For a successful second term, Prez Mahama should drive a caravan

We have been told President-Elect John Dramani Mahama is a voracious reader.
He reads everything and also listens to everybody in his circle of trust, Special Advisor Joyce Bawa Mogtari, tells us.
After his historic win, Mahama, who has wielded and exercised power at all levels of democratic governance–from Assemblyman to president for a second term–appears composed.
He has even managed to get people laughing on a few occasions, including advertising his sons as single men on the dating market.
The other day, he alluded to looking forward to romantic times with wife Lordina after a hectic campaign.
He wants to sound like the average man.

The caravan through the forest
In the course of his readings, the President-Elect may have encountered the thoughts of other presidents, especially former British Prime Minister David Cameron’s theory of driving a caravan through the forest.
It is essentially a political approach to tapping the energies of the middle class for their benefit while bridging the gap between the rich and the poor.
The theory comes alive when we picture a big caravan carrying citizens of every stripe, mostly average working and middle class people, being driven through a forest. Nobody leaves the caravan.
The size of the caravan, unlike a posh saloon vehicle or a sleek V8, covers a huge space and clears large portions of the forest that may be buried under thick shrubs.
It gives the assuring feeling that the rich and the middle class are in each other’s thinking and they complete one another’s thoughts.
It is better if the rich person who bought the caravan is also the one driving, especially if their attitude is not populist.
When the people in the caravan–the middle class–are convinced that their leaders genuinely care about their feelings, they take good care of the caravan.
I am a bibliophile, not a political pundit. I have listened to politicians and media commentators discuss the many reasons why the NPP lost the election.
Chief among them is the harsh economic situation in the country.
The huge loss–by some 1.6 million–seems to be a repudiation of the Akufo-Addo administration.
The NPP was criticised heavily for the impunity of some untouchables whose hubris alienated them from the plight of the ordinary man.
They kept silky and perfumed long hair while the rest of us suffered funny haircuts that didn’t suit our heads.

Vox Populi
In modern democracies, the ordinary man (the proletariat) controls a big constituency and decides the fate of the patricians (leaders).
The voice of the people (vox populi) is an important decision making resource for people in authority.
The common man has power to punish and reward as they please.
They are the people who populate the caravan as the leader drives through the forest.
They decide voting patterns and are behind the figures pollsters display on TV and in newspapers. Once they desert the caravan, they leave with their votes.
Did voters desert the NPP’s caravan in the just ended elections? Pundits say the NPP didn’t have caravans in their fleet of luxury cars.
They say the fleet included a 14,000 pounds an hour aircraft that was regularly rented for the president’s flying pleasure. Free SHS seemed to be the only caravan among the fleet.
The NPP estimated that some 5 million free SHS passengers will board the caravan and vote for them.
They didn’t, however, imagine that those were young passengers who needed food on the journey and could not drink galamsey water.
Many of them slept off and missed their destination while others were busy on instagram.
How does John Mahama intend to use the NPP’s broken caravan to his advantage?
Does he have a few caravans of his own to convey the millions who earned him his second term?
Historically, the NDC tradition keeps more caravans than the NPP.
This may be due to its revolutionary antecedents mostly knitted together by common men on the streets.
They didn’t come with bags of advanced degrees but sacrificed to keep the revolution revolving.
In that tradition, your father’s last name didn’t matter much; there is accommodation for the ordinary man to succeed.
Let’s not rotate corruption
The NDC’s common man orientation underlies some of their economic policies and social interventions.
SADA akonfem flying beyond no return and nkoko nketenkete may sound funny but they represent the NDC’s idea of spreading wealth to many, instead of building great corporations for the privileged few.
Ghanaians have even joked that while the NPP and the NDC rotate the first position for who is the most corrupt, the NDC spreads corruption wide so that one big contract is divided into several parts to benefit many contractors.
The NPP would give the contract to one heavily certificated bespectacled gentleman who can deliver a massive kickback. These jokes are fodder for loose chatter but they communicate some truths.
For his second term, President Mahama should do more than nkoko nketenkete.
If he is able to deliver only half of the 26 items he has listed under his social contract with Ghanaians, which he intends to accomplish in 120 days, he will cement his place in history as Ghana’s most successful president.
During his campaigns, Mahama admitted to Ghanaians that he made a few mistakes in his first term and had learnt his lessons. He has the opportunity to correct the mistakes and do more.
If I meet Prez JM again, I will ask him one thing he would want Ghanaians to remember him for–beyond infrastructure.
For all its faults, Nana Addo’s free SHS is written in the sands of time. Ghanaians my father’s age talk about Kwame NKrumah’s factories.
I would tell my kids President Atta Mills was incorruptible.

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