Did President Mills err?

The Daily Graphic last Friday carried a front page story about the resolution of the case involving the murder of 44 Ghanaians by security personnel in Gambia. The story was accompanied by a picture of a broadly smiling President Mills, shaking hands with the Gambian leader, President Yahaya Jemmeh. When the story hit the news stand, majority of the electronic media did not take kindly to it. To them, it was against our culture and tradition for President Mills to be shaking hands and broadly smiling with the leader of a country which is supposed to have murdered 44 Ghanaians in cold blood.

Some of these radio stations also faulted the Daily Graphic for accompanying the story with such a picture which did not match the somber and solemn nature of the occasion. The Chronicle agrees with these sentiments, since the nature of the story did not need such a picture to be used.

We do not, however, wish to blame the Daily Graphic for the mishap. Such handshakes do not normally take more than twenty seconds, within which time the Photographer is hard-pressed to get the best shot for the story, and therefore the paper cannot be held responsible because it definitely has to get a picture that would tell the story.

To us, instead of blaming the Daily Graphic, discussions on the radio stations should rather have focused their attention on the protocol department at the Presidency. President Mills may be a Professor of law, but that does not mean he is a repository of all knowledge. It is the duty of his protocol officers to educate him on how he should conduct himself in certain situations.

If they have done that, we do not think the President would have smiled the way he did, instead of just a slight smile like President Jammeh portrayed in the picture. When it comes to diplomacy, we do not think President Mills erred because his posture might have showed a sign of maturity, but back home such an action infringes upon our cherished culture and tradition.

The President is the father of the nation, therefore, for him to have showed a broad smile whilst greeting a suspected murderer of Ghanaians, when the victim's parents and relatives are still grieving back home, is not the best.

We hope the protocol department at the Castle would take our advice and make sure that the President does not make such a mistake in future.

When an agreement has been signed for the World Bank to give us huge sums of money, that is happy news for the country, and the President has every right to be happy about such a news, but certainly not when 44 citizens have been murdered in such a brutal manner by the Gambia security forces.