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Shouldn't We Criticize Akufo-Addo?
By Dr. Michael J.K. Bokor
Thursday, August 17,
2017
Folks, very recently, Akufo-Addo (head of the
sub-standard NPP government) complained loudly that
he was being heavily criticized for failures as if
he had been in power for 5 years!!
The obvious conclusion? Ghanaians talk too much.
Instead of taking him on barely 7 months into his
4-year tenure, they should cut him the slack and
judge him only at the end of this tenure.
Makes sense? Not at all. In politics, criticism
(whether for good or ill) has its ups and downs and
cannot be tied to any timeline. Those who know what
it entails will welcome it, even if it cuts them to
size and threatens their political viability. It
offers lessons that they need to learn to shape up
or be shipped out.
By criticizing Akufo-Addo all too soon, are
Ghanaians being heavy-handed or difficult? (We
recall Matthew Opoku Prempeh, Minister of
Education's claim that Ghanaians are difficult to
rule---a throwback to what the late Kutu Acheampong
had said in the late 1970's).
Oyiwa, folks!! Those who choose to present
themselves as Messiahs to solve the existential
problems of the people should have a big heart for
the people's reaction to how they do or fail to do
things. After all, once in power, they wield the
people's mandate. It doesn't disempower the people,
though.
Just take the United States' Donald Trump, for
example, who had said several times that he was
seeking political power to "drain the swamp" in
Washington. From what has happened so far, it is
clear that it is rather his own head that has to be
drained!! Haaaaaaaaaaa!!
So it is with what Akufo-Addo is telling us. We
won't stop criticizing him today or tomorrow. We
will look for all the traces of abject incompetence
and U-turns made by him and Dr. Borrowmia to prove
to them that governance entails more than their
whims and caprices deceive them to believe.
We have been criticizing them all these years and
won't stop just because they are now in the kitchen,
feeling the heat, and using empty rhetoric to avoid
being scalded. Once they don't know how to soak up
the heat, they should expect to be scalded. That is
what public criticism will do to them. A think skin
they may want to develop but it will only turn them
into celebrated cut-ups ("Concert Party" actors),
which we have known them to be all these years.
Others before Akufo-Addo had taken on this Messianic
role only to flop. Some ended up disastrously and
paid the maximum price for it. Here is a list of
them:
1. The Great Osagyefo (Dr. Kwame Nkrumah)
stepped forward to prove to the world that the Black
man was capable of managing his own affairs. He did
his best for which he remains a huge icon, even as
his detractors cut him to size at the Feb. 24, 1966
cowardly putsch. Ghana didn't make it out of the
woods under him.
2. The sell-outs constituting the National
Liberation Council couldn't do better. No wonder
they could neither liberate the country nor uplift
themselves. The heavy price paid by the treacherous
Akwasi Amankwaah Afrifa may continue to hurt those
anti-Nkrumah elements who propped him up, but it
reminds some of us of the chicanery that motivated
their overthrow of the Great Osagyefo (in collusion
with external forces).
3. The effeminate Dr. Busia registered nothing
different, even though his outbursts "No Court... No
Court!!" remain as the most disgusting instance of
intolerance toward the Ghanaian Judiciary. No more
on that.
4. The late Kutu Acheampong brought about the
National Redemption Council but ended up not being
able to redeem himself.
5. Bring in Dr. Hilla Limann here and you can tell
that his administration was a complete washout.
6. Flt.-Lt. Jerry Rawlings' Armed Forces
Revolutionary Council had only one aim: to attack
the military top notch and punish them for
tarnishing the image of the military. No wonder that
the firing squad took away those identified as
perpetrators. And it went beyond that scope to deal
with the civilian accomplices. The "house-cleaning
exercise" (interpreted here as the fight against
corruption) resounds loudly and clearly. Whose house
ended up being cleaned, anyway? Ghana still stinks!!
7. When Rawlings re-emerged on Thursday, December
31, 1981, to kick out the Limann administration, he
challenged Ghanaians to send him to the firing squad
if he failed to do what he had come to do for them
the second time. He is still alive, challenging
Ghanaians. No more from me.
His Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) went
all out to give Ghana this stable 4th Republic,
running since January 1993. Congratulations. But
will Ghanaians eat this 4th Republic?
8. Bring in what transpired under Kufuor, Atta
Mills, and John Mahama so you can circle the square,
if possible.
9. Then, wind the clock forward to what we have
today. Akufo-Addo got to power on the basis of the
huge promises that he and his supporters had made.
Some of those promises were fixed on a timeline,
meaning that Akufo-Addo had given Ghanaians when he
would do whatever he promised. And time flies!!
Ghanaians aren't dead to time as it ticks off.
As the situation is now, they are quick to feel the
pinch and to suggest in their reaction that what
Akufo-Addo promised isn't what they see now or
expect top happen soon. Shouldn't they complain? And
by complaining, what raw nerves haven't they
touched?
How tolerant is Akufo-Addo? (Hello, Dr.
Nyaho-Tamakloe, Dr, Charles Wereko-Brobby, Dr.
Arthur Kennedy, and Co.!!).
And if Akufo-Addo can't take the heat now, when
again can he, especially as time rolls by and
nothing emerges to prove that the electorate were
right in voting against Mahama?
The Akufo-Addo administration is capitalizing on all
that the Mahama administration and its predecessors
had already put in place. What is new under
Akufo-Addo apart from the state of insecurity that
his entering the Flagstaff House has ensured? (We
note here that his government's re-designation of
the "Flagstaff house" to "Jubilee House" hasn't even
caught up. The official name remains "Flagstaff
House" as changed by the Atta Mills government. We
are told the Indian government has even given a
grant of one million Dollars for renovation of this
"Flagstaff House", not the "Jubilee House". Confused
sub-standard government!!).
In effect, what has the CHANGE at Election 2016
brought about that Ghanaians haven't seen before?
And if they complain, should they be condemned?
I shall return…
• E-mail: mjbokor@yahoo.com
• Join me on
Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/mjkbokor to
continue the conversation.
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