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27.10.2010 Feature Article

Pinera's pragmatism versus Atta-Mills' bogus piety

President Atta MillsPresident Atta Mills
27.10.2010 LISTEN

The mantra of a nation honouring her heroes is always used by incompetent, corrupt and absolutely visionless African leaders to deceive the masses when seeking their votes. After electoral victory, the rest of the people are then relegated to the back-ground and only heroes worth rewarding then become the gaping sycophants and unrepentant greedy bastards.

These prospective leaders will often portray themselves as humble and God-fearing when seeking the people's votes. After securing these votes and being sworn in as presidents, they tend to surround themselves with only people whose sycophantic voices will always sound like pleasant music to the ears.

In connivance with this group of greedy and property grabbing pseudo-social democrats, they will continuously throw dust into the eyes of the suffering citizenry with meaningless single-digit inflation figures while they are openly displaying obscene opulence. And within just a twinkle of an eye, some of these greedy bastards end up accumulating so much body-mass that it becomes extremely difficult for some of us to identify them either in person or on television.

ex-gratia
Having accumulated what they can for themselves and close associates, they will then demand from the poor tax-payer, huge sums of cash as ex-gratia when exiting power.Meanwhile, the living standards of the people who went and queued in the sun to vote for them would have worsened under the stewardship of these very deceptive greedy bastards and bitches.

Now, since Atta-Mills was sworn into office, Ghana has never known peace in the areas of security, road safety, catastrophic disasters and general economic malaise.

Since January, 2009 thousands of able-bodied Ghanaians have lost their lives in extremely horrific road accidents. Here I am not trying to say that it is only under the current administration that people have been dying on our roads. But to every keen observer and according to available statistics, it is evidently clear that the number of road accidents with its attendant fatalities has been unprecedented in our nation's history since Atta-Mills took office.

And when the cries of the people become louder over governments total impotence in the face of such a national crisis,Atta-Mills,in his usual media-gimmickery,summoned the leadership of Ghana private road transport union(GPRTU)to the old slave castle and engaged in his usual 'nyame sem' pontifications.

Absolutely no concrete measures were put in place following that meeting and the accidents continued with increased intensity. And as we speak, people continue to be killed on our roads needlessly.

Then came the floods which rendered most of our people penniless, homeless and in total misery. When the floods struck and people were thrown into the state of absolute helplessness, the president and these characters around him turned a deaf ear to, and a blind eye at the cries of the people.

Meanwhile, a cash of $3million was sent to the people of Haiti when they were hit by earthquake.

Indeed, it was after some individuals who have not been voted for by the people and are therefore not being fed by the tax-payer, started visiting these flood victims and distributing to them some few items they have been able to mobilize from their own meager resources, that the president was able to break-out from his shell.

And I remember the president's visit to Ashaiman where he went and shed his now too familiar crocodile-tears and asked the destitute flood victims who were, at the time, really desperate for a relief of any kind, to give everything to God and pray without ceasing. Absolutely nothing practical was done for these victims except the regular blabs by Kofi Kportophy and his NADMO errand boys. And here I would salute Mrs. Rawlings for the pragmatic step she took to provide some of these victims with her widow's mite.

The president, again, went to flood victims at Sakaman, here in Accra and Agona Swedru in the Central Region and asked them not to weep over their predicaments but rather wipe their tears and pray to God for relief.

There is this rumour that when the president visited Swedru after the floods and he saw the extent of damage to the town's infracstructure, he was heard muttering to himself that 'damage yi a nsu yi a cause yi dze, kyede abrofo yi na wetum aye no yie' which translates thus; this extent of damage can only be restored by Europeans.

Here too, the president left without nothing being done for the people of the town after his 'triumphant' entry into a place he calls home(Fante-land).As a matter of fact, it actually had to take a demonstration by the people of Swedru to voice their frustrations over a broken down bridge which had divided the town into two and therefore making activities almost impossible.Again,it was Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings who went to the aid of Swedru citizens with relief aid from her own personal resources.

