A Lost Momentum

Koku Anyidoho

The President's ritual of engaging with a cross-section of media practitioners has come and gone leaving behind a regrettable aftermath full of bad blood.

Soon after the engagement, DAILY GUIDE was put on the spot in a coordinated manouvre spearheaded by Koku Anyidoho because a reporter from the newspaper had posed a question regarding the President's health.

An Accra-based radio provided a platform for the insults and threats of something sinister befalling Charles Takyi-Boadu for his effrontery. The foul-mouthing has not ceased with the notorious insulting Castle minders turning to other channels to release their pent-up opprobrium.

What a way to manage their failure to stop an unfriendly question from a representative of a perceived 'enemy newspaper.' That is the extent of the political degeneration in a country under an Atta Mills presidency.

We would not have considered the insults being rained on the reporter and by inference the newspaper worthy of editorializing on but for their persistence days after the unproductive Castle meeting.

It is interesting that the health question has become a favourite subject for those seeking the attention of the President. We would not begrudge them their preference but wish to counsel that this descent into the gutters by persons working with the President and the NDC does not make for the growth of our democracy.

The engagement has become a faded image of what it used to be having become a pet of Castle boys. No wonder one of them can boast obscenely that he decides those who must come to the Castle and those who should not. Who cares anyway?

The selectiveness in the accreditation of those who cover the Castle by the President's boys against the backdrop of the pretentious invitation of media houses perceived to be anti-government makes mockery of the whole exercise.

Coming to the substance of the beef of the President's minders and, perhaps, he himself since such vitriolic attacks are sanctioned by him, we are amused at the shallowness of the argument of the likes of the Deputy National Organiser of the NDC, Joshua Akamba.

For Mr. Akamba, any enquiry about the health status of the man who heads the country as President is 'stupid.'

We would not like to join the gentleman and those of his ilk in the gutter; suffice it to however state that it is standard practice for the citizens of a country to be briefed about the health status of their heads of state.

Emperor Hirohito, Japan's second war time head of state and the man who surrendered to Allied forces in 1945, when he was ill, had periodic bulletins released about his deteriorating condition; it is a standard applied all over the world.

If NDC operatives want Ghana to be an exception, let's explore more decent approaches; displaying their poor parental upbringing by using inappropriate language is certainly a poor reflection of who they are.

The truth is that the President's engagement has lost momentum because some of us consider it as a lousy propaganda project choreographed annually with diminishing returns.

For the umpteenth time, we state that upon the assumption of office as president, a citizen loses most of his privacy, one of which being details of his health status. Let them carry their heads when they are talking.