When Mahama descends into the gutters

Vice-President John Dramani Mahama is generally regarded in the Ghanaian political discourse as a nice man, because of his ability to be at peace with both sides of the political divide. He is regarded as civil with his language. When he asked politicians and the media recently, to be civil in the use of language, many are the people who took him seriously.

That is why The Chronicle is utterly amazed by a speech he made when he out-doored locally manufactured DONGFENG vehicles in Accra. Whether he was overwhelmed by the occasion or not, the statement that came out of his mouth was uncharacteristic of his civil nature.

For once, the Vice-President descended into the gutter, in his attempt to articulate his concern that many Ghanaians are failing to appreciate the achievements of this administration.

Read the lips of the Vice-President: 'Over and over again, we have gone round the country initiating programmes – commissioning projects that are critical to the lives of the people. In social psychology and other studies, there is a phenomenon where even when your eyes are seeing something, your brain refuses to register it - you won't see that thing.

'Even when your eyes are seeing the reality, your brain can't believe it, and so it refuses register what you are seeing. Day in-day-out, we are initiating and graduating youth who have been trained in skills for life. We are commissioning projects, clinics, schools under trees, and yet, their brains will not register it,' said Mr. Mahama.

The Chronicle is disappointed in the Vice-Presidential pronouncement.  We have been made to believe all along that the Vice-President is a special breed from those throwing hot air, after messing up with the lives of the average Ghanaian.

When an administration has doled out as much as GH¢51 million of state money to one person, and paid a total of GH¢604 million in very dubious judgment debts in three years to cronies, conventional wisdom dictates that the directors of state policy should not expect people to sing their praises, when the average person sees decay all around him.

Ayi Kwei Armah puts it succinctly in his 'Beautyful Ones Are Not Born' – 'When you can see the end of things even in their beginning, there is no more hope, unless you want to pretend or forget, or get drunk or something.'

In an administration with more Joseph Koomson's of Beautyful One's fame than the man, it is preposterous on the part of officials leading the rot in society to expect ordinary people at the wrong end of their economic malaise to praise them.

Many of us may have brains that fail to register the filth of society, and that is what this administration has served in the past three years. The Chronicle does not hesitate in stating that the leadership of this administration has deliberately failed to see its way through the mess of confusion they have created for the ordinary man in this society.

We are not taken in by the self-glorification that has taken the place of sober reflection, by men and women who promised so much, and have delivered little. If this administration believes it has achieved much, then the leadership must be living in cloud cuckoo land, our apologies to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

By nature, the Vice-President is a nice person. But, if he decides to descend into the gutter as the 2012 elections gets nearer, he should be reminded that there could be many people who are prepared to go down the mess in the Odaw River with him.