Opinions of Tuesday, 18 September 2007
Columnist: Okoampa-Ahoofe, Kwame
Professor Frimpong Boateng is Confused
He proudly claims that since he assumed his leadership position as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, he has registered unprecedented achievements at Ghana’s flagship hospital, even though all evidence, in recent times, at least as widely published in major Ghanaian newspapers, points to the virtual collapse of the hospital whose establishment Nana Sir Ofori-Atta I suggested to the immortalized Governor Gordon Frederick Guggisberg, the most celebrated of Ghana’s British colonial administrators, and the man who firmly laid the infrastructural foundations of modern Ghana as we have come to know it.
Several months ago, while writing my series of historical articles titled “When Dancers Play Historians and Thinkers,” a young Ghanaian citizen wrote to me complaining that I seemed to be according undue space and attention to “this” Governor Gordon Frederick Guggisberg. Of course, the subtext of the young man’s plaint was pretty obvious. And I also readily determined his ideological orientation to be unmistakably Nkrumaist. For I had, personally, gone that route before, even long before I came to realize how eerily and unhealthily deeply my own father had been involved with the Nkrumah Corporation, otherwise known as the Convention People’s Party (CPP).
More importantly, the young letter writer wanted to know exactly what “this” Governor Gordon Frederick Guggisberg had done for Ghana to warrant such “undue” space in my version of modern Ghanaian history. To be certain, my heart went out to this knowledge-thirsty young man, for he had also stated that he had been born either in the late 1970s or early 1980s, I forget which, and that he was not, by his missive, attempting to take issue with my evidently fond and genial perspective on Governor Gordon Guggisberg.
Being pressed for time, I simply listed the construction of the Takoradi Harbor and the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, as well as most of the current trunk roads – or major highways – in the country as the seminal handiwork of the Canadian-born and British-raised Governor Guggisberg. I had, however, woefully forgotten to also add that Governor Guggisberg was an accomplished civil engineer who did not just sit comfortably in his office while he imperiously ordered the construction of our seminal amenities by his minions, but instead quite enjoyed getting his hands, literally, dirty with the rest of his charges or collegial subordinates. And also that on the political front, it was Governor Guggisberg who laid the progressive foundations for the development of Ghana as a sovereign state.
It almost goes without saying that the outgoing Chief Executive Officer of the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital is a confused man; for Professor Frimpong-Boateng, paradoxically, claims that Ghana is in a veritable state of inertia, stasis or virtual standstill, while at the same time loudly patting his own back-side for his apparently sterling achievements as CEO of Ghana’s flagship hospital, about the same time that the country has been in a state of inertia or coma.
The preceding, indeed, reminds yours truly, while growing up at Akyem-Asiakwa, of those memorable nights of Ananse storytelling sessions. Oftentimes, some of the tales were so tall, or fantastic, that a musically talented critic would tactically intervene with the soulful admonition of “Anansesem ye asisie, to no yiye,” loosely translated as “Ananse tales are wont to be esthetically fantastic, still they ought to be told with a sound measure of probable plausibility.”
In sum, if we could so ask, what makes the outgoing CEO of Korle-Bu come to the quite curious conclusion that while Ghana has been lying in a state of “inertia,” it is only he, Professor Frimpong-Boateng, who has been logging up all the, admittedly, quite laudable achievements enumerated in the article of the interview that he granted Mr. Kwabena Amankwah of the Ghanaian Statesman (see “Ghana in a state of inertia” 8/24/07)?
What is even more quaintly paradoxical is the fact that the renowned Ghanaian heart-surgeon also wants to run for President of Ghana on the ticket of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), the ruling party which he also implicitly claims has smugly supervised such state of inertia over the past six-and-half years.
If, indeed, Professor Frimpong-Boateng’s strategy of making himself seem like a genius also demands that the aspiring presidential candidate deprecate – or play down – the incontrovertibly sterling achievements of the Kufuor Administration, then, needless to say, the man’s calling may not, after all, reside in the realm of national politics but where he is professionally situated right now. And just why would the outgoing Korle-Bu CEO also insist that he is “the best person” to take over from President Kufuor, since in the imagination of Professor Frimpong-Boateng, at least as reported by the Statesman, President Kufuor has merely presided over a virtual state of inertia (all puns intended)?
In sum, it is simply quite interesting and, even, outright amazing what people desperate for presidential power and clout would say in a bid to achieving their aim and/or objective.
We have said this before and herein repeat the same: The mere fact of any individual personality having registered remarkable strides on the ladder of self-attainment, does not necessarily translate into presidential or political competence. The fact that the aspiring candidate also does not possess mainstream, or national-level, political experience must not be overlooked. For Ghana’s current democratic political culture necessitates the election of a president with first-hand experience of the deliberate and convoluted dynamics of democratic protocol. Professor Frimpong-Boateng may be a good bureaucrat, but this fact, in of itself, does not necessarily and automatically translate into him becoming a brilliant democratic Executive Chief-of-State (ECOS).
Under his watch, not only has Korle-Bu had to dauntingly close its emergency and surgical services units, among a host of others, indigent mothers who delivered at the hospital have also had to be callously detained until they could come up with treatment fees. In most advanced economies of the kind that Professor Frimpong-Boateng claims to be itching to introduce to Ghana, CEOs of flagship hospitals like Korle-Bu are constantly dialoging with corporate movers and shakers, as it were, for substantial funding support in order to more effectively run the institutions entrusted into their care. Interestingly, in the case of the outgoing Korle-Bu CEO, Professor Frimpong-Boateng has been incessantly blaming the government for its woeful under-funding of the hospital.
Fantastically enough, the aspiring NPP presidential candidate has also assured both his colleagues and minions at Korle-Bu of his intention to keep practicing medicine even while performing his duties as President of Ghana. Somebody had better inform Professor Frimpong-Boateng of the glaringly elementary fact that becoming President of Ghana is no part-time job.
Then also, his recent fiery exchanges with Major Courage Quarshigah (Rtd.), Ghana’s Health Minister, over Professor Frimpong-Boateng’s apparent conflict of interest in campaigning for the presidency at the same time that he claimed to be fully engaged at his post, did not endear the latter to many a potential supporter or sympathizer. Indeed, to many of us, the row portrayed the outgoing Korle-Bu CEO as a brat who wanted to eat his cake and have it, too!
His rancorous attempt to parry off his egregious faux-pas by invoking the hospital’s bureaucratic protocol, by way of a subterfuge, might actually have put the renowned cardiologist in a dimmer light. The stark fact of the matter is that if Professor Frimpong-Boateng had not been an effective hospital administrator, at least in the highly relevant opinion of his own boss and Ghana’s Health Minister, Major Courage Quarshigah, there is absolutely no reason for anyone to believe that Professor Frimpong-Boateng could ever become the dynamic president of Ghana that he has been selling to potential voters and sympathizers.
Views expressed by the author(s) do not necessarily reflect those of GhanaHomePage.
