The President?s New House

LETTER FROM AMERICA

Ghanaian voters who poured out in their numbers to vote for Mr. John Agyekum Kuffuor in 2000 and repeated the dose last year did so on the promises of the NPP that a Kuffuor government would be all about positive change. They would not be disappointed because the presidency has lived up to that promise to the letter these past five years. Except perhaps not exactly in the way that some voters might first have envisioned it. On the night of triumph in 2000, the Kukrudu triumph caravan decided to dock first at the home of the gentle giant, and took much longer than most of us thought it would. Perhaps they broke a few glasses too, you can never tell with elephants.

So when there were delays in moving the caravan onwards to castle, some of us started asking what might be hindering his Excellency from going to the Castle they have talked so much about occupying once they won elections. Then, we were told that ?Castle needed repairs.? But it wasn?t only Castle that was undergoing repairs at this time. The president, with his zero tolerance for unequal treatment?of course besides corruption?, decided to use as much money in repairing the castle floors as he did with home grounds. And why would anybody begrudge a triumphant candidate who has promised ?positive change? the right to start the implementation of that noble objective in his own home? Ghanaians, at their hospitable best, accepted that the president?s home needed a face-lift befitting the high office that he had occupied, but a few cantankerous ones decided to be naughty and ask uncomfortable questions. Later some farmer turned up and countermanded the claims by rumor mongers that the NPP was using too much of our money refurbishing the president?s private property. Apparently, there are very very rich farmers in Ghana who can pay for hundreds of millions worth of presidential decorations at the bat of the eyelid when they get angry at how the president is being scandalized for using state funds. Positive change had come at last.

On the other side of the repairs scale, the Castle finally pulled through the cleansings needed to make it fit for its new occupant. It had undergone elaborate positive change too, though in the latter case, no farmer turned up to pay.

Unfortunately, though we had?through our tax monies of course?contributed so much to make the president?s residency in the old slave castle most comfortable, he could hardly enjoy the new accommodations because of his many foreign trips to woo investors. Again, some bad mouths said he enjoyed staying in luxurious five star hotel outfits in Europe and America more than he did the Castle.

Well, that makes you begin to feel uncomfortable for the man. But in this era of positive change, we should have known that there will be positive solutions to any obstacle that threatens to break the back of Monsieur Le President. It came last week in the form of an announcement that the Ghana government, because it was too poor to bankroll the project, was going to take a loan of thirty million dollars from its counterpart in the biggest democracy in the world so that eventually, our architects here would design the biggest mansion for the president.

The idea of Ghana borrowing money from India itself is interesting because when we kicked off our respective independent existences, the Indians were not any better off than us. Well, I am talking of half a century ago; and the tables have turned so much.

But the mansion for the president is what is capturing my imagination. It is being whispered in certain circles that Mr. President has just gone Afrocentric, and would not accept anything that denigrates the African personality. And after staying in the Osu rock house for five years, he suddenly woke up to the realization that it also is a slave castle, and his dignity, his love for the sacred histories of his ancestors would not let him continue to desecrate their sacred memories. Especially since the door of no returns through which most of them overlooks his office windows like a cancerous boil on his soul?s sacred navel, like a blot on his holy Catholic conscience.

For five years, he stayed in that castle without realizing its hoary history. And he granted interviews, the most famous of which I?d say is the one that Danny Glover used in his documentary, The Forts and Castles of Ghana. There, the gentle giant mourned?of course belatedly?the tragedies that the Slave Trade has brought upon his people, and yet showed so much optimism about the future in which things will turn around and there will be, as it were, a positive change for all. Sat in the chair of the old slave master and uttered words that would make all the white ghosts of the criminals who perpetrated the actions laugh cynically at his black humor.

Well, let?s us praise the great who suddenly see the light on the way to Damascus and convert into soldiers for the cross. Mr. President?s men speak Afrocentrics now, and they are going all the way to prove just how genuine their faiths are. A thirty million mansion for the president is not exactly the step a faithless weakling would take, after all. And positive change rolls right along...

There are also those who are contradicting the Afrocentric angle to the story. For these bad mouths, it?s only that the Castle has grown too small to stomach?good word,ha??the president and his growing cavalcade of hangers on?or did I hear Haruna Esseku call them kick-back takers? This latter group of official policy explicators speaks confidently too, almost in the voice of the old anglicized prophets: Mushy old slave castle, thou art to be transformed soon into a museum that art the ruins of our many ancestors fair. And thou shalt remember the role of the gentle giant who took away your affront to our souls. Halleluyah! And we will build it using a thirty million dollar loan from the Indians. Now, who is going to pay for the new complex? Your guess is just as good as mine. An angry farmer who is fed up with criticisms of the president?s over-concentration of positive change on himself will pop up from nowhere to pay up! Thirty million dollars? Well, they tell me this is Ghana where some farmers, even in spite of the WTO and other no-so-comfortable gimmicks of Uncle Sam?s other grand alliance of global G-groups, can still come up suddenly out of nowhere and pay up presidential deaths, because of the patriotism. Sorry guys, your own waiting for positive change will have to wait for some time since the president is trying to take care of his new mansion first. Perhaps we?ll all see positive change eventually, but even if we don?t, who cares? Does a big presidential mansion not do our nation a lot of honor? Foreign guests will come here thinking that they will see the trappings of a HIPPC country, and they will be shocked that Ghana-man dey proper proper since the old saying still holds that ?master dey, we too dey?!

My deadline calls, and I have to run now. Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, and even if none of the current loans has your name on it, it is still possible that sometime somewhere starting with this festive season, you might get your own glad tidings of good news.

Author: By Prince Kwame Adika for Public Agenda