Mills Antics Disgraceful � Obeng Busia

Mr Obeng Gyan Busia, an aspirant for the position of General Secretary of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), has described as unacceptable and unforgivable certain slips made by President John Evans Atta Mills during his maiden press conference for year 2010. According to Obeng Busia, certain mistakes may be forgiven when they are made by a layperson, but are especially painful and unforgivable when they are made by experts in particular fields of competence. Speaking to The Searchlight Newspaper over the weekend in an extensive interview on his political aspirations, Mr Obeng Busia said that even though Ghana currently has the privilege of having a lawyer and lecturer as a President, its governance was fraught with numerous constitutional and legal breaches. �When you come to think of it, the fact that now we have a whole lawyer who taught a generation of students as a president and these things are going on, it is a very sad commentary on politics in this country! I listened to him two days ago and unfortunately when he made the press conference one would have loved to see a lot of lawyer-like statements. You know there are certain slips that a medical officer or any professional can be excused for, for giving wrong advice in an area in which he is not an expert. But if a lawyer gives clearly wrong legal advice, it becomes worrying. There are certain basic standards expected of us as professionals, and it is unfortunate that this sort of thing is happening,� Mr Obeng Busia said. President Atta Mills had said on Thursday that as a lawyer he does not see anything wrong with the false representation made by former Youth and Sports Minister Muntaka Mubarak to secure a visa for his girlfriend, an act that all lawyers except President Atta Mills see as fraudulent misrepresentation of facts, which is actionable under the criminal code of Ghana. Mr Obeng Busia had been asked about his views on political credibility in Ghana in the light of the fact that many knowledgeable people were refusing to come into politics. �Politics per se is not a dirty game, if it were so there would not have been this saying that the penalty that the wise pay for refusing to govern is to allow themselves to be governed by fools. This essentially means that politics per se is good thing, except that we have made it dirty given the way we conduct ourselves,� Mr Obeng Busia said,, citing the lamentable pronouncements from President Atta Mills in his latest press conference as an example. �Chapter 6 of our constitutional talks about the directive principles of state, that certain developmental principles and basic standards should be initiated and respected no matter which party is in power, but you realize that, it is with impunity that some people have even ignored that, you know, there has been a lot of constitutional abuses in this country and more so around this time, when we have a whole lawyer who taught generations of lawyers in charge,� he said.