you still don’t come across as your own man? This is the evidence. Ghanaians don’t know you as a man of conflict. Naturally therefore, one would expect that left to you alone, you would have resolved matters peacefully with Rawlings long ago. The fact that the conflict persists can only mean one of three things. 1) That you are not the King of Peace that Ghanaians thought you were. 2) That some other force with a strong affinity for conflict is in control of the situation but NOT you. 3) That you just don’t know how to effectively deal with the situation. None of these three is good for your image.

The first signal I saw that 2012 will be difficult for you was not the unguarded outbursts of J.J but the sudden U-turn KOSMOS Energy made in withdrawing its offer to sell its stake in the Jubilee fields to Exxon Mobil. Did you notice that Exxon Mobil ads continued to run in some Ghanaian newspapers for a while even after KOSMOS withdrew its offer? That may not mean much but mark it on the wall, the offer will resurrect in the first 18 months of the next government if you lose the 2012 elections. If you ignore the fact that we are still a third world country in which political events are subject to the manipulations of powerful international forces, you do so at your own peril.

I wish you well in the pursuit of your Better Ghana agenda. If however you fail to manage Rawlings and it leads you into opposition, you can still make history by returning to the classroom after 2012 to teach law at Zenith College or better still, at the Islamic University. If you look at it this way, then you also have nothing to lose. J. J may strap his suicide bomb on his broad shoulders to make him look like a base ball player. Where will you strap yours?

Sincerely yours,

Mathias Dorfe (mdorfe@hotmail.com)