Courtesy Dr. Kwadwo Afari -Gyan, we are aware of the classical meanings of words and their everyday meaning. All of us know the meaning of over-voting for example, but Dr. Afari-Gyan gave a classical definition of it.
The classical meaning of smart among others are bright and new-looking, well dressed, having or showing intelligence, clever, ingenious, fashionable etc. But there is also every day understanding of smart in the Ghanaian linguistic market. A smart guy can also be a fraudster, a rogue, an intelligent thief or a clever liar. In fact we have smart ass, they are impudent, impertinent, conceited and pert.
I do not know where to place President John Dramani Mahama in the various definitions of ‘smart’, in its classical definition. He is bright and new-looking, well dressed, shows intelligence and very clever, but he is certainly not ingenious and fashionable. A bright and well-dressed individual appeals to the outsider, that is aesthetic, but an ingenious individual creates situations and conditions that help the outsider in varied forms.
Very smart guys, confronted with challenges become creative in finding solutions to those challenges by harnessing every conceivable resource to address the challenges. I believe that is what he meant when he alluded to the smart businesses not laying off workers.
In the same vein, the world over, there are records of Presidents of nations who out of nothing relative to what others have, made their nations great and strong. The world just recently paid glowing tributes to Lee Kwan Yu, the late Prime Minister of Singapore. When I had the opportunity of being the guest of the Singaporean government in 1996, as a journalist then working for the ‘Ghanaian Chronicle’, the Press Secretary of the Prime Minister (not Lee Kwan Yu) who picked me from the airport told me that Lee Kwan Yu was too honest and a visionary to a fault, qualities that led to the transformation of that Island of a country now the financial hub of Asia. President Mahama and his NDC government inherited a Ghana which was not perfect in its totality but surely a nation that was the envy of those around us. Ghana was a cynosure of hope for the West African sub-region.
His government assured us of a ‘Better Ghana’ which classically means improving upon a good situation. By that slogan, the NDC told Ghanaians and the world that the previous government had done so well but there was still room for improvement on what had been achieved. Certainly yes, no condition is perfectly satisfactory to human beings. That is why we are insatiable. So perhaps Ghanaians accepted the ‘Better Ghana’ promise in as long as their lives were going to improve from the state they found themselves at the time.
But alas, our President, having being in the saddle for close to three years as President and almost four years as the Vice President of the Republic, has not exhibited the positive and classical definition of smart in the solution of our problems. President Mahama inherited a manageable Gross Domestic Product (GDP) deficit in 2012, just six months after, he pushed our GDP deficit into double digits and it has remained so, up till today.
He inherited a relatively stable currency which could have been improved upon or ‘bettered’; what have we seen under his reign? He has presided over a currency which has gone mad and has become a mockery on the international currency market because of reckless and irresponsible management or mismanagement of the nation’s finances. Mahama was handed a single digit inflation which was touted by the NDC itself as unprecedented in the history of Ghana and a lot of noise made about it in the media as the greatest achievement ever. What are the inflation and interest rates today? Is he a smart President?
No smart president anywhere in the world will allow open thievery of public funds by his appointees the way Mahama has done. He has institutionalized corruption and entrenched mediocrity, mismanagement and incompetence as a leader. Are these the qualities of a smart leader? He goes ahead to offer shelter, food and clothing to those whose actions and inactions have worsened the plight of this country. Under Mahama, education has become a privilege to those who can afford; the poor are becoming poorer, hopeless and helpless while the few rich created by Mahama through an unwritten policy of creating, looting and sharing the resources of this great nation, instead of working hard, to the detriment of the majority of our citizenry. Is that the way smart leaders manage the resources of a nation?
Smart presidents do not carry their citizenry through economic and social difficulties to the point of choking them to death. This country has at various points in time gone through load shedding management of electricity and the smart presidents had solutions to them to restore this nation back on track to normalcy and allow the lives of the citizens to go on uninterrupted.
Businesses of all shapes and sizes are suffering because of irrational and erratic government policies of the Mahama administration which has led to the laying off of workers and all our President is saying is that those businesses are not smart? The examples the President gave in terms of those businesses he inaugurated do not justify the failure of the government in addressing the criminal neglect of such an important sector as electricity which is the key to the growth and expansion of businesses.
It is trite knowledge that businesses plan their programmes long before execution. I am sure that those industries he used as examples of smart businesses had begun the projects he inaugurated long before his incompetent imposition of ‘dum dum dum’ and a ‘sor’ on this nation. He should go back and find out whether ever since he inaugurated them, they have been able to recruit new workers and operate their installed capacities. In fact if management had known beforehand that these were difficulties they were going to go through in the electricity sector, they would have held on to the execution of the projects. There is nothing for the President to jubilate about.
A smart president will never describe a problem that has generated into a crisis as temporary unless he or she does not understand the word temporary. Once again the classical definition of temporary is ‘lasting or meant to last for a limited time only’. How can a problem which persists for three years out of a four year term of office be described as temporary? Is it a question of misunderstanding of the Queen’s language or a matter of being smart? I am not surprised though because there are a lot of sophists in the government of President Mahama.
Classically a sophist is a person who uses clever but false arguments intended to deceive, and the NDC is full of such characters well trained in the art of sophistry. In ordinary and local meaning, sophists lie with finesse. They are very good orators who are capable of bamboozling their listeners and getting them to believe what they say even when they are lying. Well, in Ghana, a businessman who owes his bankers and is smart enough to get a presidential intervention in the payment of his debts and go ahead without any trouble can be a smart businessman. Why will he lay off workers?
A businessman who can get tax waivers and ship in goods and still sell them at the going market prices while his competitors have to pay every pesewa before clearing their goods, can be described as a smart businessman because he does not have to go through hustling and bustling which others have to go through. If a businessman can have access to public funds in advance to provide goods and services which they do not provide anyway, they do not have to lay off workers, but those who have to borrow from the financial institutions to offer services to government and not get paid, surely, will have to lay off workers and be described as not smart.
Three tots of smart mahogany bitters to join those who are smart.
By Kwesi Biney
Via: -Daily Guide
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