President John Evans Atta Mills
This one was unavoidable; I mean saying something by the Daily Guide picture caption on the first citizenry. ‘Staying alive!’ The motherland is trying to stay alive. The first citizen is the personification of the motherland.
She or he is the anthropomorphic representation of the inanimate physical or geographical area portion of the globe occupied by the motherland; and so, as a matter of course, a first citizen staying alive is a motherland staying alive.
In-law MTN said it. Spio said it in so few words. Tobacco son Herbie also said it. As for Madam FONKAR, she knew it as a fact. All of that is about knowledge that my compatriots stood the risk of voting a staying alive into office.
An assuming majority and realistically minority manipulated into majority failed to discern the message, defied all the warnings and voted staying alive into office. Now it is one of congresses’ many mantras: that my people are discernible and that is why they voted for staying alive.
Go tell the people of Ote Kokooso land, they whose son of the soil Kufuor’s NHIS has become a staying alive deathtrap as first citizen spends in America everything that could have gone into their NHIS trying to stay alive still parroting a revived one time premium gimmick.
Citizen one health talk is much a talk about little or nothing. The debate ought not to be about whether everyone gets sick or ill. It is about the common sense of whether a sick parent would take better care of sick children or a parent who is well and not sick will do a better job taking care of sick children.
Indeed, it is not for nothing that the supreme law prescribes sanctions against he or she who falls too ill to be able to effectively administer the affairs of the motherland.
I learn this is the first time Parliament has been notified about a ROUTINE check-up trip. The assumption, based on ‘the routine’ is that there have been previous check-up trips. On that score alone, one will not be far from wrong in also assuming a deliberate omission, or even a disingenuous plan not to inform Parliament on previous occasions.
Such an assumption will find support in the likelihood that Parliament may have invoked its constitutional obligation to launch an investigation into the wellness status of a first citizen because medical check-ups had become too frequent.
Everyone gets sick or falls ill some of the time. It is an unwarranted condition in the governance of a nation if getting sick or falling ill is all the time or most of the time; if it is the norm and not the exception.
When you are the number one in charge, you are to take care of everyone else. That is what you are paid to do. You don’t have a choice. If you have a choice in falling sick often, then those you are to take care of all the time are denied your attention because you cannot be there for them.
That has nothing to do with everyone else getting sick. The governor is not everyone else. The governor is the governor elected to govern. No one gets elected or selected to govern so she or he can fall sick anyhow like anyone else.
Meanwhile, not every getting sick is simply getting sick. And not all sicknesses are the same. Some illnesses require more time and resources to manage and treat, including routine check-ups, than others. Some sicknesses demand therapeutic methods, the effects of which are such that one is unable to perform a number of activities.
Malaria drugs, for example, tend to have debilitating effects. A person constantly suffering from malaria can, therefore, hardly perform workplace tasks that involve active physical manipulation. Some illnesses require drugs with even stronger immobilizing effects to manage and cure.
For some illnesses, you can only manage their effects on the ill because human ingenuity and smartness is yet to find a cure for them. What happens to one unfortunately afflicted with that kind of ailment in taking care of others is as good your guess as mine.
So my compatriots, let us not work ourselves into a state of everyone gets sick, or ill so what! As December 7 approaches, let us resolve and wish and vote for one who is so fit that s/he can devote enough of the already limited time to take care of the motherland’s affairs including the health of all her offspring.
No motherland has ever been led into prosperity because those who manage her affairs were elected so they can use state facilities to take care of themselves first over what more time would allow them to take care of the others they were chosen to take care of.     Â
By Kwasi Ansu-Kyeremeh
