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President John Evans Atta Mills� demeanour and turnout when he hosted a cross-section of the media yesterday is worth commending. Whoever is responsible for making him up for public appearances did a good job, having succeeded in transmitting the message, especially yesterday, that �hey, I am still alive and not dead as my adversaries bandied my unfitness around sometime ago.� The gesture could have scored a higher point but for the First Gentleman�s mixing of issues and missing the point about certain matters which took place during his one year at the controls. We congratulate him for managing the affairs of the country in the past one year, the achievements or otherwise notwithstanding. It has been a period punctuated with mixed blessings even as he struggled to steer the ship away from the rocks. It has been frightening sometimes, but we are still together in one piece, albeit with a lot of grumbling among a cross-section of Ghanaians. It is a milestone whose feature of an invitation to the media, as noted earlier, is good, given the opportunity it has afforded the practitioners to pose questions to the First Gentleman. Some of the questions, though pre-arranged, at least served as a vent for the President to tackle some issues weighing him down. A wonderful opportunity! We are excited that the President has acknowledged in the media, a critical component of democracy which should not be marginalized in the matters of governance. Our democracy is maturing with speed and any politician who attempts distancing themselves from the evolving phenomenon do so at their own risk. A robust media, inter-party and intra-party democratic engagements, sometimes rather acrimonious, are all good and positive signs of a good governance. There is no doubt that most Ghanaians prefer the trend to what happened when a military junta strode the political terrain with a rod. The judiciary has stood its ground, maintaining its independence and debunking allegations of corruption among its ranks. The recent outcome of politically-inclined cases has provided ample proof of the readiness of the judiciary to support the fledgling democracy to remain a feature of our governance. We are worried about the economy which remains gloomy, with no sign of good things ahead if the prevailing developments are anything to go by. The tendency to point at the previous government as being corrupt has remained a feature of the incumbent occupants of the Castle, and it is worrying. It is all but a mendacity which does not help our democratic experiment. No wonder Ghanaians watched avidly as the political drama over the allegations leveled against Hon. Muntaka Mubarak, when he served as Minister of Youth and Sports, unfolded. President Mills yesterday shocked many when he defended rather robustly, the man who, under the circumstances, resigned his appointment as minister. The committee which was set up on the matter did not work on indiscretion as the President�s belated public forum intervention sought to make us believe. The committee did not deal with the sponsorship of a girlfriend for a foreign trip as the President sought to trivialize a rather serious subject. This is one subject which would continue to haunt this government even years after it exhausts its tenure. Apart from the Mabey & Johnson case, the Muntaka one stands out as a clear case of corruption and misuse of office by a minister, no matter how hard the President defends the action. Mr. President has only mixed the issues and missed the point. Anyway, happy one year anniversary even as the Muntaka and Mabey & Johnson cases dangle around the neck of the government.