Ghana Presidential Press Confab Good, But JM Could Have Done Better

Folks, in one of my opinion pieces welcoming President Mahama to office as the substantive President of Ghana at the end of Election 2012, I made it clear that he could help our democracy grow better if he used his communication skills to advantage. In that sense, I suggested that he should adopt a weekly radio address approach to make his administration more proactive and relevant to the people in terms of public policy and government's handling of affairs.

 

I premised my arguments on the fact that a President who knew how to use "communication" to share information with the public stood a good chance of remaining connected with the people. I said also that in our kind of situation, using the weekly radio address to throw light on the government's activities could help him deflate political opponents and make his government visible. It would also ensure that questions nagging the citizens would be factored into such weekly radio addresses and answered.

Lo and behold, nothing of the sort has been institutionalized to date, which makes me wonder why President Mahama won't take advantage of his communication skills to improve government-citizen relations.
Instead, an erratic, knee-jerk approach was adopted, using the sterile "Meet-the-Press" approach, which ended up embarrassing the government instead. That measure ended in smoke.