Mahama’s Reshuffle May Be Cosmetic On National Development
July 16, 2014
?I hope not. That is, I hope that Dr. Richard Amoako-Baah is wide off-tangent, when the KNUST political scientist notes that the main objective of President John Dramani Mahama’s cabinet reshuffle is about closing ranks – as well as closing up factional fissures – among the key operatives of the National Democratic Congress (See “Mahama’s Reshuffle Is to Make Peace with NDC – Prof. Baah” MyJoyOnline?7/16/14).
Not that I really expected any dramatic results or miracles to come out of this slow-moving charade of musical chairs. Well, according to Dr. Amoako-Baah, until his latest major cabinet reshffle, Mr. Mahama had created a very sharp and bitter divide between the executive operatives of his largely youthful and relatively inexperienced cast of ministerial appointees and the old guards. The rationale here, therefore, appears to be that in reintroducing more cabinet appointees from among the ranks of the so-called senior leadership of the party, the President may well have succeeded in unifying these two hitherto warring camps.
The KNUST professor also believes that the NDC’s institutional machine appears to have take firm control of the Mahama government. If the latter observation has validity, then the smooth-operating Bole-Bamboi chieftain may well have rather unwisely set himself up for more trouble. For one, to be functionally healthy and national development-oriented, the Mahama government clearly needs to differentiate itself from the party machine proper, if it is not to encumber itself with the sort of parochial cronyism that is largely to be squarely faulted for having created the current economic mess in which the overwhelming majority of Ghanaians find themselves.
Needless to say, being able to effectively differentiate itself from the party machine, as well as its operatives, ought not to necessarily alienate the Mahama government from party headquarters. The two institutional entities have discrete, albeit conspicuously overlapping, roles to play. For example, the role of the executive branch of the government, presently headed by Mr. Mahama, must seek to equably represent the cross-partisan needs and aspirations of all Ghanaian citizens, even while openly seeming to do so on the basis of the clearly laid-down ideological principles and tenets which the executive inescapably shares with the National Democratic Congress’ party machine.
The party, on the other hand, ought to primarily seek to promote the broad-spectrum agenda of the government through its grassroots organizing and propagation of the activities (or programs) and achievements of its popularly elected officials, both in Parliament and at the Flagstaff House. Among such party-machine activities are voters’ drive, voters’ registration and the general civic and political education of party members, supporters and sympathizers. To hear New Patriotic Party operatives like Mr. Alan John Kwadwo “Quitman” Kyerematen tell it, it well appears that the NDC is way ahead of the game and its closest competitor. In sum, when it comes to keeping biometric tabs on its rank-and-file membership, the New Patriotic Party’s grassroots operatives need some remarkable catching up to do.
I am also not very sanguine about the latest Mahama cabinet reshuffle because, really, it is? merely about the outright pedestrian and embarrassingly prosaic recycling of the same “Cash-and-Carry” politically and ideologically regressive figures who so fanatically, misguidedly and scandalously collaborated with Chairman Jerry John Rawlings to effectively grind the national economy to a standstill throughout much of the “revolutionary” decade of the 1980s, and the faux-democratic dispensation of the 1990s.
And to be certain, the trend hasn’t any remarkably been reversed since 2009, when these Rawlings lackeys, minions and hangers-on of yesteryear regained reins of governance. In other words, short of a complete changing of the proverbial guard, I really don’t see any materially, or even culturally, measurable relief in sight in the offing.
By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
E-mail: [email protected]
