Leaders In Government Complain About Themselves

There is an Afrikaans expression that goes: “to complain is to gossip about yourself.” But perhaps in a more nuanced way, it meant to convey the message that one is, to a large extent, master of one's own destiny. This lesson is very necessary for our leaders to take to heart as they prepare to hit the road for the 2016 electioneering campaign.

How disconcerting then that two years after the 2012 elections and its accompanying Supreme Election Petition, the ruling government and its leaders are quick to blame everyone but themselves about the problems the country faces. Ironically, less than two years ago, the same people were pushing to be elected based on their promises that they were those best-placed to solve the country's numerous problems.

Now they are the ones complaining the loudest about obstacles, allegedly due to some alien or domestic forces within and outside the governmental apparatus. The complaints have reached tragic (but comic) proportions in that the complainer-in-chief is the Commander-in-Chief and the first citizen who was elected to occupy the highest office of the “Land of the Gold”, with his cabinet joining in like back-up singers performing the chorus, with numbing and monotonous regularity.

Within the past couple of weeks, President John Mahama has complained about the poor financial standing of the country and the shoddy work done by the former NPP government. His Finance Minister always complains about the insufficient funds at the Finance Ministry and other sector ministers bitterly complain how the much needed funds for executing their mandate were drying up. Yet, this NDC government is splashing billions of dollars on luxuries like office logistics, cars, on bloated salaries at parastatals and increasing the number of ministers as well as their pay, all at the expense of improving essential services and infrastructure.

The latest last week was a cheap shot labeling his critics as suffering from myopia and that they do not see the efforts and achievement of his government. Since the NDC government's election to power about 6 years ago, the best thing they have done was to complain and to blame all their predecessors except their own party (the PNDC and NDC). This has even infuriated some of their own leaders who had also complained more about their own government's failures.

They should perhaps take a leaf from Pope Benedict XVI's book and resign of their own volition or at least keep quiet, so that those willing to do the job can take charge and responsibility in order to arrest our problems. Otherwise, they need to learn to shut up and do the work that the voters hired them to do. No amount of scape-goating by leaders will solve the issues facing the country now.

MICHAEL ADDANEY ([email protected])