President John Mahama
Section 57(1) of the 1992 Constitution of the Republic of Ghana makes the President of Ghana the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ghana. In the words of the Constitution “There shall be a President of the Republic of Ghana who shall be the Head of State and Head of Government and the Commander-in –Chief, the Ghana Armed Forces”. The question that comes to mind is does this constitutional mandate of the President that makes our President the “Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces transform our President from an elected civilian President into a military Head of State? The answer is obviously no.
I therefore wonder how you felt when you saw our President arriving for a military ceremony at the Burma Camp resplendent in a Naval Officers uniform. To me the uniform was aesthetically beautiful on him but was it constitutionally right as well? If the later were so the wording of the Constitution would have been as follows; “The Head of Armed Forces shall be the President of the Republic of Ghana” which would have completely cut off the elective principle in choosing who our President should be”.
It should be noted that the President of the Republic of Ghana is a civilian elected by the people of Ghana to head a civilian Government for a specific period of four years. Our President in performing his functions as a civilian President, no matter the occasion should therefore don civilian clothing at all times.
As a civilian President the President does not salute the flag of Ghana as a military man would do he rather bows to the flag during state functions. On that occasion that our President wore a military uniform to a state function he was definitely caught in a conflict of roles. Did he salute the flag of Ghana while he was in military fatigues or he bowed to the flag of Ghana in his Constitutional capacity as an elected civilian President of the President of Ghana? On that occasion our President in fact got it all wrong and I expect the host of Presidential advisers around him to bow down their heads in shame.
It is a fact that the President of America Commands the most powerful army in the world but on no occasion would the President of America don a military uniform to attend any state function be it a civilian function or otherwise. Presidents around the world whose countries are even at war do not wear military fatigues even when visiting troops at the war front neither does the Secretary General of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (N.A.T.O) which is essentially a military alliance of Western Nations wear military fatigue to any function organised by the military alliance that he heads as a civilian Administrator.
What even makes that occurrence worrisome is the fact that West Africa is gradually becoming a hot bed for military adventurism into politics. Burkina Faso, Niger, and Mali are currently reeling dangerously under military rulers. News filtering in from our Western neighbour La’ Cote de Iviore is not encouraging either, so a civilian President donning Military fatigues is surely, a veiled invitation to the military to enter into the main stream of our political process. That could not have been the intention of our President or the host of his advisers around him on that occasion, but that symbolic act gave a wrong signal to the armed forces of Ghana to enter into the mainstream of our political process.
The indications are that Ghana as a country has not be able to shake off completely from our military hangover. Since the institution of our third Republic which has seen about six governments, all aides of our civilian President have been military men, and heads of every prominent institution in our civilian administration like Customs, (now a wing of Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) and recently Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority (GHAPOHA) are headed by military men. Meanwhile the dream of every hard working worker is to aspire to head wherever he works, but as Ghanaians we seem to crave for military leadership in all sphere of our lives. However we as Ghanaians should stop giving wrong signals to our armed forces (who may not harbour the intention of venturing into our politics), that leaders in uniform are more preferable to leaders in civilian clothing.
For God’s sake let us protect our fragile democracy by refraining from sending wrong signals to our gentlemen in uniform to unwittingly invite them to take over our elected civilian Administration once more!
By K. N. Adomako-Acheampong Esq., Political Scientist and a practising lawyer, Tema