SHOULD THE PRESIDENT SACK KOKOU ANYIDOHO & THE ENTIRE MINISTERIAL TEAM AT THE INFORMATION MINISTRY?

According to their many critics, to understand the scale of the failure of those responsible for telling the remarkable narrative, that is the sum total, of the many positive achievements of an embattled regime, left a terrible legacy, which amounted to a poisoned chalice, one must list the many red flags raised by the New Patriotic Party (NPP) during the campaign for the December 2008 presidential election: and show how today many of them have failed to come to pass.

Apparently, those many NPP red flags, were meant to create a picture in the minds of ordinary Ghanaians, about the disaster that would befall them and their homeland Ghana, if it was led by a President Mills.

Ordinary Ghanaians were told for instance, that a President Mills would be a puppet of Flt. Lt. Rawlings - who would rule Ghana yet again, from behind the scenes at the Osu Castle, the seat of government. Yet, as we all know, today's incredible reality, is that it is rather Mr. Rawlings who is smarting at being sidelined - and is loudly and openly criticising the independent-minded President Mills: whiles he moves Ghana forward methodically despite inheriting a ruined economy.

Then there was the cruel story of a man who would be dead within three months of becoming president - the implication being that he should therefore not be voted for. As we have all seen, the gentleman who was said to be at death's door, is able to stand for more than two hours, at a stretch, answering questions from a mostly-hostile media. He has also on occasion, even walked up the full flight of stairs to the sixth floor of the surgical block of our major teaching hospital, the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, and descended same - without being carried back to the Osu Castle on a stretcher in an ambulance.

Indeed, ordinary folk were also told by many of those who did not want Professor Mills to become president, that if elected, during his tenure, the culture of silence would creep back into our national life, and that so would the abuse of human rights (including the assault on freedom of expression, resulting from the harassment of individual journalists and sections of the media), which occurred under all the previous regimes that have been led by Flt. Lt. Rawlings. Well, as we all know, the reality today, is that the praise-singing media folk and media houses, showered regularly with zillions of taxpayers' cash in the past, are as active in their perfidy today, as they were when their NPP paymasters were busy gang-raping Mother Ghana so brutally.


Those complacent government PR geniuses, are also accused of failing to make the point (because they lack the nous!), that ordinary Ghanaians ought to compare today's many positive realities under the Mills administration, with the many falsehoods of yesteryear's pre-election fear-mongering, engaged in by the New Patriotic Party (NPP), and those in the media whose conscience they bought: and ask themselves whether or not President Mills' vociferous critics are sincere and fair-minded individuals.


The government's PR team's critics also stress that those they refer to as the "many third-rate individuals in the Osu Castle and elsewhere", have failed woefully to make ordinary folk understand clearly that the NPP's Enkoyie propaganda of today, is the political equivalent of old wine in new bottles - and is a combination of rehashed and polished versions of those selfsame deliberate anti-Mills falsehoods, specifically designed to deceive voters last December: being deployed today for the same purpose in Decembee 2012.


The government's PR team, its critics further insist, are "over-pampered and "over-paid geniuses" who have failed completely, to make ordinary Ghanaians understand that the NPP's Enkoyie propaganda's purpose today,is to bring about the hoped-for outcome of yesteryear: to stop ordinary Ghanains from electing the most honest and selfless individual to lead Ghana, since Nkrumah's overthrow in February 1966, in the December 2012 presidential election. Who does not remember how from literally nowhere, by the end of their regime's much-tainted tenure Kufuor & Co. and the favoured members of their family clans, had emerged unto the list of that elite group of the wealthiest Africans on the continent - within eight short years? Which of those government PR geniuses is pointing out the cold and frightening fact that the NPP's presidential candidate has a much larger family clan, jam-packed with even more ruthless and infinitely smarter individuals than the greedy and selfish lot they aspire to emulate and succeed in 2012?


Those who call for the dismissal of the entire team of geniuses in charge of PR for the current regime, say that the most egregious of their failings, thus far, has been their inability to realise the importance of pointing it out to the detractors of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) regime, and ordinary Ghanaians that contrary to what was said by the NPP in 2008, far from ruling Ghana by proxy, today, Mrs. Rawlings more or less complains of being marginalised and sidelined by the Mills regime: and has consequently removed her well-fitting and expensive kid gloves: and is preparing to fight a no-holds-barred bare-knuckled fight for her political life.


It is also said to have escaped those selfsame government PR geniuses, that despite the NPP's pre-election scaremongering, the 31st December Women's Movement has not succeeded in leveraging the machinery of state, as happened under the different regimes led by Mr. Rawlings, and still remains the pale shadow of itself that it was under the NPP regime - and shod of its state life-support systems, is virtually moribund.

Then there is also their inability to capitalise on Mrs. Rawlings intention to challenge President Mills for the right to stand as the NDC's candidate for the December 2012 presidential election. The question that those who are calling for the dismissal of the entire government PR team, feel should be asked, is: Is Mrs. Rawings' intention to stand against President Mills, not empirical evidence that far from being an undemocratic party, and a political tool of Mrs. Rawlings and her husband, the NDC under President Mills, has evolved and matured into a normal and democratic political party - a broad church with competing interests? And that furthermore, the Mills administration welcomes her candidacy: as it will bring forth many good ideas from both campaign teams, during the forthcoming campaign to elect the NDC's presidential candidate - all of which will strengthen the government and make it possible for the NDC to defeat the NPP again in December 2012: and widen the margin of victory further in that crucial election.

Finally, those selfsame government PR geniuses are accused of failing to make ordinary Ghanaians understand what effect a huge budget deficit (such as that left behind by the borrow-and-spend-waa-waa-waa Kufuor regime!) has on any nation's economy: and the attendant erosion in living standards that re-balancing a nation's finances results in. Are the citizens of many wealthy nations tackling huge budget deficits, not seeing an erosion in their living standards, as inflation eats away at the incomes of those lucky to still have jobs? Is the plain truth not that if the NPP had retained power in December 2008, ordinary Ghanains would be in the same situation they are in today - if not actually worse off under that selfish and profligate lot, whose real goal is to lay their grasping hands on Ghana's oil and natural gas deposits: and divvy that up between themselves, their favourites amongst their family clans and their cronies, like Kufuor & Co started doing before they left office in January 2009?


For all the above, and many more failings (too numerous to list in a short article, dear reader!), those who call for the dismissal of Kokou Anyidoho and the entire information ministry ministerial team (and their sidekick, that master-of-the-dark-arts, Stan Dogbe!), say their lack of creative thinking has enabled the many hirelings of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the media, and the NPP's own many self-seekers-with-a-hidden--agenda, to run rings them around them, for the entire period of the little over two years, which President Mills has been in power, and that it is time they were assigned other duties. The question is, will the president heed the call to dismiss all of them? Those who wish him well, hope that he will have the courage to do so - and act quickly before it is too late. The NDC regime ought to find world-class talent to handle its PR. Period. A word to the wise...

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