Damage Control Gone Too Sour To Taste

The handlers of President Mills are not doing him any good. Those propagandists who never hesitate to jump into the ring always offer infantile reasons and make the President rather look like an uninformed leader. His handlers are simply bootlickers who want to seek visibility and recognition by the boss they are serving. None of them seem to be bold enough to tell the President when he goofs; neither are they prepared to brief him before he speaks in public on certain issues. Well, they are not to blame because in the government that they are serving, competition to stay employed is a do or die affair. If you tell the king that he is dancing naked, you stand the chance of being booted out of office. Ask Sekou Nkrumah, the son of the founding father of the nation. In his case, they even told us that there was the need for the man to book an appointment with a psychiatrist. In other words they said he had gone gaga. My dear cherished reader, follow me along memory lane to see whether indeed President Mills is the �best president of Africa� as the propagandists capitalized on the visit of the UN Secretary General and the diplomatic niceties he portrayed when he met the president. At the end of the memory lane, we will all decide whether Ban Kin Moon was sarcastic or realistic. About five months ago, there was an election in Ivory Coast and Alassane Ouattara was declared the winner by the Electoral Commission of that cocoa producing country after a run-off. Incumbent Laurent Gbagbo, who had ruled the country for ten years and postponed elections on several occasions, refused to accept defeat and took an entrenched position. He quickly offered himself to be sworn in as the president of Ivory Coast and surrounded himself with armed presidential guards. The US, France, UK, EU, AU, ECOWAS and well meaning citizens of the world accepted Ouattara as the president-elect and went further to congratulate him accordingly. For his safety, the president-elect got himself holed up in the Golf Hotel, surrounded by United Nation Peacekeepers, while he awaited the day that he would be properly sworn in to take up his job as the de facto president of a country he worked so hard to uplift her image. Even when the New Forces led by Mr. Soro, demanded that the president-elect should give them the go ahead to fight the forces of stubborn Gbagbo, the peace in Ouattara told him not to allow them to fight. The AU and ECOWAS sent emissaries to impress upon Gbagbo to relinquish power but he stayed adamant. He called the bluff of Mr. Nicholas Sarkozy, the president of France, when he said he would instruct his soldiers in Ivory Coast to strike if Gbagbo refused to step down. In the face of the stalemate, Gbagbo sent his emissaries to brief President Mills on the situation and when they returned to Ivory Coast, they also told Gbagbo what Mills told them. From what Mills told the emissaries of Gbagbo, the man told the foreign media that President Mills of Ghana was a wise man. Back home, the propagandists of Mills clapped for him following the comments he made, until their palms developed sores. Then the ECOWAS met at Abuja in Nigeria to deliberate on the Ivory Coast standoff. All 16 members of the regional body attended, including Mills. At the end of the meeting, a communiqu� was issued, which included the option of a military intervention if all persuasions for Gbagbo to step down failed. President Mills signed the communiqu� without any duress or undue influence. When our President returned home after signing the communiqu�, he subtly dispatched some journalists to meet with Gbagbo so that they could acquaint themselves with the situation and come back to do some damage control for the embattled Gbagbo. It was alleged some �bundles� of dollars exchanged hands. These journalists set out to do the job but sadly for them, their message did not sink in as the world kept the pressure on Gbagbo to step down. They shamelessly kept on disturbing our ears that Gbagbo had a case so the international community should listen to him. Mr. Baloney was his rhetoric best whenever the issue of the Ivory Coast stalemate came up for discussion on our airwaves. Who could blame him, after all, was he not doing a job that he was paid to do? Then President Mills organized a meeting with senior editors in the country. When a journalist wanted to know whether Ghana would contribute troops when the need came for ECOWAS to choose that option, president Mills told the world that Ghana would not contribute troops because he was advised by his commanders not to do so. He went further to use his mother tongue to tell us that where he came from they had a saying that one should mind his own business (Dzi wo fie asem). The following day, BBC�s Network Africa dawn show spent almost all their time discussing this stone age, outmoded and archaic diplomacy. On that sad morning, they played the voice of the President on several occasions on air and Ghanaians all over the world became targets of mockery. Those who sent in text messages were uncharitable as they took on our President, with some calling him names which are not worth mentioning here. After several persuasions, Alassane Ouattara instructed the Republican Forces and New Forces to strike. As one town after the other fell to the Ouattara forces, Laurent Gbagbo, the cheat, still refused to step down until he finally realized that all his commanders had deserted him. Alasane Ouatarra gave him a fine opportunity to surrender in order to save his life and the lives of his family members, as well as the few soldiers who were guarding him, but he decided to fight on. As the Ouattara forces closed in on the presidential palace, Gbagbo chose to hide in his bunker but as fate may have it, he was found and dragged out like the way hunters drag a rat from its hole. Laurent Gbagbo, the former president of Ivory Coast, received a few slaps from non-commission officers before being �loaded� into a waiting military vehicle which took him to the Golf Hotel to meet his new boss, Mr. Alassane Ouattara. The Ouattara soldiers humiliated him as he was pushed into the vehicle and sent straight to the Golf Hotel where Ouattara received him and ordered the soldiers not to harm him. So ended the story of Laurent Gbagbo and his attempt to steal power. So where lies the contribution of president Mills to bring peace to the Ivory Coast? In anyway, if really Alassane Ouattara appreciated the role played by Mills during the standoff, why did he pay compliment and shower praises on Nicholas Sakorzy of France, Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria, Blaise Campaore of Burkina Faso and paid no heed to Mills who was sitting close to him? You see, when you do not deserve honour and you are honoured, you demean your integrity. If accommodating refugees makes one the best president, then yours sincerely thinks ex-president Rawlings is second to none. During his time, he hosted thousands of Liberian and Sierra Leonean refugees at Budumburam, but he never beat his chest to shout from the rooftop that he had done well. Ex president Kufuor too continued and even paid for refugees from Liberia to return home. Those who are doing the �Dzi wo fie asem� damage control should find something better to tell us rather than expose the president to public ridicule. They should keep quiet and let sleeping dogs lie for silence is golden but speech is silvery. And come to think of this: where will history put this shameless man called Yao N�Dire, head of the Constitutional Council of Ivory Coast? This was the guy who nullified the November elections and declared Gbagbo the winner and even went further to swear him in as the legitimate president of Ivory Coast. Unknown to Ghanaians, Mills was harbouring this man, whose action led to the bloodbath, only to tell him to go back and swear in Alassane Ouattara. And Mills is taking credit for this insidious farce! My Political Science lecturer used to call this action �Diplomatic Somersaulting�. Good morning, Appiah Carpenter, the worst president of Africa!!! (Apologies to J.J Rawlings).