BRAVO, PRESIDENT MILLS!

The instructions issued recently by President Mills to Ghana’s Inspector General of Police (IGP), that the police should provide maximum security, and give the needed assistance required by those who intend to demonstrate against the government, speaks volumes about his democratic credentials. That is as it should be in a civilized and democratic African society such as ours. It is the first time that a Ghanaian leader has shown clearly, and in a practical and down to earth manner, that he understands that democracy is not just about institutions, but that it is also a way of life based on tolerance. It is obvious that President Mills is a very shrewd politician indeed – and this singular act, marks him out as one of the most intelligent democratically-elected leaders Ghana has ever had, thus far, since the overthrow of the great Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah (of blessed memory) in February 1966. Perhaps it is no coincidence that he was once in the Convention Peoples Party’s young pioneer movement.

A great deal of the reaction to President Mills’ very noble gesture has been predictable and instructive. One of the most interesting, has been that of the hypocrites on the right of the political spectrum in Ghana – who pay endless lip-service to the tenets of democracy, but in reality happen to be the staunchest of anti-democrats: cleverly using the concept of democracy as a convenient cloak, to hide their real political agenda (the restoration by stealth, of the sovereign power, of the pre-colonial feudal ruling elites). Some of them have sought to dismiss it as an empty gesture. That is why latter-day feudalists like the tiresome and elitist Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko (a loquacious fellow who loves the sound of his bleh voice, so) can go on TV programmes, such as Metro TV’s “Good Morning Ghana” newspaper review programme (the June 30, 2009 edition), and seek to deride President Mills’ sincere gesture, by describing it as “populist” – meant to be pejorative, and a word that is much-favoured by our local equivalent of the odious white-supremacists of the Western world: who deploy it as a political weapon, to ridicule any initiative in Ghanaian politics, which seeks to empower the ordinary people of our country. Looking back, it always did strike me as rather odd, that the previous New Patriotic Party (NPP) regime did not understand the importance of encouraging the police not to take sides – and to stop using roundabout means to try and prevent such demonstrations from taking place. It would have been good for Ghanaian democracy, for example, if at the times when the Committee for Joint Action (CJA) was minded to go on public demonstrations that the police were against, the NPP regime had done what President Mills has just done. It would have shown the world that democracy was indeed alive and well in Ghana – and that our country was a true democracy in which the citizenry could speak their minds freely and go on public demonstrations whenever they chose to do so.

In that regard, it was rather unfortunate that a proposed demonstration by the CJA was banned, in the period immediately preceding Ghana’s 50th Independence Day anniversary – because the masters of the universe then in charge of Ghana thought it would embarrass their regime. However, today, thanks to President Mills’ undoubted decency and sense of fairness, President Obama and his entourage will see for themselves, when they witness that particular demonstration against the government that is planned by some of the right-wing hypocrites in our midst, during their stay in Ghana, just how false are the accusations of widespread human rights abuses in Ghana, which have been leveled at the current government, by some of those anti-democrats (that selfsame group of power-hungry political-nerds who sought to steal the December 2008 presidential election by rigging it – in those disgraceful, shabby, criminal, coordinated attempts to deny the good people of Ghana, the regime-change they sought at the time: because, according to Maxwell Kofi Jumah, ordinary Ghanaians did not have a right to remove them from power under any circumstances. At any rate, not before he and his colleagues had finished all their personal projects, and he, had died and been given a state burial: an event that arrogant sod envisaged a 30-year time frame for, to come to pass). One certainly hopes that the president’s gesture, will encourage and embolden those in the top echelons of the Ghana Police Service, who desire to reform that institution, and turn it into Africa’s equivalent of the UK‘s world-famous Metropolitan Police – so that it will become an organisation that is independent of the political establishment in Ghana, and an impartial enforcer of the law: because as a people, we now agree that all Ghanaians are equal before the law and that the law should be no respecter of the status of any Ghanaian. That is an example of disciplined security agency professionals, whose sense of professionalism makes them want to see ours become a tolerant society, in which democracy is a way of life – and not just a system of government defined by the dynamics of the relationships that exist between the major institutions of state.

President Mills has set a shinning example of political tolerance that is worth emulating by all the members of our political class – and the message it contains must percolate through the entirety of our security agencies. Unfortunately, and for far too long in our nation’s chequered history, their top echelons have often had a tendency to see the role of the organisations they lead, largely in terms of the protection of the political interest of the individuals who constitute the government of the day – as opposed to their constitutionally-mandated role of protecting the interests of the Ghanaian nation-state at all times. It is important that they always remember that Ghana’s national interest, so defined, at any point in time in our country‘s history, ought always to be what is in the best interest of the ordinary people of Ghana, and which will promote their well-being and assure their security, in any given situation – for it is in the hands of the ordinary Ghanaian that sovereignty ultimately lies under our constitution. I am pretty sure that many an independent-minded and nationalistic Ghanaian will say bravo to President Mills – who must now move quickly, to do what most ordinary Ghanaians want him to do, above all else, in order to help our nation win the daunting war against corruption: He must get Ghana’s political class to unite and ask parliament pass a new law, which will require all public officials, from the president down to the very last district chief executive, and their spouses, to publicly publish their assets: both before and after their tenure in office. He will then go down in history, as the president, who made sure legislation that would make a real difference in our fight against corruption, and create a more transparent system, was passed during his tenure. No Ghanaian will begrudge making personal sacrifices in the national interest if such a law is in place in our country – as they know that the siphoning of taxpayers’ money by crooked politicians will then abate somewhat. The passage of such a law will ensure that he is remembered as a reforming leader till the very end of time – and, as an added bonus, make him occupy the high moral ground: and stay above the fractious and often divisive politics of today’s Ghana. A word to the wise…