'Abrokyire' Palaver: When a President loses honour, shoes fly about.

Politics is interesting. It has its own way of making and unmaking people. Historically there are many examples of how people came into the limelight after gaining political power and later lost everything when they fell out with their people. It is more painful when such people completely lose their honour and integrity.

These people become a perfect embodiment of the Biblical expression that a prophet is without honour in his own home but with a different dimension- this one is self-inflicted.
I find it difficult to appreciate how people can fall so low. What happened to these fine personalities is a question that keeps haunting me.

This, for me, is how the American presidency of President George Walker Bush can be described. In his own country his rating has dipped to an historical low. No one respects the president in this country and it is a pity to hear words that are used to describe him. Maybe that is just the American style- they are very blunt and will never garnish their words if they do not believe it is a true reflection of their thoughts.

The climax of this sad ending of the president was what happened in Iraq on Sunday. President Bush paid a secret farewell visit to Iraq and finished reviewing a military parade. Together with the Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki they went to address a news conference after the parade and that was where the drama occurred.

“This is a farewell kiss, you dog” was the statement spoken in Arabic that preceded a pair of shoes flung at President Bush which missed him narrowly. The shoes came from the feet of an Iraqi journalist, Muntadar al-Zeidi who is a correspondent for Al-Baghdadia television, an Iraqi-owned station based in Cairo, Egypt.

In his humouristic self Bush sought to downplay the issue by saying that the shoes were a size 10. That is how much of an extent a journalist could go to express his dissatisfaction with a president whose farewell visit was also to tell the Iraqis that the war was not over and that it was on its way to be decisively won.

Call it a repetition of history. Do you remember how in 2003 American marines toppled a statue of Saddam Hussein while Iraqis expressed their cultural interpretation of contempt by stamping at the statue with their shoes? In this instance it was not even done to a statue but a sitting president.

With a little over a month left for him to leave office President Bush has become the paper napkin with which people blow their noses. This is a sad depiction of what people can do to themselves.

One can rightly argue this away that he was not popular in the first place when he was elected. True but I am not sure hatred for him was so bad and as he rightly stated after the incident that it was a reflection of the current political situation in his United States.

At this point I want to believe that if there was anything that he will be hoping to do, it will be to hand over to President-Elect Obama and disappear from the minds of Americans.

For the moment the name Bush has become an adjective describing anything negative and unworthy of pursuit like a “Bush policy” or a “Bush programme”. Too bad how a man loses his honour, I only hope those size 10 shoes make it to the famous American Smithsonian museums. I will definitely love to see it for it is worth a ten-page story.

Dot Asare-Kumah [[email protected]]