The mystery surrounding the approval of the Kufuor’s Ex-gratia Award, brings into sharp focus President Mills’ style of leadership. Is the Peace King, Asomdwehene John Evans Atta Mills, taking a cue from Kufuor with his silence or is he already failing Ghanaians with his inaction? Is he silently looking at his own fat retirement 4 or 8 years down the road while Kufuor takes the blame for its unpopularity? Is this a case of monkey dey work, baboon dey chop? The 1992 Constitution has a three step Process in place for the passage of the Ex-gratia Award.
(1) A committee is empaneled to make recommendation to the government.
(2) Parliament examines the recommendation and approves the package.
(3) A sitting President assents to the bill for it to become law.
Ghanaians know the first two steps have taken place in the Kufuor capricious Ex-gratia Package:
(1) The Chinery Hesse Committee made the recommendations.
(2) Parliament drunkenly approved it.
What about the third and final step? But wait, the constitution also requires that Bills passed be published in the Gazette on the day of their passage. Is this Bill a Law? Is it in the Gazette already? According to article 106, clauses 7 and 8 of the Constitution, the President has a maximum of 7 days to assent to a bill and 14 days to provide an explanation to the Speaker of Parliament if he refuses to assent or inform the Speaker that the Bill has been referred to the Council of State. If the Bill got Parliamentary approval on January 6, then the 7 day requirement for Presidential assent passed on January 12. President Mills had at least 6 days from the day of his inauguration to act on the Bill if Kufuor did not assent to it. The 14 day requirement for notifying the Speaker of a refusal to assent, passed on January 20. So what is happening Professor, Mr. President Mills? If Kufuor assented to the Bill before leaving office then President Mills can send it back to Parliament with his refusal to implement, reasons for the refusal and his recommendations to the House. The ball is squarely in President Mills' court and Ghanaians and the media should focus attention on him and not on Kufuor or Parliament. The constitution is clear, President Mills either implements the “obscene bill of privileges” if it has a Presidential assent or send it back to Parliament with a refusal note. If no President has assented to the Bill, then President Mills should explain why he has not kept the controversial fumbled oath he just swore. He cannot sit on the fence and watch as this plays out in public. Ever since he took office, President Mills has been avoiding the hard decisions. First, there was the pay increases President Kufuor dumped on him to implement. President Mills claims that the State is not in the condition to honour the 16% to 34% pay rises (the single spine pay system) but he is keeping mute over the issue and leaving others to manoeuvre around the provision. The pay rise is a Kufuor Executive Order. Mills can suspend or repeal it with his own Executive Order. He can at least talk to Ghanaians about it. The President should have given a speech asking for time to audit the books of the country first. Ghanaians are understandingly patient but cannot wait for ever on his inactions.
It is heart warming to read that Hon. S. K. Bagbin (Majority Leader in Parliament) and company are planning to take up the Ex-gratia Bill again in Parliament. But does the constitution permit this when the controversial Ex-gratia Award is supposed to be on the President’s desk for action? Will Parliament be repealing a law or making a new one? Any new Bill if not referred by the President will have to linger in Committee Procedure for days and months before coming to the full House as stipulated by the constitution. That will take up precious time. Has Bagbin and company got a different plan? The President can make things go much quicker. The constitution permits him to ram bills through Parliament.The Presidency is not a job for the squeamish. Somebody, please tell the Peace King, Asomdwehene that he was hired by Ghanaians to make tough decisions. The country is evaluating him and thus far his score card does not look impressive. He should get off the wall and hit the ground running.
Comparism with new U.S. President Obama shows striking differences. President Mills was nominated as NDC candidate over two years ago besides his tenure as Vice President and also losing candidate in 2000 and 2004 elections. President Obama was nominated as a neophyte Democratic Party candidate less than a year ago. Mills was inaugurated on January 7 while Obama's was only January 20, 2009. However, within a day, Obama hit the ground running with ministerial team assembled and made major decisions including suspension of Camp Delta in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, broadcast economic stimulus policy statement, and appointing Senator George Mitchell for Mid-East Peace.
In the case of Mills, aside of using tax payers money to travel to give testimony to controversial Prophet T.B. Joshua's Synagogue of All Nations, he is holed up in the Osu dungeon like a 16th century male slave bought at Salaga slave market and waiting to be shipped. It is at the end of January that he just finished submitting the list of senior ministers. Meanwhile time and tide, they say, waits for no one so the economy is on autopilot and the Ghana Cedi is on free fall against major currencies like US$. Inflation is on the rise, an indication of investors lack of confidence in the new government mainly due to inactions of President J.E. A. Mills as contained in the AGI warning about loose talk of bankcrupt economy without evidence. Though Rome was admittedly not built in a day, Mills should not hide behind orchestrated propaganda to divert attention from his seemingly unpreparedness for the task he personally applied for, for we need not re-invent the wheel. He was hired to come and continue the foundation already laid down by his preedecessors. Secondly, his numerous promises like reducing prices of petrol products to Gh¢2.oo within 100 days of his administration, one-time premium payment for health insurance, school uniforms and footwear for children in deprived areas, not introducing any new taxes (page 45 of NDC manifesto), etc. are still fresh in the memory of Ghanaian voters and are eagerly expecting delivery. He should sit up or else take us 50 years back with his government's politically orchestrated demonisation of the previous administration. Ghana is not broke because our debt levels are sustainable hence Ghana today will not qualify to take advantage of HIPC unlike when he Mills as the head of the economy team left Ghana in 2001 . He must act now with decisive economic policy statement to end hurting the economy since it would not be in anyone's interest to run the economy down. It is not a Minister who decides the direction of the economy, he only implements the President's vision in a delegated authority position. In any case, is the nominated Minister of Finance (Dr. Kwabena Duffour) not the owner of Unibank? Any conflict of interest from Central Bank role?
BY L. Kojo Yeboah Raleigh, NC USA (A Ghana Home Page Feature Article of Wednesday, 28 January 2009 on the title "Is President Mills Already Failing?")
Blue-coloured font is addition by blogger.
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