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Editorial TALKING A GOOD GAME Politicians make a very fascinating study. When they are outside looking in, they always give the impression that only the sky can limit their abilities to change the world: their vision of things is a perfect 20/20, their understanding of the issues fathoms-deep. When they are trying to wrestle power from the hands of incumbents, they will tell you that Utopia is anything but an unrealistic dream, the only obstacle standing between you and paradise being the inadequacy of the present leadership. They talk a good game, and Prof. John Evans Atta Mills was hardly disappointing in an exclusive interview he graciously granted this publication last month. The man who was J.J. Rawlings hand-picked successor to lead his NDC organization and one of the former president’s trusted lieutenants for many years and who wants to be president of Ghana himself is telling the world that Ghanaians will be better off under his stewardship than they are under the current leadership. May be so, but Ghanaians would first have to be persuaded that the realities of their existence for over two decades prior to the accession to power of the NPP government were anything to be nostalgic about. Among other things, those realities consisted of unemployment for nearly half the adult population of Ghana, including university graduates; sky-rocketing prices due to run-away inflation; chronic shortages of basic necessities including medicine in the hospitals; lack of development projects; deteriorating infrastructure; unprecedented crime wave; mysterious disappearances and extra-judicial killings; loss of civil liberties; semi-literate high school graduates; brazen and rampant corruption in high places. Indeed, everything that could possibly go wrong in a society was part of the harsh realities that defined life in Ghana for well over twenty years before it all mercifully ended in January 2001 with the coming into office of a democratically-elected government under John Agyekum Kufuor. It is not necessary to refute or rebuff point by point the claims or accusations made by Prof. Atta Mills against the present administration in Ghana in his interview with the Spectrum. The record speaks for itself. Atta Mills was one of the main architects of Ghana’s ruin. Whoever was Rawlings’ right hand man couldn’t possibly be expected to lead a government that would truly serve the best interests of the people of Ghana. The Rawlings’ era dates back not to the day he metamorphosed from military dictator to a so-called civilian president, but rather to that fateful day in 1979 when he seized power in a bloody military coup – a mutinous event his supporters ludicrously celebrate as a revolution. His NDC regime was merely a continuum of his brutal and corrupt dictatorship, and those who collaborated with him either as part of his military junta or as members of his pseudo-civilian government share the blame for his economic mismanagement and brutal excesses. Given the choice – and the choice they will have come the year 2004 – Ghanaians will never elect to go back to the days of darkness, which is exactly what they would get if Atta Mills and the NDC were to regain power. “Forward ever, backward never” was the progressive motto adopted by Kwame Nkrumah for his Convention People’s Party. Although Ghana’s founding father never really lived up to this wonderful ideal as a leader, it can still serve as a useful rallying cry for our country. Ghana will continue its forward march as a free, democratic, and prosperous nation. This will never happen with Atta Mills and his party in charge. |
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