Opinions of Friday, 25 January 2008
Columnist: Okoampa-Ahoofe, Kwame
Cash-and-Carry Santa Claus Storms Korle-Bu
This past Christmas and New Year, the perennial presidential candidate of the so-called National Democratic Congress (NDC) took his circus act to the Children’s Ward at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital.
What is interesting was Professor John Evans Atta-Mills’ lying through the canyon-like gab of his teeth by gushing to hospital administrators thusly: “I would have loved to be coming here more regularly[,] except that these days, when people sight Atta-Mills around any hospital[thanks to fellow NDC traveler Mr. Ekwow Spio Garbrah], the next thing you will hear is that Atta Mills is nearing his grave” (Ghana News Agency 1/14/08).
Needless to say, for a patently grizzled and purportedly erudite lawyer like Chairman June Fourth’s second-bananas to be so morbidly afraid of “nearing his grave” simply boggles the sound Ghanaian imagination. Then again, exactly what, and/or where, does the Swedru Declaration’s (or appointed) presidential candidate see himself inching daily towards? The space-shuttle Megalomania or the Dzelukope headquarters of the so-called National Democratic Congress?
You see, this writer personally spent three months of his early life at the Children’s Wing of Korle-Bu’s Fevers Unit in 1973; and knowing what he now knows about the man, the last person that he would have expected to encounter distributing Salvation Army toys to him and his ilk – or fellow child-patients and playmates – would have been Professor Atta-Mills.
In 1973, almost every child who shared the Children’s Wing of the Fevers Unit with this writer at Korle-Bu ended his or her life there. So abysmal and disconcerting was this state of affairs that at one point, this writer was the only patient left in his four-bed capacity room. Indeed, so desolate and dejected did he feel that one day this writer packed up his scanty belongings into a hospital-stamped pillow case, climbed the window to the back of his room, where visitors were regularly received, every evening, and made for the exit door, only to be abruptly and roughly grabbed by the crook of his arm by a vigilant nurse.
The sad reality is that this writer, then a preteen, couldn’t have found his way home in Lartebiokoshie, next to the site where Radio Gold stands today. There was a hotel located exactly opposite and across from where his family rented a two-bedroom apartment.
What was also quite bizarre about Professor Atta-Mills’ visit was to hear the trice-rejected NDC presidential candidate brag about his party’s massive contribution to the development of Korle-Bu, almost as if Ghana’s flagship and seminal hospital were a mere graveyard when Mr. Rawlings and his bootlicking scammers shot their way into the Osu Castle: “The NDC government refurbished all the theaters in the surgical block of Korle-Bu, including the laparoscopic equipment. We also built the cardiothoracic unit, built the plastic and burns unit, built the radiotherapy unit, worked on the physiotherapy unit and I can assure you that an Atta-Mills government will surely continue [from] where it [P/NDC?] left off, and continue to make Korle-Bu the flagship medical center, especially because of the major role it plays in healthcare delivery in our country.”
No wonder Fiifi the Ananse-story-telling Atta-Mills spent the most recent Yuletide distributing toys to children at Korle-Bu. For, after all, isn’t it only to a toddler that a 60-year-plus-old adult could cavalierly presume to riff such nonsensical catalogue of purported P/NDC healthcare achievements?
Why, for instance, did Professor Atta-Mills neglect to tell his little hostages that until his P/NDC government introduced the infamous Cash-and-Carry healthcare policy into the country, previous governments had all intelligently and constructively pursued the welfarist policy of fee-free admission or a token admission fee? The latter policy is, indeed, what social-democratic governance is about, not the barbarous P/NDC policy of literally allowing those who cannot pay for basic health services to rot in hell. And could anybody imagine, in retrospect, what would have happened to children like me, in 1973, if Messrs. Rawlings and Atta-Mills had ruled the proverbial roost?
I bet these shameless scammers are now beside themselves with wistful rage; if only Chairman Jato June Fourth had shot his way into Christiansborg a piddling six years sooner, this now-fearless son-of-a-bitch wouldn’t be ensconced in his suburban New York State community college volleying such super-shit-bombing spitballs at us!
Then again, if the P/NDC really did so much for Korle-Bu, and the Ghanaian healthcare system in general, why did Professor Atta-Mills voyage all the way to China and South Africa seeking first-rate medical attention scarcely awhile ago?
You see, where I come from in Ghana, we call people like Professor Humility “Shameless Liars.” The man is demented past shame and repair; and the sooner a special cage got constructed for him at the newly-proposed Achimota Forest Zoo, the better would the peace and quiet of innocent and unsuspecting Ghanaians be protected and preserved.
Now regarding the building of the cardiothoracic unit at Korle-Bu, the last time that this writer learned about it, it was Dr. Kwabena Frempong-Boateng, the former New Patriotic Party aspirant for president and also former director of Korle-Bu, who was claiming credit for the same. And Dr. Frempong-Boateng, a cardiologist, ought to know far better what he is talking about than the tax-policy-bungling perennial NDC presidential candidate.
Indeed, if Professor Atta-Mills could feel so good about himself for, reportedly, having distributed toys to the patients of Korle-Bu’s Children’s Ward, it is precisely because the liberal and people-oriented government of the New Patriotic Party has made it possible for these children, through their parents, of course, to readily access Ghana’s National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS). Otherwise what Professor Atta-Mills ought to have been doing would have been to distribute generously-drawn certified (or banker’s) checks to these children for the footing of their Cash-and-Carry monkey’s wrench of hospital bills.
Alas, what cheap method of vote-buying gimmickry! Then again, from what the Ghanaian electorate, at large, knows about irreparable scams like GHACEM and GIHOC, just when did these Abongo Boys of the so-called P/NDC stand up for the interests of anybody else but their own?!
Views expressed by the author(s) do not necessarily reflect those of GhanaHomePage.
