By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
March 3, 2016
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

I did not get to watch President Mahama’s so-called State-of-the-Nation Address (SONA). I usually prefer to read a downloaded PDF version of the same. It is often predictable and largely composed of half-truths and conveniently massaged facts and figures, such as nationalizing some 5 quite successful parochial – or missionary-founded and run – teacher-training colleges to make up for the glaring failure of his government to fulfill its electioneering campaign promise of adding 10 more teacher-training colleges to the existing national stock.

The President’s exuberant touting of the success of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) is also one that invariably causes me to scratch my head, more often out of annoyance than wistfulness, especially when one remembers the fact that the paradoxical capstone of the National Democratic Congress’ social democrats’ healthcare policy was the Cash-and-Carry regime of Social Darwinism, which is even more cutthroat and decidedly more insensitive that what prevails in the purportedly vampiric capitalist West.

But that then-candidates John Evans Atta-Mills and John Dramani Mahama self-righteously and pontifically pooh-poohed the entire Kufuor-minted National Health Insurance Scheme, only to be among the very first Ghanaian citizens to line up at the front of the queue to benefit from the same, is all the more annoying. I shall shortly come back to this subject, but it is equally significant and interesting to report that just the other day, somebody published a rather cynical tirade claiming that it was under the tenure of Chairman Jerry John Rawlings, and not that of the John Agyekum-Kufuor-led government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), that the UN-sponsored School-Feeding Program was established.

Now, the pertinent question to ask here is not under whose tenure the School-Feeding Program established but, rather, who was able to more effectively implement and manage the program successfully. You see, other than cheap and tawdry rhetoric, and the obscene espousal of populism, the National Democratic Congress has absolutely nothing to showcase for its contribution to the modernization and development of the country. And by the way, parading some 10 “hostages,” for that is precisely who and what they were, in front of the garish glare of television cameras during his most recent SONA address was taken straight out of the stylistically classic playbook of President Barack Obama. The technique itself may well have either been initiated or popularized by former President William Jefferson Blye Clinton.

And so I was naturally flabbergasted to hear IMANI-Ghana think tank’s Mr. Franklin Cudjoe chalk this authentically American, albeit decidedly jaded, rhetorical technique as a veritable Mahama shtick that was worthy of emulation by other Ghanaian politicians. Indeed, had he been watching President Obama’s State-of-the-Union Addresses (SOTUs) on CNN International, or other alternative channels, Mr. Cudjoe would have readily recognized this patently stale political gimmickry for what it indubitably is. In the hands of President Obama, this so-called Great Art of Communication, as Mr. Cudjoe puts it, is simply inimitable.

In the hands of President Mahama, this copycat technique is rather cheap and tawdry, particularly when one recalls the fact that Mr. Mahama had caustically criticized the LEAP – public assistance program – when it was first introduced into the country by the Kufuor-led government of the New Patriotic Party. If I were Mr. Cudjoe, such tacky and abjectly mediocre rehash of the Clinton /Obama Technique is the last Mahama act or gimmickry that I would be celebrating.
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