Why Mills Is A Poodle

The man, who, in 2000, was famously described in a column in the Weekend Statesman, ‘Around the World in Gabby’s Words’, as having the platform charisma of tranquilised sheep, appears to have successfully filed his nomination as the most loyal poodle in Ghana’s political community.

He seems to have managed this fate with a single validation statement made by him last week in reaction to the Government’s decision to discontinue with the loan agreement with the International Financial Consortium.

The Poodle is a 15-inch dog which would obediently do his master’s bidding without any yap or yelp. A poodle’s most outstanding characteristics are his high intelligence and sense of humour. A Poodle is the best canine companion you can have. In fact, it is too dutiful to a fault. Very loyal to its humans, a Poodle has the appearance of a very active, elegant-appearing dog, squarely built, well proportioned, moving soundly and carrying himself proudly. Properly clipped in the traditional fashion and carefully groomed, the poodle has about him an air of distinction and dignity peculiar to himself. Once most people have experienced a Poodle they seldom go to another breed.

Last week, Professor John Evans Atta Mills put on an ill-fitting costume and called for the resignation of the three men who led the Government’s team in negotiations on the abortive $1 billion IFC loan. This uncharacteristic howler on the part of the law professor has drawn charges of delirium and unashamed hypocrisy from many quarters. “The gentlemen have displayed gross incompetence and lack of candour in their dealings with the people of Ghana. Their credibility is zero and their continued stay in office will hold back the progress of the economy,” said he.

Perhaps, wagging his tail with pet-like excitement to please his handlers, the aspiring Presidential candidate for the second largest party in the country forgot that by the above statement he has clearly admitted that the country has in point of fact made some progress with the economy and this positive change shouldn’t be held back. Interestingly, the very three men whose heads he called for are among the men at the driving seat of the Government’s macroeconomic gains.

Ironically, when Prof Mills made the statement, sitting behind him was the ‘Texan Ranger,’ Kwamina Ahwoi of cashpro infamy. The company, owned by top NDC members, in blatant exhibition of nepotism, was awarded several contracts, including a ?20billion one during the last election year, under the vague-sounding “Hi-Tec Maintenance Scheme.” This was at the time that Vice President Prof Mills was doubling up as Chairman of the Economic Management Team of the NDC Government. Prof Mills endorsed this ‘job for the boys’ vote for the funds after the NDC-majority Parliament gave approval for the scheme presented in Finance Minister Kwame Peprah’s 2000 budget. Notwithstanding, at the time the cocoa buying company, Cashpro was already in dire financial straits with the salaries of its workers unpaid, culminating in debts of over ?30bn owed to the State, placing the guarantor banks, SSB and ADB in serious financial crisis.

On Monday, The Statesman described Professor Evans Atta-Mills’ call for the key negotiators of the IFC loan to resign as clearly re-enforcing the public perception that the former Vice President and aspiring Presidential candidate is a Poodle. This was described by the Managing editor of The Insight as “most unfair.” Asare Otchere-Darko explained that the Professor Mills that Ghanaians have been made to know is not the same man who called for the resignations. “That was not vintage Mills,” said Otchere-Darko, adding Mills,” was too decent a person to attempt to make such cheap political capital out of a genuine but unsuccessful attempt by Government to source out funds for development.

Comparing the unsuccessful pursuit of the IFC loan to tax collection, Asare Otchere-Darko explained that with his background as head of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Mills had as a matter of routine sent tax collectors out there and it was not unusual for many of them to return to the office unsuccessful. Indeed, a report compiled by the Ghana Statistical Service during his time as Commissioner of IRS showed that the IRS collected less than 45 per cent of potential tax revenue, with the uncollected 55% attributed to corrupt practices by tax collectors. Yet, their Commissioner did not at the time see himself ripe for resignation.

This and many other cases of corruption or waste under his stewardship make it difficult to believe that the resignation statement of last week was actually Prof Mills’ idea. The Statesman is of the view that the man who was handpicked by former President Rawlings as his successor, to instil a modicum of decency into the National Democratic Congress, has now fully confirmed that, contrary to his laboured pronouncements of late, he is far from being his own man and remains highly strung to the strings of leash of quasi-invisible handlers.

Mills certainly knows better – which makes it difficult to believe that had he not been pushed to bark so deafeningly at trees to the whims of his probably handlers, he certainly would not have volunteered a statement so hypocritical and pathetical. Would he, in his actual professed wisdom, have thought that the Government really thought it could get away with telling Ghanaians that no sovereign guarantee was issued if indeed it was? Yet, those very doubting words came out of his mouth last week. In the period that Prof Mills was head of the NDC Government’s Economic Management Team, Ghana’s economy stagnated at 4 per cent, which was far below the IMF projection, well short within sight of the NDC’s own Vision 2020 but just above the 3.3 per cent annual population growth.

Ghana is today fated to lose to total sum of $23 million dollars on a seemingly fraudulent lease agreement for an aircraft valued at only $7m. The deal was struck at a time when Prof Mills was the captain of the nation’s economic management team. Two years before the Swedru Declaration catapulted him into power, per capita income stood at $400. By the time he was booted out of office, along with his boss (Rawlings), this had fallen to $390. Thus, the Ghanaian had gotten poorer.

During the campaign year, when Ghanaians voted against his plea to be entrusted once again with the affairs of the nation, the national currency, the cedi had depreciated by over 90%.