We have enough problems in Ghana. We are a country steeped in so much corruption, billons of dollars down the drain is no longer news. This is a country where one merely has to burn documentary evidence to get away with fraud and where enquiries go on for ever. This is a country where presidential commissions are established to investigate corruption and damning reports are then shelved to protect cronies. This is Ghana, where no water flows through our pipes, electricity is erratic at best, where projects like the Accra-Kumasi road have been on-going for time on end and our schools are in perpetual decadence.

We need serious-minded leaders to address the myriad of problems our people have to contend with and not gimmicky, shallow individuals like President John Mahama. I supported this gentleman during the election petition because I was and am still convinced he did win the election fair and square but my goodness, is he no presidential material. I think it is about time we all stood up to say, enough is enough!

Mr Mahama has never got his priorities right since becoming president. This is the man who had the temerity to queue up senior African leaders to pay him homage at his inauguration. At the time I thought it had merely been an error in protocol by some inexperienced individual and chose to ignore it. Next he decides to introduce a presidential change of guard at the Flagstaff House which he then observes from his ivory tower. This is the gentleman who, at a time his countrymen are crying and our economy is in tatters decides, that the best way to cheer up his people is to release pictures of himself celebrating Kwadwo Asamoah’s goal against Zambia in Kumasi.

This is the man who, at the height of the load shedding exercise, decided to go and ceremoniously open a small section of the Bui dam that had been completed, while awaiting the final completion, months, if not years down the line. Is this not the same man who was so happy to have been invited to the CNN offices, he decided, as president of Ghana, to stupidly pose in front of the building for some holiday snaps?

What business has a president, inviting the Ayews, who at the time were yet to make their peace with the coach for a photo opportunity, and directly or indirectly influencing Black Stars issues that are best left to professionals? One may not be a fan of the coach but one has to defend with all the vigour one could muster, the coach’s right to select his own team. Why can’t our president, just for once, concentrate on the important issues at hand rather than turning himself into some lay preacher to yet again seek more cheap popularity, with the pretext of thanking God for his election petition victory? A president who claims the election petition was responsible for holding Ghana’s economy back should have long moved on, fighting to address our problems rather than visiting churches every Sunday for, guess what, yet more election petition rabble.

This man has always been a joke and yet, the cowardly manner in which he has summarily dismissed Victoria Hammer beats all his other gimmicks. That was the last straw. At the end of the day, what crime has Victoria Hammer committed apart from being grossly naive? A young woman says “I’m not going to leave politics till I have one million dollars in the bank” Is that evidence that she is corrupt? Could it be she is going to save every penny she earns from her rather well-paid job as a minister? Could she have other business interests she is earning from? Is there any evidence that she has actually been corrupt?

Is it not typical that at a time Mr Martin Hamidu, a former attorney general who has evidence of corruption against people in high places is being firmly held at bay, when people like Alfred Woyome are beating their chests, walking the streets threatening others, when the GYEEDA report is gathering dust in the president’s office, that Mr Mahama should decide to pick on a poor woman just bragging to her mate to show how tough a president he is. Why did this poor woman not benefit from a presidential enquiry? Simple. She is small fly. Dispensable. The thought of it makes me sick! We need to kick out this buffoon, and if it be via a coup d’etat, then so be it.

Papa Appiah

www.ghanansemsem.blogspot.com