John Mahama
The first State of the Nation Address (SONA) in President John Mahama’s second term at the helm of the nation was anything but totally veracious.
Such addresses deal mainly with the state of the economy, especially this subject constituting the bulk of the tasks of governance.
The state of the economy when it was handed over to him by his predecessor was not dire.
That today, the President claims the economy is in crisis and in dire straits, is more a fallacy than truthful.
Some of the persons who listened to him were unsurprised by the contents of his delivery, knowing his obsession for propaganda.
One of the leading members of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) said the way to go is to paint a previous government negatively in the early days of assuming the reins of power.
It was a SONA adhering strictly to the NDC rulebook of blending truths and untruths, which President Mahama alluded to during one of his campaign rounds.
The now opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) leadership, especially those responsible for managing the economy, will respond accordingly to the untruths about how the fiscal matters stood at the time of power handover to President Mahama.
President Mahama has an assortment of descriptions for the economy and picks them at will.
He attracted public opprobrium recently when he claimed Ghana is a crime scene because, according to him, it was managed badly.
He has by his picture of the economy not only denied the figures presented us by our local managers of our economy but the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.
We are excited about the President’s pledge to turn the ‘sick’ economy around, but sad that he continues to lament even when he claims that is not his nature.
A sick economy that was able to contain the Free Senior High School (SHS) policy, undertake major infrastructural development and to post the decent figures posted at the exit of the erstwhile government, posts a different picture from the President’s.
Composing such addresses offers politicians with a proclivity to propaganda to offer a lot to their audience but short in commitment.
The presentation was a rehash of the NDC manifesto, no wonder the small poultry farming and the doubtful 24-hour economy which featured during his campaigns found space in the address.
‘I fixed dumsor before leaving office’ is an aspect of the delivery which elicited derision. He did not address dumsor as he claimed, unless he sought to play on his so-called ‘Ghanaians suffer from amnesia’ and so he can make such wild claims.
President Mahama should have avoided the declaration of some persons ‘wanted’, who he alleged squandered monies from the kitty of the National Service Authority. Such persons, he claimed, have fled the country.
How many persons have absconded who squandered state funds as the President put it?
As we have stated time without number, allowing the rule of law to hold sway in this country is the most preferred way to go.
It is becoming clear that the President is supportive of the acts of lawlessness which his supporters continue to subject Ghanaians on the other side of the political divide to.
Talking about education, we have observed the mutilation of the Free SHS in spite of a pre-election pledge not to do so.
The introduction of disguised and open fees in the senior high school system is something still being discussed by the public, even as the President said he would not scrap it.
We observed the glee with which the President revisited the real figure of the beneficiaries of the Free SHS system. To describe as an exaggeration the number of beneficiaries of the Free SHS by the Akufo-Addo administration even after the correction by the representatives of the previous managers of the education sector is to behave ungentlemanly and populist.