As for the over 18 Ghanaians killed and those thousands rendered homeless and penniless in the northern part of Ghana, at the time, the so-called 'I care for you' president never found it worthwhile to even visit the place.

safety in the North
The state agency (NADMO) charged with the responsibility of ensuring the safety of our brothers and sisters in the North was given enough notice by the Burkinabe authorities long before the Bagre Dam was opened.Yet, no advance measures were put in-place to re-locate the potential victims.

Again, on the front page of the 18th October, 2010 edition of the Daily Graphic was a report that 55 communities in the central Gonja district of the Northern Region, including parts of the district capital, Buipe, have been submerged by floods following the overflow of the Volta river on Saturday, 16th October, 2010 resulting in displacement of a total of 25,000 people consisting of mostly women and childen.Didn't the state get wind of this torrential rains that caused this havoc?

Well, how would anyone expect a government that is engrossed in a mediocre venture of plastering walls of every building in this nation with a 'sexy-looking' portrait of Atta-Mills, to be concerned with the plight of some subsistence farmers up-north? How do we, as a nation, explain to the family of the woman who died because she could not be transported to a clinic for safe delivery due to the floods, our donation of $3million to Haiti? Obviously, the sense of priority of Atta-Mills administration has gone haywire!!!

Then came the mother of all disasters; which was the collapse of a mine-pit in Dunkwa-on-Offin where over 120 able bodied Ghanaians were buried alive.

Now, when that disaster struck, the minister of lands and natural resourses, Collins Dauda, was rather preoccupied with arguing over the actual number of people trapped in the pit instead of mobilizing the resources to the site to rescue the people irrespective of the number.

This back-and-forth nonsense went on for some couple of days, with the owner of the pit in question, rather becoming the centre of attraction for both the police and the media. The man was notified of the accident while he was on his way to Kumasi and he actually cut short his trip and returned to Dunkwa-on-Offin.And immediately he got there, the police went and pick him up for questioning as if that was what was going to bring the trapped 'gallamseyers' out of the pit.

The talking continued for nearly one week before a ramshackle excavator, supported by the local town folks who do not enjoy any government largesse, were mobilized to dig through the mud with their bare hands.

As a result of this shambolic approach by the state, lives had already been sniffed out of those unfortunate young-men and women by the time some of them were dug out. In the end, the rescue operation had to be abandoned with the rest of the trapped bodies buried in the pit. And as we speak, nobody really knows the exact number of people consumed in that incident. And here too, the president never bothered to either visit the site of the disaster or make any pronouncement on it.

On the other hand, an equally third world nation as Chile, having suffered a disastrous earthquake not long ago, has been able to demonstrate to the world that with a leader who has not surrounded himself with absolute block-heads, boot-lickers, abusive characters and incompetent greedy bastards, hope can actually be brought to citizens of a nation.

When the mine disaster struck in the town of Copiapo in Chile trapping 33 miners, it took engineers and other rescue workers 17-clear days to even establish the fact that the men were alive. And after discovering that the miners were alive, a carefully measured and well-oiled round-the-clock rescue operation was put in place to get them out alive.

determination
And with determination, hard work and sincere care for their fellow citizens driven by the president himself, the first miner, Florencio Avalos, 31, was brought to the surface, alive, in the early hours of Wednesday, 13th September, 2010 after 68-days of being buried 0.7km deep in the bellies of the Atacama Desert.

Here President Sebastian Pinera of Chile did not cocoon himself in his residence and pretended as if nothing had happened. He also did not visit the relatives of the trapped miners to ask them to wipe their tears, give everything to God and just pray. After all, what is the essence of prayer if it is not backed by deeds, as the good books say!!

Effectively, if this Chile mine disaster had struck here in Ghana under the current Atta-Mills administration, the president would have either, turned a blind eye or simply travel to the town to engage in shedding of crocodile-tears and asked the relatives of the trapped miners to just leave everything in God's hand and pray without ceasing.

Fellow Ghanaians; with Atta-Mills always hiding his incompetence under the pretext of calls for prayer devoid of concrete action in the face of every national crisis, would the town of Copiapo (Chile) not have been turned into just a 'prayer camp', with absolutely no attempt to physically rescue the trapped miners, if the accident had happened here in Ghana, with the result being inexorable calamity?!!!

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