Can President Atta Mills be a hero in this Economic Crisis?

President Atta Mill

Today marks the day Former President Rawlings entered the Ghanaian Political Scene (15th May, 1979). Ghanaians have been able to recover from the terrible events that took place when Rawlings took over the helms of affairs in this country; people regarded him as a hero because they said they had lost faith with the then government (General Achempong and Co.). But there were others who thought otherwise, well we are not going to judge here, but want to point out the fact that occasionally we as Ghanaians look back at difficult periods of our life and wonder how on earth we got through it, and many at times there is always a hero, so this article wants to voice out the views of ordinary Ghanaians, whether Atta Mills will be the Hero in rescuing us from this financial crisis?

Let's hope this article will be able to achieve that now. In America for instance, they seem to have a sense of hope as a result of what Barack Obama's election has promised them. The same for Great Britain, their people have hope that Gordon Brown would rescue them and provide job and security for them. Politics is very funny, within a matter of months now the ordinary people have hope in the politicians and feels as if the country is entering a new age forgetting what happened in the past, well you cannot blame them.

In Ghana it very difficult to see what the Mills government policies are? And how it is doing to rescue the ordinary people, although to be fair to them, the ministers always go to the office, but what are they doing? That is my question for government to answer the people. There is no government official to turn to, what they always say is that we are doing something, I wonder why the Minister For Information feels proud in passing RTI bill, when the ordinary man wants job, housing and other social amenities, when to the contrary, Obama's first bill to congress is the Economic Stimulus Package for the people, which was successfully passed by congress.

It's an awful image of an ugly political culture, and politicians sit in it; oblique, detached and unloved. The New Patriotic Party came to power in 2001 with the aim of helping the ordinary Ghanaian, but they ended up in the contrary, for eight years the NPP feared to question anything about the market, or the private sector which brought them to politics, because Ghanaians needed the private sector to create jobs, but they failed.

For years we were forced to believe that the NPP and the NDC had a different ideology, but now we read the fact that there are still some government appointees from the previous government who are still at post, are we still living under the government of both. That is the more reason why Rawlings and other people were calling on Mills to change all those people and bring on board new people with different ideas.

Government often criticise the media for concentrating on personalities instead of policies. And indeed, less people vote when the focus is on people and not policy. But one wonders what else there was to describe. It high time government leaves the ordinary people to choose their own District Chief Executive (DCE), their interference will not help the views of the locality. President Mill as a hero for the ordinary man should scrap off that policy of allowing government to choose DCE.

The party selection process always turns DCE candidates into pre-packaged automatons emitted from party head quarters. The authoritarian ideology of government over the last decade has made matters worse in Ghana. Each appointment of a DCE robbed the public of more control over their lives. This resulted in local planning decisions being stripped of local assembly contributions.

Most areas in Ghana are being under developed because of the Member of Parliament and Co. Most of these MPs in this country live in safe constituencies. Why should they listen to constituents? Volta is never going to vote the NDC out. Ashanti Region is never going to vote NPP out. So many of these areas are left underdeveloped. So whose fault?

It is their fault, but in a very real way it's also ours, for living in a society where value is only expressed by pay checks, for living in a society where Ministers and foreign contractors are paid millions while nurses and teachers struggle their way through their careers. When we express worth only through money, this is one of the things that happens to us, the ordinary man is only heard during election, but after that they are forgotten.

So President Mills's things are bad in Ghana currently, but you can become a Hero if you use that to make the changes we need for a better Ghana. Politics has become stale, meaningless and corrupt. But Mr. President you have the power to fix it; please the ordinary man voted for you because they have confidence in you. The government needs to be radical if you want be a Hero! This is an opportunity to change the whole system. We'd be fools as a government and party to waste it.

God Bless Ghana! NDC! NPP! CPP! And the ordinary man on the street!

Author: Paul Rex Danquah
London