Would Atta Mills be an able leader?

Ghana's new president John Evans Fiifi Atta Mills is in the wrong profession with the wrong people. From the look of things Mr. Mills probably goes to sleep reminiscing over his days as a Tax Commissioner and a college professor. He has too much baggage for his health and his conscience.

John Kofi Atta Mills is not new to politics. He became a replacement vice president after his predecessor, Arkaah was punched out of his office by former President John Rawlings. If Atta Mills thought he might make a difference in the political situation as it was then, he was dead wrong. Matter of fact he did not – was not allowed – to make a difference. Perhaps was not able to because he did not have what it took to make the difference.

Mills came in at a time when the presidency was entrenched in the person of Mr. Rawlings and his wife. With Tsatsu Tsikata providing the legal advice – misdirection? – no one else mattered. Mills became a president for constitutional convenience. Not even the NDC majority at parliament had any influence on the government. For after all, the NDC as a party did not – has never had – any clear policy, economic, administrative or political and it is exactly the same conditions that exist today with Atta Mills as the surrogate director. In actuality, Mr. Rawlings is the man pulling the strings. He and his wife own the NDC and no one in the party dares do anything without his say-so.

It will forever be etched in the minds of all right thinking democrats in Ghana that if there has been any meaningful upward movement in the development of the country it was provided not even by Kwame Nkrumah, but by the Kufuor administration of the NPP. Unfortunately, the NPP under Kufuor wasted eight years thinking about the economy, fixing the roads repairing the economy without playing any politics – the stuff that could have helped them stay in power to continue. It had too much confidence and too little home wisdom – efie nyansah – as our people say. Why or how otherwise would such unprecedented efforts be allowed to go to waste? Some opine that the NDC rigged or used communist inferior tactics, but I say even if that is true, the NPP alienated itself from the very people it tried to help, but that is another matter altogether, for how many times would the party cry “stolen legacy?”: now back to Mr. Mills.

Mr. Mills assumed power and immediately decided to adopt the “forward movement” (yereko yen anim) mantra of the NPP. Earlier, the NDC's manifesto had been nothing but a plagiarized version of the NPP's as observed by NPP's McManu and others. Obviously, Mr. Mills, a doctorate degree holder in Law and a former vice president together with the NDC's bunch of intellectuals could not fashion out a manifesto alternate to NPP's. It is not funny, especially now that the NDC is in office.

How does Atta Mills purport to lead when he does not have any political manual to guide him. Ghana endured a directionless leadership under the same party for nineteen years with Atta Mills as part of the junta for the final four years. He probably was in from the beginning or somewhere in the middle of it all but from the look of what happened in those years, including when he was the assistant president, he did not make any impression on the people, on his party or the development of the nation. What is worse, he happened, as the vice president, to be the head of the economic team that sold off the country's factories and industries and pocketed the money.

John Atta Mills is an opportunist who after being at the losing end of two elections – 1999 and 2000 – sought every means, even if it went against his own beliefs, to win these recent elections. He benefited from the lies and innuendoes of his master, J. J. Rawlings. He would face the other way as his master was brazenly playing the ethnic card, playing one group against the other. Mills himself foolishly went to Elmina to lie about Kufuor building a cold store at Kumasi while ignoring the coastal Fante fisherfolk who needed the facility the most. That was alright if it was to win the elections. He would clothe his face with a foolish grin when told of the crime his party committed in the Volta Region. He was winning, so it did not matter.

Mills, in spite of the aforementioned, would swear on the unity and oneness of the Ghana whose leadership he won on drumming up the divisions in the nation. He would even turn away from the violence that followed after he had won the elections. He could not ask his minions to desist from persecuting those from the NPP who were being ejected from their rental homes and their businesses at Agbogbloshie in Accra and elsewhere.

Prof. Mills is incapable of leading the nation. After swearing in and later trying to stay the course of the national unity which he mentioned in his swearing-in speech, he would order that all government appointees at the districts stay in office. In the same breadth, he would not hesitate to fire all DCEs after Rawlings had fires one of his senseless salvoes of scolding his pupil.

The banned 64 battalion is being resurrected and Mr. Mills does nothing. Citizens are being harassed by these goons but Mills does nothing. While the handing over of national assets are being attended to by the transitional team, a band of NDC goons are on the streets harassing citizens who happen to drive in nice cars, because no one else but they have to ride in those cars, much like the heady days of the “revolution.” And Mills is doing nothing.

It may be too early to launch into such a searing criticism of a new government but as the Akans say, asem beba a efri anopa, (what happens in the morning sets the tone for the day). Mills has not exercised any leadership worthy of his election. Ghanaians are aware that he does not have any clean bill of health and that has stunted his will, if he has any. That can affect his enthusiasm to carry out as an independent leader.

Mills does not have what it takes to lead Ghana, not now not ever.