Who is Afraid of Atta-Mills?

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

The mess created by the poor combination of abject lack of election –scheduling foresight and Old-Sleepy-Eyes’ crass deviousness continues to reverberate across Ghana’s political landscape; and this chaotic political climate is likely to prevail for quite awhile.

Here in the United States, for example, there is ample period constitutionally allowed between the general election, during the first Tuesday of November, and the proverbial changing of the guard on January 20. This gives the President-Elect (or even a reelected President) about two-and-half months to put both a competent and properly constituted transitional team together. The ampleness of the transitional period also allows the incoming administration to conduct credible and serious searches as well as vet competent and well-qualified personnel for cabinet appointments, as well as other non-cabinet but key administrative positions.

In Ghana’s Fourth Republic, however, the incoming government has scarcely a month within which to both put a transitional team together as well as line up potential candidates for cabinet and other major non-cabinet positions. And, as Americans are fond of saying, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist, or a nuclear physicist, for that matter, to figure out that the Ghanaian transitional period is patently impracticable and downright unsound.

The foregoing may, partially, explain the fact that President John Evans Atta-Mills would put a transitional team of identical likeness of the checkered and lackluster Rawlings era together. Indeed, so badly cobbled together did Prof. Atta-Mills’ transitional team appear that a Ghanaweb.com acquaintance of mine likened the entire situation to the pathetic case of a canine going back to its own vomit (See “A Case of the Dog Returning to His Vomit” Ghanaweb.com 1/8/09). Whether, indeed, Mr. Bernard Asher’s characterization has validity would shortly be evinced.

On the eve of Prof. Atta-Mills’ assumption of the Ghanaian presidency, I published an article exhorting the outgoing premier, Mr. John Agyekum-Kufuor, to slow down the practically lunatic transitional process, via a parliamentary mandate, in order to guarantee that the country was set on a smooth and viable keel for the next four years. Unfortunately Mr. Kufuor, who seemed to be far more eager to scamper out of the country, in order to secure a plum job on the executive board of the World Bank, as he unguardedly gushed to some local reporters on the presidential election run-off day, could not be bothered.

Couple the latter with his contradictory advocacy on the possibility of extending a presidential term to five years, and the likelihood of Old Sleepy Eyes being afflicted with a serious psychological malaise of some sort can hardly be overruled.

In his latest reaction to such temporal crunch, President Atta-Mills has issued an edict to all “former” District and Municipal Chief Executives to go back to their posts until further notice, meaning, such time that the President and his cabinet, as well as other associates, determine how these New Patriotic Party appointees are to be pruned or pollarded, which may not be such a good move on the part of these District and Municipal Chief Executives, if one were to ask the opinion of yours truly.

In other words, our contention here is that complying with President Atta-Mills’ edict may not be such a wise move on the part of these NPP appointees, because ulterior motives may well be involved, besides the afore-stated problem of temporal strictures.

His much played-up talk of running a conciliatory and vendetta-free government notwithstanding, the truth must be promptly confronted in an honest and upfront manner. And it is simply that during the twenty years that the Rawlings Corporation dominated the postcolonial Ghanaian political landscape and culture, the Provisional National Democratic Congress (P/NDC) was known for just about everything except a conciliatory temperament. Thus, when a President Atta-Mills wakes up one morning looking visibly ill and 64 years old, and abruptly appears to have serendipitously discovered a more collaborative and conciliatory and cross-partisan ideological way of doing things, the entire constabulary of the now-opposition New Patriotic Party had better watch out!

While, indeed, the need for “collaborative politics” cannot be wisely ignored at this critical moment in our national history, extreme care must be taken to ensure that the Danquah-Busia Tradition of today does not go the tragically pathetic way of the Nkrumaist camp. For, needless to say, it was the P/NDC’s deft and near-inimitable ability to co-opt the most progressive and radical elements of Nkrumaism that seems to have permanently guaranteed that the revivalist Convention People’s Party (CPP) would never, again, rise above a wistfully marginal force in Ghanaian political culture. Mr. Sekou Nkrumah appears to have maturely and astutely recognized this glaring reality, thus his recent invitation for all ideological disciples of his immortalized father to enter into a lasting alliance with the Rawlings Corporation.

In sum, while in theory it is laudable for these NPP-appointed District and Municipal Chief Executives to want to take up President Atta-Mills’ rather tempting overture, taking such obviously attractive bait may very well seriously undermine the NPP’s strategic efforts aimed at overcoming their stunning political loss come Election 2012. But even more significant to bear in mind is the following observation: which is that in partisan politics, the admittedly laudable and patriotic desire for national unity must, at all costs, never be allowed to seriously compromise the equally significant need to maintain one’s ideological and individual integrity and dignity. The NDC appears to have avidly learned the foregoing lesson, thus the party leadership’s fierce resistance to any conciliatory gestures and overtures advanced to it by the Kufuor government.

In other words, what yours truly is saying here is that there is no legally enforceable or constitutional provision that enjoins NPP District and Municipal appointees to passively comply with President Atta-Mills’ patently expedient edict to tactically retain them in office until such time that the NDC government would have been able to effectively render these DCEs and MCEs practically redundant and readily expendable as well as disposable and, ultimately and ironically, punishable!

Another direly plausible scenario could also be that President Atta-Mills prefers to retain these DCEs and MCEs until such time that he is able to produce culpable dossiers on each and every one of them, so as to severely “Tsikatize” those deemed to have caused, and you heard me right, “caused financial loss to the State.” Needless to say, those who heard him speak loud and clear, however extemporaneously desultorily, about law and order being the very top priority of the Atta-Mills administration could not have been too stolid to take note of the true meaning of the Rawlings protégé’s “revolutionary” proclamation. The joke is on you, NPP DCEs and MCEs; and it is a deadly joke, if you know what I am talking about! Then also, perhaps, nobody needs to remind any of you about the politically incontrovertible fact that in every Atta-Mills, deviously resides a Rawlings!

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is the author of “Dr. J. B. Danquah: Architect of Modern Ghana” (iUniverse.com, 2005) and “Ghanaian Politics Today” (Atumpan Publications/lulu.com, 2008). E-mail: [email protected]. ###