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The trasition team at work
The trasition team at work

The courage to be magnanimous and its perils

‘’Our eyes are in the front because it is more important to look ahead than to look backwards.’’This quotation, a pithy statement on the state of Ghana today found online, is generally ascribed to the Sage of Omaha, the billionaire Warren Buffet, as one of his investment tips to the general public.

I believe it describes what we need at this fractious time in our country as we travel on the road of transition from one elected government to another.

Events this week, some two weeks after our general election, have persuaded me that we have serious work to do as a nation on how to handle transitions. Those of us who were alive from 1966 to the present do remember clearly the differences in transition as between a constitutional change of government and the other or as between a military change and the other and vice versa, and in between, given our checkered history of democratic and military governments, and  at various times describing themselves as revolutions, liberators and redeemers, et cetera.

We are nearly 60 years old, and so one would have thought we draw a firm and enduring line between these forms of transitions and the present which fortunately is regulated by law, and developing conventions as we go along. This is not for the convenience of any party or group of people but for the peace and stability of this country.  This is important for our national stability and constitutional development cannot be at the whim and caprice of those who hold power at any time, but the peace and sustainability of our nation.

If I am not mistaken, Winston Churchill was given the Nobel Prize in 1952 or so for Literature principally for his massive multivolume work on his history of the Second World War. I think one of the volumes was subtitled ‘In victory, magnanimity’, to capture the enormous task of reconciliation thrust upon the victors of the world war, and the expansive nobility and generosity of spirit that was to be required to achieve this reconciliation after six harrowing and extremely destructive years of conflict between the Allied Powers led by America and the Axis Powers led by Germany.

A mark of the success of that effort is the fact that we have not had another world war since then, though conflicts and flashpoints have not ceased to seize our attention since the end of WW2 in 1945.

Simple questions

To come back home, we need to ask ourselves simple questions which seem to have eluded some participants in the current transition process.  Who is the transition for? Does government qua government cease completely in periods of transition such as this when one administration gives way to another? Do we have a President? When does the incoming government begin to exercise executive power? Should the incoming administration have power to fetter executive action by the outgoing government? Do the laws of transition cater for all these live questions and eventualities?

All these matters, framed as questions, come to mind in the current imbroglio about our transition between the lawfully established transition teams. But I do remember a sentence I included in a defence counter-review of our new President Nana Akufo-Addo’s review of late Modibo Ocran’s book on Nkrumah in the fledgling Statesman newspaper in July 1992, which I think, is germane to the current disagreements. As usual, I recall from memory, and not the paper itself.

I asked plaintively in that article if Dr Danquah had to die in detention to prove the utility of the idea of African unity, or the Preventive Detention Act was an integral part of the ideological and policy predispositions of the Nkrumah government?  In similar vein, I ask, how does the appointment of the new substantive heads of CHRAJ and NCCE affect the victory of the NPP and the inauguration of President Akufo-Addo on January 7, 2017? Maybe I am truly daft, but these constitutional bodies, and what they do have proven to be irrelevant to electoral choices since 1992 so what is the furore about them meant to achieve? I simply don’t get it. What if the transitional period was longer, would we still be demanding a legal government stay its hand from executive action and appointments it is mandated by law to perform?

The whole disagreement paints the incoming government as clumsy and unprepared for actions for which equanimity and generosity of spirit should be the studied response. Why? Because January 7 would by all means arrive, and the whole caboodle would be in the lap of President Akufo-Addo. I would have wished for an argument that we need an American-style constitutional provision where the new President assumes office at noon on January 20, sworn in or not. Especially when we have been treated to a campaign of competence versus incompetence in the past weeks and months of campaigning.

I am aware that there are hawks in every administration. But this is one conflict that does not sit well with me because Nana Ohene –Ntow has told us, still undenied, that President Akufo-Addo has given the clearest indication to his party that he wants the suspended executives of the party to be reinstated as an act of magnanimity. Of course, his sweeping victory has given him unchallenged sway in party affairs, and if he leads in the return to office or membership of Paul Afoko, Kwabena Agyepong and Sammy Crabbe, I would argue that he would have been a greater party leader than Premier Dr Busia, Victor Owusu, Adu-Boahen and President Kufuor combined.

For a long time in our politics, the historical and current UP/NPP has appeared like a party in search of enemies to demonise and consign to ignominy, the feared Nkrumaists, gathered first in the CPP of President Nkrumah, the PNP of President Limann, and the PNDC and NDC of President Rawlings and his successors, Presidents Mills and Mahama. This has been the staple of our post-independence politics to date. If President Akufo-Addo, with his experience in both camps, would act as the leader who brings us together as one people looking forward together in progress and not backwards to conflict and confusion, then his election and tenure as President would be worth it.

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