Sunday,
May 6, 2012
Let’s be serious in any
discussion of our leadership problems. Here is something to start with (from
the great J.E. Casely Hayford’s propositions on Leadership in West Africa):
The
story goes that a flock of birds once set out to find a king. And they climbed a
high mountain if only they could find him there. And they climbed and climbed
until they scaled the topmost peak, and there they did find him. But—he was
only a bird!!!
The lesson is clear: the king of
a bird is no different from the birds that set out to find him. Disgust, disillusionment,
disappointment, and regret? Your guess is as right as mine.
Ghanaians may be looking for a
leader of a different kind but are those parading themselves all over the
political landscape any different from those we already have? We want to be
sure that they are different before we commit ourselves into their hands.
Our democratization demands that
if one leader proves to be incompetent, he must be voted down; but the decision
must be carefully made in order not to bring in the worse of the two devils. So
far, the NPP’s Akufo-Addo is the most vociferous in the appeal for voter attention;
the PPP’s Paa Kwesi Nduom is no new comer, but he seems to be re-echoing much of
the NPP’s cries and portraying a mirror image that doesn’t turn my crank. He is
running a one-man show, which isn’t the way forward.
Only three distinct traits
characterize Akufo-Addo’s politicking: “huhudious” promise- making, a frontal
attack on President Mills’ personality and leadership style, and a looming threat of "All-die-be-die." Take these three traits out of the equation and he stands exposed as lacking anything to suggest
that he has the acumen that Ghanaians are looking for in those needed to help
solve the country’s problems of underdevelopment.
It is no secret that President
Mills’s leadership style is problematic at several levels—he is too laid back
and allowing a laissez-faire approach to governance to create the impression
that his government isn’t well organized. Many happenings confirm it as not
being an organic whole.
There are too many fault lines
that have developed because he seems not to be exerting his powers to rein in
the ambitions and overzealousness of his appointees. This laissez-faire attitude
is the cause of the Woyome scandal and many others that have manifested as the
gross indiscipline that motivated the so-called NDC foot-soldiers to visit
mayhem on the system (forcibly taking over lorry parks and public toilets and
chasing public officers out of their offices, among other acts of outright
hooliganism).
The President’s seemingly
laid-back approach to governance has also had a negative sequel at other
levels, especially the political violence perpetrated by NDC activists in
Odododiodio and other parts of the country. Additionally, the fracas in the NDC
could have been managed better had the President been more proactive and committed.
He has a big price to pay.
He seems not to see the urgency
of the situation, allowing his so-called “pacifist element” to cloud his sense
of judgement, which will cost him dearly. It is now clear that he is bearing
the flag of a party that is fractured. How does he hope to win the elections convincingly
with such a run-down political edifice?
Given this state of affairs, one
might think that Akufo-Addo will adopt better strategies to turn the table
against the incumbent. His “Listening to the people” tour ended abruptly, apparently
because he seems not to have it properly laid out and coordinated enough to be
sustained for long. Or is it because he has gathered enough complaints from
those he has already interacted with to conclude that his kitty is too full to
take in more? Or that he wants to use a better approach? (Like what, though?)
Of course, we know that after the
NPP had launched its campaign for Election 2012 with a non-denominational
church service at Essipon, the stage was set for it to go all out on all fronts
to roll out its alternative development strategies to woo the electorate.
Nothing so far to write home about except promises and the lambasting of
President Mills. Flogging a dead horse won’t win votes!!
This is where the problem
thickens for Akufo-Addo. Having been taken to the cleaners over dirty
allegations over the years, he already has a huge credibility problem. The fact
that nobody is openly revisiting those allegations doesn’t mean that they have
fallen into oblivion.
Instead of expending energy to
prove that he is more endowed with the requisite leadership skills, he is
fixated on condemning President Mills as if that will open “Sesame” for him.
Having already labeled President
Mills as “Professor Do-Little,” and going ahead to say that the Woyome scandal
couldn’t have happened under the watch of a government headed by him, he opened
himself to many probing questions, all related to his own shoddy performance as
Minister of Justice/Attorney-General and that of Foreign Affairs.
Did I hear that some diplomatic
passports being kept in the vault of his office when he was the Minister of
Foreign Affairs vanished? Or that some drug barons ……? (You can complete it
yourself.)
These instances are equally
scandalous, right? Certainly, Akufo-Addo is throwing stones and acting as if he
is not living in a glass house.
