Mr. President, take control of your own administration

I was one of those disaffected NPP sympathizers who thought Mills would be better president than Nana Akufo-Addo. I had concern with Nana Addo's temperament and detested how his supporters treated Mr. Alan Kyeremateng.

I also had concern with some of the decisions former president Kufuor made especially at the latter part of his administration. I was critical about unnecessary expenditure on Ghana@50, presidential palace and acquisition of two planes for use by the president. The ex-gratia was the last blow. Politically, these were unwise and morally repugnant decisions.

We do not spend over $50 million to celebrate Ghana@50 while citizens do not have good drinking water, efficient electricity and good hospital. The same goes to the presidential palace and the two planes. The late finance minister may not have died if we had our own world class hospital. The $50 million spent on Ghana@50 could have been used to upgrade Korle-Bu and Komfo Anokye teaching hospitals to become world class hospitals.

Having said that, I think Kufuor's administration performed better than P/NDC era. The school feeding program and the universal healthcare will be two of his greatest achievements. On the economy, I will give him a grade of B. He gets a B grade because I believe the good economy during his tenure did not trickle down to the ordinary person.

Now comes Prof. Atta Mills. He won the election with a thin margin but that is irrelevant now. During his inauguration, Prof. Mills promised to hit ground running from day one. But it has been six months now since he assumed the presidency and what we are seeing in Ghana is not promising. Everything seems to be going downhill. The economy is in free fall and there seem to be no end in sight. Since January of 2009, the cedi has depreciated more than 20% against the dollar and other major currencies. This has resulted in increase in prices of goods and services.

The president is yet to put forward any viable economy policy to alleviate the suffering of the masses but go around blaming the former administration for our current woes. I urge our president to learn something from President Barack Obama. He inherited the worst financial meltdown since the great depression from his predecessor. But within four months since he assumed the presidency, all economic indicators are showing that the USA economy is starting to stabilize because he put forward new economic policies to tackle the problem.

It seems the president is politically cripple and weak. He is not in control of his own administration. He is allowing NDC to run the government, so any NDC member can do whatever he or she wants with impunity. Today we hear NDC members from this region have seized public toilet, tomorrow it is another government property and so on and on.

While these unlawful activities are going on, nothing is heard from the president. It is only president Mills whose nominees to local governments get rejected by local NDC members because he seen as weak.

The president's ministers and cabinet members are out of control. Most of them do not know their functions, so they keep interfering in the affairs other ministries. A case in point is his national security advisor. I was flabbergasted when I heard him in the media talking about prosecution of former ministers. Prosecuting of former ministers for any wrong doing is a legal matter and should be left to Attorney General. When did the National Security Advisor become the Attorney General?

His two deputy information ministers, Ablakwa in particular, are just disgraced fellows. I suggest they should be given a booklet outlining their duties and functions before things get worse. I believe Ablakwa cannot distinguish between information minister of republic of Ghana and propaganda secretary of NDC. His erratic response to Nana Akufo-Addo press conference calling him a serial caller was childish. The response to Nana Addo's press conference should have come from NDC headquarters as Dr Tony Aidoo rightly did. But instead of refuting the accusations Nana made during his press conference with facts and figures, he rather insulted the character of the man. But I wonder if his immature public pronouncements are approved by the administration.

Mr. President, it is true that you cannot take six months to undo the "wrong" of eight years, but you promised us that you would hit the ground running from day one. So far, you have not hit the ground yet because you are not in control of your own administration. I hate to be one of those Ghanaians who have already judged your administration as a failure. You can reverse this perception but time is running out for you.

Credit: Kwaku Poku
Alexandria, VA
(Email: kgpoku@gmail.com)

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