The President’s “State of The Nation” address on Thursday, January 22, has already drawn mixed reaction. It has been variously described as the screeching of an “old gramophone record”, a park of “factual inaccuracies” to “excellent” and “comprehensive speech”. The reaction, however, depends on whom you talk to and which camp of the political divide the respondent leans to. Of course two of the issues that did not attract the President’s attention this time round are corruption and decent housing for the teeming population. Some found the quiet on corruption particularly striking given that the 2003 Transparency International’s corruption index saw Ghana dropping to 1999 levels of 3.3, down from a high of 3.9 in 2002. The President’s silence on corruption is loudest because Kufuor declared war on corruption right from assumption of office three years ago – “zero tolerance for corruption,” he told Ghanaians as he declared his era as the “Golden Age of Business”. Public perception about corruption in officialdom remains high. Indeed, investigations Parliament conducted between 2002/2003 into public perception of corruption in the Judiciary, one of the three arms of government, revealed exactly that – corruption is very high. On international relations the President showed his pride and happiness: “We are at peace with our neighbours and it has also raised Ghana’s stature within the comity of nations.” The President was re-elected to serve a second term as chairman of ECOWAS and in the December 2003 ECOWAS summit [in Accra] selected Ghana to host the headquarters of the West Africa Central Bank in 2005. The President’s 23-page address on Thursday was just about half of the 40-page document he read a year ago. He, however, repeated his call on Ghanaians to change their change attitudes to work and sanitation. But unlike a year ago when the President prefaced his State of the Nation address with the inspirational words of the late Ephraim Amu’s “Yen ara asase ni” – This is our land, land of priceless heritage, won for us by our forefathers with their blood, sweat and toil ” President Kufuor thumped into his short address with a litany of the mess in which his administration found the national kitty on assumption of office on January 7, 2001. He ended with what the NPP administration has achieved over the period. Here is an easy read of the issues President Kufuor raised in his 2004 State of the Nation address:
