The Ghana Meteorological Services agency (GMSa) has never been so much in the news as in the past few days. The staffers are in a bellicose mode spoiling for a fight. Someone�s umbrage has led to the frosty relationship between the agency and the Presidency.
In their bid to save their faces, staffers of this distressed agency deflected the President�s query when he took them to the cleaners, albeit subtly. They responded with so much vigour and self- explanation that they won the sympathy of most Ghanaians.
The Presidency and the GMSA were, if you like, engaged in media exchanges as each tried to prove a point.
What drove a staffer of the agency to call the bluff of the President when the issue of whether or not a weather forecast was relayed to those responsible either at the Presidency or wherever, is what makes interesting musing.
An irate staffer of one of the most resource starved agencies in the country could not take anymore the attacks they were subjected to when the President talked contradictorily about the weather. His response was as brief as it was incisive. �The President�s attack is baseless.�
At first, it was about a global warming, El Nino, and its effects on the weather patterns around the world; something which in his words has ignited the unusual features witnessed in March. That was a wonderful piece of observation which marked the President for a future role at the UN�the kind of assignment former President John Agyekum Kufuor is performing today�when he serves out his term.
Then the President hopped into something hymnal�Showers of Blessing�which was not bad because he sought to create the impression that the finger of God was over Ghana. Unfortunately however, what we were experiencing were not showers but a heavy downpour which spanned six hours and beyond, completely drenching the President.
Matters got to a head when Mr. President turned to the distressed agency, subtly querying them for informing the relevant agencies rather late about an approaching storm. He also pointed out that in this day and age, predictability of the weather should not be something beyond the capabilities of the GMSA.
This turned out to be the source of the ignition� the straw that broke the camel�s back.
We lament the exchanges which ensued because they have the tendency to debase the reverence which is the principal attribute of the Presidency.
There was no missing the fact that the GMSA staffer, who returned the President�s fire, had been pushed to the wall. He and his colleagues felt that as professionals working under rather challenging circumstances hardly remembered by government, the last they can countenance is such veiled obscenity.
We share in their predicament and would rather the exchanges did not take place at all.
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