The 'I Am Not Dead' Crap

President John Evans Atta Mills

If the choreographed 'triumphant arrival' of President John Evans Atta Mills into Ghana, after an unusual spell in the US, and a morbid sounding 'I am not dead' assertion were intended to veneer the Woyome rip-off, the brains behind the enactment failed in their bid.

Seeing him at the tarmac with the state media busy covering the arrival suggests that he was alive and not in a body-bag, making the 'I am not dead' unnecessary.

President Mills, it would appear, is paranoid, perpetually nursing the fear of being haunted by so-called foes who he thinks would rather he was dead, a morbid phobia of sorts; that is how he feels and this impacts negatively on the discharge of his functions as president.

It follows on the heels of 'whether you like it or not I am the President' and 'there is only one president in the country' remarks which resonated across the political plane when he made them a year or two ago.

Presidential speeches, which should normally seek to encourage the citizenry to join hands with the government in the very arduous task of nation-building in a highly polarized society, have been replaced by polemics and innuendos.

In any case, Ghanaians were not served with news about the President's death when he was away, supposedly visiting stock exchanges and signing Chinese loans.

The late Musa Yar'Adua and Kim Jong il both managed for a long time to present a picture of 'all is well', with the former even compelled to speak to his compatriots from his sick bed in Saudi Arabia to erase the fear in their minds.

We do not pray for the death of the president and would rather he serves out his term so Ghanaians can judge him by how much he has fulfilled his campaign promises and above all, protected the country's kitty from a Woyome rip-off. After all, Ghanaians have the power to replace a non-performing government through the ballot box, supported by a verification mechanism.

The incessant chipping away of public confidence in governance is worrying, especially as this is caused by reckless utterances from not only the president but his minders who draw inspiration from what he tells them outside public view, and above all daylight robbery of the state kitty by a party man, with the connivance of government appointees and other beneficiaries.

Arriving at a time the country is ablaze with the country's most notorious rip-off, the least to expect from a president worth his salt is a display of genuine commitment to get to the root of the financial hemorrhage of the state.

Pulling the wool over our eyes in a bid to douse the heat generated by the infamous Woyome rip-off, or even veneer it through such unprovoked utterances, is a pointer of a government under stress from a litany of governance misdemeanours.

A demand of a report on the Woyome rip-off by the president cannot command respect, given the declaration of the case by Deputy Attorney General as bad. Such a report would be nothing but a ruse. We shall be back.