The Rhetorics Of An Insecure Leader

The Asomdwoehene, once the cool, calm and collected dude, we are told, is already throwing a national tantrum because he is exasperated and pissed off by the fact that some chaps are not allowing him, him only, to be the president. He does not feel like sharing the presidency, you know! He is even prepared to sacrifice the few endearing attributes given to him by the Almighty for the service of humanity. According to him, Ghanaians are misconstruing his patience and peace-loving nature for weakness, incompetence and timidity and so he has decided to tighten the screw on us so that we as a people learn to recognise that he is just as hot-headed as his boss, JJ Rawlings, who apparently is 'loved, admired and respected' by Ghanaians for his penchant for provocative speeches.

This Atta Mills man does not get it.
He is choosing very early in his presidency to be belligerent and reactionary.
Here are a few points for consideration.

• According to him, it is time to show Ghanaians who really is in charge of the country. Duh? The chap is still oblivious to the fact that Ghanaians did put him in charge of running the affairs of the country and therefore he does not need to show us anything. What we want to see is that he is doing a damn good job.
• He chooses to tell Ghanaians the most profound secret hidden from us since January 2009! And that is: there is only one president in Ghana and that he is the one! Geez, I really never expected such twaddle to come from Atta Mills. He is leading me and many others to believe that we have been overestimating him all along . Unlike the rest of us, he has still not come to terms with the fact that he is actually the president. He does not need to tell Ghanaians that he is the president. What sort of inferiority complex is that? Man, prove your competence by action and not threats. You cannot threaten us as a result of your own grasshopper mentality. It appears to me that this man is in a fix. Having fought the presidency for so many years, he now dreads the very responsibility that accompanies that office. He does not seem to have any clear sets of priorities by which to govern Ghana. Threats and insinuations are a sign of incompetence, if you ask me.
• He says he has not authorised Kuffour to use the late Hawa Yakubu's ministerial bungalow as the former president's offices. My question is: if he hasn't signed whatever he is supposed to have signed, why doesn't he just go ahead and sign the blooming thing and let us all get on with our lives instead of the the petty childish games he and his minnows are playing. I cannot understand why the President of the Republic is the one to authorize which building should be used as an office by the former president. Are there not state institutions to do that. Besides, one of his own guys, PV Obeng, has confirmed that Kuffour indeed did ask for the permission to use that office and a letter was subsequently sent to the presidency on the 6th February so how come Atta Mills and his gang are wasting their time and energy on something as 'trivial' as a small bungalow for a 'ceremonial' office of the former president . Has Atta Mills not got important matters of state to deal with? We hear the president's spokesman, his communications director as well as the National Security Coordinator spending days and nights arguing about something of minimal national importance. What is the big deal here?
• He says he will instruct the law enforcers to enforce the law. Why should the president have to instruct law enforcement personnel to carry out their constitutionally obligated responsibilities? The days when everything that happened in Ghana had to originate from the Osu castle is surely coming back big time.

While inflation is shooting through the roof and the New Ghana Cedi is falling like lightning, the circus of blame-game and the mischievous plot to disgrace the former president and the NPP appears to be the only issue that is gripping the sacred attention of Atta Mills and his administration.
Did not Atta Mills promise us a better Ghana? Why then is the gear stuck in reverse for so long?

The Way I See Us

The world we live in is quite a weird place.
To function as normal as possible, one needs to follow a prescribed lifestyle with built-in mechanisms able to weed out the multitudes of psychosocial pollutants around us.
I have personally made a decision to laugh a lot, both at myself as well as at those things that will make me mad under normal circumstances. Why should I take myself so seriously and end up becoming a statistics, if you ask me?
Ghanaians, it appears to me, are a pretty lunatic bunch. I read somewhere that 40% of us, that is more than 9 million people, suffer from some form of mental disorder. Mind you, these includes our uncles, parents, aunties, brothers and sisters and ourselves.
Gee that is a scary statistics!
And most of us, sickos, will never get access to any mental care any time soon because there are only 4 psychiatrists in our public hospitals. No wonder most of us walk around with super-inflated egos. We easily blow our gaskets and threaten each other every time things don't go our way. Most of these threats are empty, but hey, how we love to issue them!
Just listen to the unmitigated twaddle we spew continuously on our radio stations daily. Take a hard look at the way we treat our womenfolk. Look at our cities, town and villages drowning in filth and garbage. Gee, take a second look at our priorities and the pull-him-down syndrome so quintessentially Ghanaian. Now tell me are we not nuts?
But the clearest sign yet of this collective psychosis is the ominous propensity for the politics of dysfunction, chaos, indiscipline and disorder. Ghanaians get easily bored by an environment where things run orderly, smoothly and progressively. Some nuts amongst us always have to come up with some plan to throw us back into the bowl of confusion and retrogression.
The history we have written, and continue to write, of ourselves clearly paints a picture of acute eccentricity. It is as if we are uncomfortable or even allergic to a quiet, well-functioning and progressive society. There is this latent nostalgia for interruptions whenever we are ushered into a continuum of socio-economic development and advancement.
We yearn for a return of the chaotic, the noisy, the messy common denominator: a strife for an entropic familiarity.
We are not that different from the sadomasochist who derives maximum satisfaction from being tortured.
Ghanaians must surely be having an orgasm now that we are being whipped by the goons of the elected dysfunction. Relax, take your fill. We are in familiar territory. Again!