The actions of the President must be bold, almost daring, yet fair and even-handed to calm our ruffled feathers and to lift the spirit of the nation in expectation of better things to come."

It is so reassuring that the President of the Republic of Ghana is formally finally reacting to the flood of allegations being levelled against members of his family and government.

For a while now, these daily reports of allegation of corruption against members of the President's family as well as some senior members of his government failed to gain traction and the attention of the body politic for a number of reasons.

First, the source and timing. Most of these allegations are coming from members of the opposition NDC who elevated corruption from the level of an art to a science. The total lack of credibility of the NDC and all its appendages in all matters pertaining to corruption caused one to digest such information from such a discredited source, not with a pinch but bucketfuls of salt.

Then there was the timing. Even before the Kufuor administration had settled into office, the NDC was hauling truckloads of allegations against the new government, led by none other than Citizen Rawlings himself.

To accuse a government of corruption on its first day in office sounded to many reasonable persons as bordering on insanity; and this is how Citizen Rawlings and the NDC started their first day on the opposition benches.

Secondly, and more importantly, for those of us who pride ourselves as belonging to the Danquah-Busia tradition, anything but selfless dedication to the service of one's nation is simply not acceptable to the ethos and core beliefs of our tradition. After all, the history of our tradition is not one of "di bi ma me nni bi".

It is against this background that we now agonize over these allegation, even if unproven and smacks of political orchestration, that now seems to emerge on a daily basis.

There is no doubt at all in my mind that for political purposes, a great deal of these are pure fabrications and the figment of the fertile imagination of some people. However, the failure of the government to deal with these allegations boldly and firmly and simply ignoring them as emanating from the quarters of political malcontents has now allowed this phenomenon to gain traction, and the NDC will surely milk it to our complete discomfiture.

Left unattended to and festering in the wild and vivid imagination of some, all that was required was one lucky strike.

There could be a thousand such allegations playing about with people doubting their veracity. The moment one is proven to be true or partly true immediately validates all the others that were doubted. And so here is our problem.

The continuous and incessant repetition of falsehoods and verisimilitudes now all of a sudden appear credible.

The President's punch line response is that his government will deal firmly with substantiated allegations. Such a response would have been sufficient if we lived in ordinary times. But these are no ordinary times.

We are a jaded nation and a jaded people. Our lamp of history, which guides our feet and emotions, leads us to a deep mistrust of our governments, of authority in general, of our institutions and indeed of ourselves.

We have obeyed the weight of our sad times to the extent that we have learnt to speak what we ought to feel and not what we feel. If these were normal times, The President's response would have made perfect sense.

Unfortunately, we are far away from normal times and such a response can only add fuel to the fire. The response of the President, which stresses on the word "substantiated", implies that unsubstantiated allegations will be left alone.

That, under the present dysfunction in our society will amount to political suicide. There must be a process that moves an allegation from the status of unsubstantiated to "substantiated" or "proven to be false". It is cardinally important to stress the process and the integrity of that process.

The weight of these sad times requires that our response must be more robust than in normal times. The present reaction will therefore not do. For example, if the President had been bold enough to withdraw the nomination of Dr. Richard Anane, without prejudice, it would have earned him a lot of kudos.

If he had sacked Alhaji Bamaba instead of waiting for him to resign, it would have sent a strong and clear message to the rest of the nation that this President will not tolerate even the appearance of wrong doing in public office. Having missed these opportunities to draw a line in the sand, yet another passive posture from the President in his response can only add to the current fetidity.

In life, appearances tend to be more potent than reality. We are a jaded people who have lost faith in all forms of authority, our institutions and ourselves. We are therefore only waiting to convert the appearance of wrong doing into actual wrong doing to allow us to pronounce our verdict of guilty without due process.

It is said that a statesman must frame his actions with a practical wisdom that understands his people, their history, their traditions, their inherited rights and liberties, and their present circumstances. To do otherwise is to court disaster.

The actions of the President must therefore go beyond the tepid and passive. On this score, he must be very aggressive in searching for and punishing wrong doing in public life. Here is my two-cent worth of input in helping stem what is unfolding.

It may be worth establishing a neutral judicial review body similar to a Grand Jury to quickly go into some of the most obvious allegations by inviting or issuing subpoenas to those making the specific allegations to give evidence in a public hearing.

Once sufficient evidence is adduced, such persons against whom serious allegations have been made, if they are government or public officials, must be sacked and handed over to the judicial process.

Likewise, where no evidence exists, such persons must be publicly exonerated and their accusers held accountable and to public scorn and opprobrium. The government must also emplace a Code of Conduct for all government and public officials and more importantly must have the mechanism to enforce, investigate and punish violators without fear or favour.

As a nation, our past is grim. We are jaded and seem to have lost our bearing in this fast-paced world. The actions of the President must be bold, almost daring, yet fair and even-handed to calm our ruffled feathers and to lift the spirit of the nation in expectation of better things to come.