‘Last’ Act of the President is the Worst

First Published on August 5, 2023

The President is on his last legs but he is seemingly determined to choose and install his successor in his Vice President. Dr. Bawumia is by some distance one of the less qualified of 10 Presidential Aspirants of the New Patriotic Party as the party begins its primaries for Election 2024. He is politically inexperienced; with a poor performance record in government and probably the most polarizing candidate of the Pack.

President Bawumia would in all likelihood be a wayward experiment that could put any semblance of a progressive and coherent national leadership strategy at risk.

But this Presidential move will not surprise any casual observer of Nana Addo’s cavalier attitude to the weightier matters of governance and the development of the country.

Throughout the President’s term of office there have been egregious violations of constitutional integrity; and even a basic desire to build a cohesive and sustainable nation of equals appears lacking.

There are many examples of these to make the eyes water but here are a choice few;

1. First, is the decimation of the Domestic financial sector space in the name of financial sector reform. The President chose the most extreme options that targeted financial institutions apparently owned by his political opponents while providing relief for similarly placed institutions that were more favorable to him;

2. There is also the appointment of a ridiculously large number of ministers, deputy ministers, aides, attaches, board members and functionaries at newly created agencies of the State. Even as at today with the economy on its knees, the President has refused to heed good counsel and is maintaining a very bloated administration;

3. The co-opting or the appearance of co-opting of independent state institutions such as the Judiciary, Security Forces, Electoral Commission, Office of the Auditor General, Bank of Ghana and the Securities and Exchanges Commission. This ranges from a perception of packing the courts to outright appointment of NPP apparatchiks to the EC. At a point; an even sympathetic-seeming Supreme Court bench had to rule that the President acted unconstitutionally in asking the Auditor General to proceed on leave and subsequently chasing him out of the office;

4. The condoning of alledged corrupt practices by his appointees; combined with the President’s own prolifigate lifestyle in office as well as instances of direct allegations of corruption against the President and Vice President themselves. The fight against corruption has been decisively lost under this administration;

5. The President has shown open contempt for Parliament by himself and through his appointees. He has on a number of occasions spent funds beyond appropriation by the House, including on the National Cathedral. This has included a disregard of his own party MPs and the will of the constituents regarding the position of the Finance Minister. This has resulted in a culture of clanism, nepotism and vindictiveness in his administration;

6. The slippage of the country from the position of most peaceful country in the sub-region can be put firmly at the feet of this President. He has superintended and given comfort to incidences and perpetrators of political and ethnic violence unprecedented in the Fourth Republic. At the same time, the President has actively sought to criminalise media freedoms and free speech through both covert and overt actions;

7. The President failed time and time again to show leadership during the once-in-a-generation pandemic in 2020. He used a national pulpit as a campaign bully platform rather than as a unifying stage for the country. He then perpetuated a class system that punished the poor and absolved the rich for breaking the COVID protocols. Finally, he brazenly broke his own rules to show us that he was really above the law. In truth, if COVID was an existential health threat in this part of the world, Ghana will have faced an extremely dire death count;

8. Despite escaping the health consequences of the President’s poor leadership during COVID; we were not so lucky with the economy. Economic mismanagement of epic proportions has resulted in an unsustainable debt position. Further self-interested decisions by the President has resulted in deliberately impoverishing over 800,000 Ghanaians as the Bank of Ghana printed billions in cash for the government who then turned around and refused to pay it back;

9. The President’s term of office has been a torrent of failed promises. None of the President’s promises have lived up to the billing; not even the famed Free SHS which has resulted in poor quality education at not just the SHS level but also at the Basic level. Furthermore, in a classic case of predatory gaslighting and a lack of truthful candour; the President has actually made more promises to Ghanaians such as the Agenda 111; dissipating scarce public resources in seeking an elusive legacy;

10. In a most bizarre move, the President managed to find a scape goat on the international stage for his poor leadership; in the International Rating Agencies who have for many years continually rated Ghana above our deserved rating despite significant deterioration of our financial position over the period. This ridiculous assertion has merely invited international ridicule to the country as fellow African countries have made us out to be modern Icaruses.

It is important to call this President out for his failure of leadership, not simply to counteract the alternative reality he and his acolytes present to the Ghanaian people; but more importantly to send a clear message to future Presidents that this is unacceptable leadership. It is important Nana Addo’s governance does not become a standard for future leaders because then it will just become a race to the bottom.

In the above regard, one of the most significant actions his party – the NPP – and the people of Ghana can take presently to prevent any further decadence of our national leadership is to reject his chosen successor in Dr Bawumia; if just to send the message that we do not reward failure.