Atta Mills: Face Of A Thug

The recent brouhaha and out-and-out war that has broken out over the school feeding program must cause the scales to slip from the eyes of the majority of Ghanaians. For many of our people, the simple and brutal fact is becoming clear. Our President may be a Professor of Laws, but the simple and brutal truth is also that at heart he is just a thug! For a large number of Ghanaians, there is a growing feeling of dismay at the sheer and barefaced employment of brute force and thuggery in official matters. They have witnessed a long list of such rampant abuses orchestrated by the Mills Administration, but the latest abuse in the school feeding program is causing many people to catch their breathe. They are in shock, and they are asking themselves; is this what we really voted for? For many people, it would be more palatable to blame the underlings of President Professor for the numerous stories of abuses that we are hearing, but I would not be so charitable. I think that I would like to live by the mantra which Professor Atta Mills repeated often times when he was in opposition and running for the presidency that the buck should and would stop with him. For whatever is happening, the President has the ultimate responsibility. He is responsible, and he can no more remove himself from blame, when things go wrong, than the people directly implicated. For what is happening in the school feeding program, one may blame the MMDCEs. One may blame vicious characters like Elvis Afriyie Ankrah and the rest who are out there defending this crappy behaviour, but the fact is that the man who makes it all possible is John Evans Atta Mills. Even as we are debating the issues with regard to the school feeding program, it is now also emerging that people working in the Office of the President, at the level of the Deputy Chief of Staff, has constituted themselves into a syndicate to deal with suspected stolen cars. I was very amazed when I heard this piece of news. I had a feeling of d�j� vu. It reminded me of something I had heard before. And I wondered, whenever did the job of reviewing stolen cars become the preserve of the office of the Chief of Staff? What happened to Interpol, the Customs, Excise & Preventive Service? What happened to the National Security set-up at Blue Gate, which normally has been responsible for some of these things? Busybodies like Alex Segbefia, Deputy Chief of Staff, are suddenly in this daylight robbery and thuggery because Professor Atta Mills makes it possible. It is the same way he made it possible for Akufo Addo�s car to be seized and never returned. It is the same way that the vehicles of a number of Ghanaians to be seized. It is the same way he allowed members of his party across the length and breathe of this country to seize public toilets and car terminals. It is the same way he allowed the numerous beatings, intimidations and outright murders to take place and the perpetrators to walk scot-free. It is the same way he allowed Akwasi Osei Agyei�s passport to be seized and detained in spite of two court judgments. And it is the same way that he is turning a blind eye even as his party illegally kicks people out of their contracts in order to award them on silver platters to his party functionaries. It is so, because Atta Mills is a thug.