In the end, nobody cares whether Nana Akuffo-Addo wears his socks over his shoes or dons a basket for a hat.

All we care about is development, which, among other things, means adequate and affordable access to such essentials of life as water, housing, food, education and of course good health services.

This may seem self-evident but the recent spate of threats and catcalls from some public officials when they should be talking development is a reminder that nothing can be so self-evident as to not warrant the occasional reminder.

There's been the usual excuse that these officers of state were merely responding to provocations from the "other side".

Horsefeathers!

Ministers and other public officials are the embodiment of the state and thus, unlike the "other side", are always expected to conduct themselves in ways that are civil, tactful and of course purposeful. In their interactions with the public, they require, at the minimum, the ability to deal with provocations without soiling the image of the office they hold.

By contrast, the "other side," damnable though their conduct may sometimes be, are under no such ethical strictures of governance. The larger moral imperatives of society may weigh on them occasionally but for the most part they can "talk by heart" and get away with it.

That’s not fair, yes, but life has never been fair; being a leader necessarily requires a certain degree of self-denial and forbearance.

Beyond public conduct, officers of state also have a national responsibility that the "other side" does not have - and that is to lead the cause of national development, of bringing improvements to the lives of the people from whom they derive their raison d’être.

Every resource we give them - from salaries to bungalows to vehicles to body guards and other privileges that ordinary Ghanaians do not enjoy - must be put to these ends. It is their obligation to, and we must expect nothing less.

Thus, when a deputy minister of a critical ministry like Interior speaks anywhere, he has an obligation to address the pressing developmental issues of the day and not digress into trivialities like the fashion sense of his political adversaries; not even in passing, for such gratuitous attacks may be popular with party hotheads but they only succeed in creating public disaffection for both minister and government. They don’t win votes. Hardcore armed robbery, for example, might have gone down in recent times, but recreational armed robberies (committed by bored and restless neighborhood youth) are on the rise. What is the Ministry of Interior is doing about this? We would like to know. Despite the many fatal accidents they cause, abandoned vehicles continue to litter the country’s highways, cities, and towns. Indeed, less than a week after a deputy minister narrowly escaped one such accident with his life, 12 people reportedly died in a similar accident on the Accra-Kumasi road. As far back as March 19, 2009, the president expressed alarm at the carnage on our roads and directed the relevant ministries to address the problem. Clearly, the president’s directive has not been heeded and those responsible are rather indulging in juvenile playground-like name calling with careless abandon. They should know better. Similarly, when a deputy minister in charge of such essentials as water and housing gets an opportunity to speak to any section of the public, one would expect her to address the perennial problem of water shortages, and how effective government has been in resolving them (not just what government is doing about them). Instead, we get a tasteless display of machismo and taunts that is unbecoming of both minister and government. We most certainly deserve better.

Equally, we deserve to know what is being done about the draconian rental regime in the country that is suffocating small businesses (GHc80,000.00 for a 10-year “goodwill”), robbing workers of their savings (2-4 years’ rental advance), fostering homelessness (most people can pay monthly but not multiple years), and generally making life difficult for the ordinary Ghanaian who has not the luxury of a free government bungalow.

We deserve to know all this – and more.

Indeed, the effective resolution of these pervasive social ills is what “social democracy” is ultimately all about, and not the kind of empty sloganeering and trash-talking that have become the lot of some public officials.

Credit: Nii Moi Thompson