My mother is not one for turning on the television at 6 o'clock in the morning. "They hardly do anything good on television at that time, and it disturbs me.", so she says. So when she decides to pick up the remote control and turn on the TV set at that time, you know its because of something of epic importance. But ever since November 5th, 2008 when she tuned in to see the electoral victory of Barack Obama in the U.S polls, she had kept her resolve not to touch the television at dawn.
That is, until this morning.
She is just one of so many Ghanaian men, women and children trying to come to terms with the sudden death of the 3rd President of the Fourth Republic of the Republic of Ghana, H.E. Prof. J.E.A. Mills and the quick swearing in of his vice, John Dramani Mahama as the substantive president. I'm not trying to announce news that has, figuratively, broken nature's speed limit of 300 million metres per second in moving from mouth to ear and from screen to eye. I want to rather focus on the fallout from this sad news and bring it to the fore.
Firstly, the international media such as the BBC, CNN, Reuters, AP and Al-Jazeera were all able to bring out President Mills' illness which had been put to the back burner by almost everyone that had a link in government. "The President is fit.", "He has more energy than all the members of the opposition combined.", just to mention a few were some of the responses that were bandied around by the Communication machinery of the ruling party and government to the concerns of majority of Ghanaians of the President's ill-health. Things came to a nadir when President Mills, ill-advised by whoever-that-I-don't-care-to-know, turned the tarmac of the Kotoka International Airport into a keep-fit arena just to show Ghanaians that he had 'energy for the past,present and future.' Probably, he had good intentions of keeping his illness quiet because Ghanaians do talk. But he and his followers should have known that once he became President of Ghana, very little of his private life remained private, if any did at all. Ghanaians, being the understanding people they are renowned for, would not have batted an single eyelid if he went on numerous check-ups just to manage or cure his illness. And that is a lesson I wish every leader would take and keep.
Though President Mills' death is a bitter experience, it helped to show the whole world that indeed the rule of law has a firm root in Ghana and the Constitution is upheld as the supreme law of the land. The Constitution had a clear succession plan in case a situation like this came up. And that succession plan as stated by Article 60 of the 1992 Constitution of Ghana was followed to the letter which meant the country had a temporal power vacuum of just a little over 5 hours, which was undersatndable considering the various processes that were set in motion. But everyone knew what to do and how to do it notwithstanding the fact that this was the first time this situation had occurred. In some other countries, that country might have descended into chaos just over who to take over power.
My last and most important point is, Ghanaians were "united over grief", as President Mahama so succinctly put it yesterday during his speech. Apart from some guy I met on the way home who was trying to politicise the whole issue by pinning Mills' death on opposition parties, everyone regardless of tribe, class, religion or political affiliation was in a sombre mood and everything stood still in respect for President Mills. I only wish that that unity will continue to be there even when the emotions of his death long fade away.
I wish to end my submission by saying this: Let's not use President Mills' death as an excuse to slack off work today but rather use it as a tool to spur us on to greater productivity to help move Ghana forward. And as John Mahama's swearing in showed, life goes on even if we find it hard to accept some of the circumstances. And that was so wisely put in this eight word phrase:"The King is dead. Long live the King."
