President John Evans Atta Mills has made the headlines again. Like the one before, it was geared towards giving the man a good image, one ready to lead by example in the war against drugs even if his luggage was not subjected to similar scrutiny.
His minders organized a horde of cameramen from the state media to photograph him as he presented himself for screening at the Kotoka International Airport, prior to his departure for an official trip to the US.
Whether it achieved the intended tall objective can only be determined by the litany of the largely cynical reactions which greeted the stage show.
When propaganda is stretched to such levels, we begin to fret about a possible desperation and a likely wobbling on the part of government as they try to shore up their dwindling respectability.
It was the second such anti-cocaine show and, expectedly, it attracted a lot of not adulation but condemnation at the debasing of the presidency.
The last time a similar show was enacted, it did not attract this number of pre-arranged cameramen and space in the state media. Perhaps, in the face of the barons winning the war, the Commander-In-Chief must be seen to be squirming and doing something, albeit circus-like.
If you think the president is not honest and ready to rule by example, the airport show was adequate evidence of his sincerity even if Narcotics Control Board (NACOB) boss Akrasi Sarpong �wikileaked� that it is all lip-service and that the man is under-resourcing his outfit to undertake the drug war.
If there is anything like an exit point stage-managed activity, strictly for the cameras, that was it. We find it appalling that the presidency, the highest office of the land, should be reduced to a stagecraft.
It was like seeing �the father of the nation, father for all� in a circus, armpit bared for the screening machine as he stood at ease position with cameramen running helter-skelter to cover all the organized scenes lest they incur the anger of their news editors.
We pray we are spared what, without doubt, is a puerile attempt at making the president look good. It reminds us about how a deputy minister told district information officers to make the government look good even if that meant skewing the facts.
So when the president�s intention is to throw dust into the eyes of the citizenry through such enactments, it is all d�j� vu, no longer surprising Ghanaians.
Reeling under the challenge to make his government appear unfriendly to drug pushing after politicizing the subject, he must explore all means to present a good and credible picture.
Resorting to this method however only opens the presidency to an unavoidable derision, smelly and smacking of desperation of the highest order.
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