Do they want only a third, or an indefinite term?

Not so long ago, on a warm but breezy Sunday afternoon, na me nenam na meetete, that under the nkwankwaanuase where the youth had gathered to play dame and ludo and the much younger ones were seriously engaged in a football match, the whole discussion was about whether or not our President should, or should not go for a ‘Third Term’. My brothers and sisters, fellow Ghanaians, ladies and gentlemen, make no mistake, the heat in the argument was nothing like I’m telling you so calmly. In fact, the temperature of the argument had risen to the extent that two of the protagonists had already started unbuttoning their tops, ready to throw blows.

After studying the situation for a while, and I’d succeeded in calming tempers down a little, I calmly asked the leader of the pro-3^rd Term group was exactly his problem was. “Sure, Old Man”, he started. “Who in this country doesn’t see the massive developments going on since this government came to power? The unprecedented appreciation of the Cedi against the US Dollar and its resultant decrease in fuel prices, the lowest inflation in living memory, the peace and tranquility in the country, the BIG PUSH, and the reset…., so why shouldn’t the president be allowed to go for a third term to continue with his good words?” Wow, this guy could have lectured me the whole day if I hadn’t stopped him.

Meanwhile, a prominent member of the anti-3^rd Term group, was so boiled up that if I hadn’t quickly stepped in, he would have slapped his party colleague. “This idiotic sycophancy and bootlicking must stop”, he yelled, boiling with rage. “Don’t you know that initiating this kind of debate at this early stage puts the party in bad light? Again, do you think President Mahama is the only one in this great party of ours who wants to be President? Do you think it’s for nothing that, for example, our party chairman, more than a year after our victory, is still carrying the party flag around the country under the guise of a Thank You/Victory Tour while the president who personally breasted the tape keeps himself busy shuttling between Accra and the outside world?”

It was at this stage that I stepped in to pose a few questions to these my NDC friends as well as try to draw their attention to a few points they seemed to have forgotten or perhaps might be ignorant of because of their age. To make it easier for them to appreciate where I was coming from, I started by telling them that at the time of the first coup d’etat in Ghana, I was a mid-teenage secondary school student, which by implication, especially since I haven’t died before, meant that I have lived under each and every leader and government Ghana has ever had, including when Queen Elizabeth II was our Head of State and the Union Jack our national flag. The first question I asked them was if they could point out one Head of Government/Head of State of Ghana, or even for the benefit of our 4^th Republic Generation, since the 4^th Republic, who in the very first year was seen as not doing anything.

I recall, for example, that on one occasion, our then President, Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah was said to do no wrong, was our Messiah and in fact, never died. That was when all political parties other than the president’s CPP had been banned. At that time, it was “One Nation, One Party, One Great Leader”, exactly the direction any suggestion of a “Third Term” would eventually lead us to. After all, would it make sense that if we have such a great leader who does no wrong and under his leadership the country is over-flowing with milk and honey, we should shove him away after doing only three terms, in other words, only one more after his current one? But as I was saying, before we woke up one day in February 1966, Nkrumah’s CPP had been overthrown and replaced with the National Liberation Council (NLC). And if you want to know whether or not that coup was popular, you better find out from a survivor who was a teenage like myself, and you would be told that to date, no coup in Ghana has received a more massive jubilation than the one that welcomed the 1966 coup.

WE HAVE BEEN LIBERATED, REDEEMED, AND HOUSE-CLEANED

Three years after being ‘liberated’, the country’s governance was handed over to K.A. Busia’s Progress Party. However, hardly had the soft-spoken professor completed half of his four-year term did the ‘13^th January Man’ force himself on the stage to ‘redeem’ the nation. Before anyone could detect any pregnancy, mother Ghana had already given birth to the National Redemption Council (NRC) with the claim that “Busia’s hypocrisy has been detected”. And that was when I heard my Ga co-tenants in Labadi Aborm jubilating and hailing Colonel ‘AYITTEY’ Acheampong as the new Strongman.

And who were you not to admire the courage and resolve of the Colonel who would boldly tell the whole world that ‘YENTUA’ - meaning, ‘we are not going to pay our debts to anyone’. If for nothing at all, Acheampong will always be remembered for the introduction of ‘Operation Feed Yourself’ (as opposed to our current over-dependence on foreign food), the smooth change-over from driving on the left to driving on the right – ‘Anyifa-anyifa’, as well as changing from the imperial system of measurement to the metric system (‘Metriki-metriki’). So, who says Acheampong did nothing good, especially in his initial days? What eventually led to his downfall was his clever attempt to perpetuate his stay in power with his so-called Union Government (Unigov) concept – a system of government which would always include the military. But before then he also had his admirers. Before going any further, therefore, all I want these young and over-excited “Mahama Third-Term” dreamers to understand is that so far there has not been any government in Ghana that at least, in their initial years, has not had their own admirers seeing them as the best. And I’m saying this from personal experience as opposed to having read about it.

So the NRC metamorphosed into the Supreme Military Council (SMC I and SMCII) before Rawlings and his boys decided that there was the need for some house-cleaning before a return to civilian rule. Yet again, as Dr. Limann and his PNP thought they were on track, J.J. Rawlings wasn’t so convinced and came back to shove them aside with his ‘Provisional’ NDC which, after conveniently removing the word ‘Provisional’ later, is the current NDC led by President John Mahama.

PRESIDENT MAHAMA’S 2-IN-ONE RECORD

For the records, and lest we forget, President Mahama is the one and only President who as an incumbent, was unable to convince Ghanaians that he had done enough and deserved to be allowed to do a second term. In other words, he woefully failed to live up to their expectation. The flip side of his record, of course, is that eight years after he was first rejected, he managed to get back on stage. But since he has so far completed only the first of his constitutionally mandated four-year term, i.e. only a quarter of the term, we are not in a position to compare his two terms to be able to determine whether he will perform better or worse than he did in his first term. In fact, even granted, or assuming without admitting, that this is the best ever first year of any government we have seen, should that be enough for us to conclude that we have all too soon found another president who will forever do no wrong, in other words, another ‘Great Leader’? So where’s this over-excitement coming from for people to be already popping victory champagne just because their team is leading by one goal in a match which is played for 90 minutes? But for all you know, maybe it’s nervousness rather than the ‘excitement’ I was talking about.

Yes, we’ve heard it before that in the history of the world, some countries have changed their Constitution to benefit a sitting president but I do know for a fact that only a cheat would propose changes to be made to the regulations of a tournament in favour of a particular team while the tournament is still ongoing. Therefore, any group of people harbouring any diabolical plans to change the Constitution to favour the ruling government should be told in their face that this country has long gone pass that era. Before we can entertain any idea of a ‘no term limit’, ‘three-term limit’, ‘President-For-Life’, or ‘one-Party state’, we will have to start, among other things, from disbanding all existing political parties, disqualify all past and present political leaders, and promulgate a completely new Constitution to usher us into a 5^th Republic.

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