Now, let’s bring the matter
closer home. Akufo-Addo has just been reported as asking President Mills to “sit
up” and “to act as a responsible leader in the run-up to the December general
elections.”
If President Mills sits up, will
there be any need for Akufo-Addo to contest the elections at all and hope to unseat
him? He has already reduced to absurdity his own political ambitions. This
person is not a politician who knows how to do politics to win elections. Where
does he place his own belligerence, couched as “All-die-be-die”? Or Kennedy
Agyapong’s “madness,” which he has refused to condemn?
In fact, he may be best qualified
as a political activist and praised for leading street demonstrations
(especially the “Kume Preko,” “Wie Me Preko,” and “Sie Me Preko” demonstrations
organized by the defunct Alliance for Change) or being active in political
organizations fighting Rawlings’ military dictatorship. I doff my hat off for
him on that score. A political activist he still remains.
But to regard him as a future President
for Ghana is out of the equation for me. I don’t see what he has to be so. He
isn’t coming with anything different except the mentality of a hurt elephant—the
only animal which, once hurt, neither forgives nor forgets!!
My hunch is that he is just the déjà
vu type that will not make any marked difference in our national life. I have
good cause to say so because he hasn’t provided anything to persuade me that he
is of a different calibre than those we have already written off as bad debts.
I am dead serious about my
concerns and challenge anybody who thinks otherwise to list Akufo-Addo’s
leadership qualities to change my perception of him. Until then he remains to
me the same side of the political coin that has lost its lustre.
He is nothing more than a firy,
fast-talking, conservative democrat. Ghana deserves better.
He may be vocal, theatrical, and
insistent on airing his contempt for the Mills government, but he hasn’t given
me the faintest urge to be optimistic that he will move Ghana forward. At 69
years, I daresay that he has seen better days. Only one thing is motivating his
struggle to be in power: he sees the Presidency as an entitlement and must do
all he can to wrest it from the incumbent.
As far back as 1996 when he stood
against Kufuor at the NPP’s Sunyani congress for the flagbearership, Akufo-Addo
hasn’t ceased nursing that urge of regarding the Presidency as his entitlement.
From his political rhetoric and the zeal with which he has institutionalized
the “All-die-be-die” craze among his party’s followers, one is not in the least
mistaken that he wants to realize his ambition at all costs.
He might have said that he won’t
shed a single Ghanaian’s blood to be in power; but it is all an unconvincing
damage control measure that has backfired already in the face of current
happenings. His refusal to comment on the Kennedy Agyapong hate speech betrays
him. If he were an astute politician, he would make his personal voice heard on
the matter and use it to reinforce his claim not to shed or cause to be shed a
single Ghanaian’s blood in the pursuit of his deep-seated political ambitions.
But he hasn’t done so, which
clearly sets him up as a double-faced modern-day Ghanaian version of the Roman
god, Janus. He is looking both ways simultaneously: seeing defeat staring at
him if he fails to outmatch the incumbent (hence, his insistence on the inspiration-inducing
“All-die-be-die” war cry), and buoyed up
with some hope that for as long as he leads the NPP’s frontal attack on
President Mills, he will prevail over the electorate, on the other side.
That is why we see much ado about
nothing in his politicking. The real issues that we need to be sure that he is
a better quality material are missing. They are just not there for us to see.
Why should we then go for him?
As far as I am concerned, our
democratization efforts should not just be directed at replacing one government
with another just for its own sake. We must do so only to assure ourselves that
those we kick out have failed to prop up the democracy in ways other than what
we already detest as incapable of solving our problems.
Those we bring in must certainly
have better means to solve those problems. If we allow mere sentiments to
determine our electoral decisions, we can’t move our democracy beyond this “procedural”
stage (characterized by mere political rituals of holding elections and putting
new wine in an old fermented wine bottle).
We aspire to the “substantive”
stage of democracy where “equity, justice, civil
liberties, and human rights prevail; where citizens enjoy freedom, interests
are represented via elected public fora and group participation, and all
citizens have equal access to governmental process and have a say in collective
decision-making [regarding the national cake]” (Jonathan Haynes, Democracy and Civil Society in the Third World. Cambridge, England:
Polity Press, 1997, p. 85.)
Our democratization calls for the kind of leadership that will
make the difference. If President Mills’ leadership style is problematic (as
his critics believe), then, we need a better one, not what Akufo-Addo represents.
Otherwise, we will continue to run around in circles until we drop down dead in
the midst of over-abundant national resources. What is wrong with us in Ghana,
the first country to gain independence south of the Sahara?
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