Competent presidential experience

If you ever had any doubts about my qualification to write what I write, now I am telling you it has been confirmed that I more than qualify. I do, because on at least two occasions I have been president of two student groups here in the motherland and in some other motherland. On a third, I was the president of some alumni group, perhaps incompetently because I was less successful.

The johnnic criterion for criticising a president is that you ought to have been one. So, alive, none of the motherland general chairmen would qualify. A typical example: If General Chairman Blaa Kutu were to be alive today, he would not be able to call a president incompetent. Blaa Kutu whose life was sacrificed so someone would become president today will not be able to criticise a president.

Blaa Kutu won’t be able to ask why after building Kaneshie and Asafo markets, today a president has overseen the tearing down of Asawase, Atonsu, Tafo and other markets in pursuit of one million votes.

Destroy the markets ostensibly for reconstruction; force the market women to starve and bribe them to vote for you. There is nothing competent about that.

The murdered general built Benkum Secondary School and others. Yet, today, because he was never a president, he would be unqualified to ask where the promised 200 secondary schools and 10 teachers’ colleges are.

He, Blaa Kutu, the general chairman, who built Teshie Nungua Estate, Dansoman Estate and Kabore Estate in Ho would not be allowed to question why after seven years, the Kufuor affordable housing units are still uncompleted. Kutu would not be able to describe that as incompetence.

The general who was chairman foresaw dums? and built Kpong hydro as his modest contribution towards guaranteeing electricity for all forever. This general who did all these things could not have talked a president, who has locked the motherland in darkness for four years, as incompetent if he (Kutu) were to be alive today.

In any case, ?manpanin Dadaa Kufuor has just spoken about school feeding degrading; the failing of one of his star social intervention achievements. It is incompetence when you downgrade where you are expected to upgrade. My senior the Gentle Giant will not say what I am saying. We are both qualified as former presidents, he of the Republic I of smaller groups. I feel like I have said the incompetence on behalf of all my suffering compatriots.

Leader of Government Business Kwame Nkrumah who established Tamale Secondary School in 1951, the one someone attended freely on the way to becoming president, ?sagyefo himself, would not be able to talk about incompetent presidency.

He would not have been able either as prime minster up to July 1, 1960. Just imagine his combined works as LGB and PM surpass anything a congress president and his predecessors have achieved over their longest period of leadership of the motherland.

Geriatric, Methuselah of a president and octogenarian Robert, our in-law who used to sojourn in our motherland, has spoken and given his verdict about presidential competence. He says if you can’t even talk, just talk oo, nearby terror, about what’s going on around you, don’t talk terror far away from you. If you do, it’s a ‘disgrace,’ and thus incompetent. I may disagree because that terror is not that far away.

That said, I guess the competence test of knowing relevance and priority is a key indicator of presidential competence. For one, borrowing heavily to build flyovers which could have waited a few years down the line, imperils your economy and makes you incompetent.

If before you become a president you were shipped to Romania or some communist place to study Goebbels (g?bls) and practised it against Limann and Kufour, one day you will talk it when you realise it is not congress’ monopoly. The realisation will come when you believe it is working against you; especially when your deeds demonstrate it and not just your opponents are goebblesly talking it.

Competence is doing what you promise to do well. Borrowing heavily to construct interchanges when you have no energy is not competence. Competence is knowing what to do where, when and how that will create jobs and keep an economy running. It is incompetence to do things because you personally profit from doing them.

My compatriots, being incompetent is being incompetent. Your deeds will give you away no matter your talk. You cannot take an economy from 7.3 percent lower middle income growth to 4.3 percent sub-HIPC decline in seven years and argue you are not incompetent. And you can’t keep your people in darkness for four years and say you are not incompetent. You are not competent so you are incompetent. Incompetent yi de? ahye obi papa!