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A former Deputy Minister for Finance and Economic Planning under the Kufuor administration, Prof. George Yaw Gyan-Baffour, has described the current state of the nation as bleak and epileptic and not inspiring any hope for Ghanaians. Delivering his fourth state-of-the-nation address to Parliament last week, President Atta Mills indicated that the state of the country was �stable and in reasonably good health�. However, contributing to the ongoing debate on the address, Prof. Gyan-Baffour, who is also the Member of Parliament for Wenchi, said contrary to President Mills� claim, the country had been so terribly managed with gargantuan dissipation of the nation�s money that only God�s intervention could save Ghanaians from bad leadership. �Madam Speaker, we have barely 10 months to decide on who should run the affairs of our state. Let us be patient and Madam Speaker let us go down prostrate on our knees in abject submission to the Divine Providence to give us peace and wisdom to remove our sorrows and grief by giving us a leader who is serious, honest, incorruptible and competent to ensure. �The state of the nation is very bleak and indeed is as dark as the night and as a dull as the Erebus and no one should believe the difficult attempt by the President to whitewash the state of the nation,� Prof. Gyan-Baffour noted. Obviously referring to the Woyome scandal in which the Mills administration had doled out over GH�51 million to ruling NDC financier, Alfred Agbesi Woyome, for no work done, Prof. Gyan-Baffour said. �The recent events of blatant theft from state coffers has opened a window into the governance of this country and point to the lack of control of President over the affairs of the state�. The Wenchi MP said the chief executive of the land had been enjoying power under the NDC�s umbrella without knowing what was going on around him. �The umbrella has been spinning uncontrollably in the last 3 years and the chief has been focusing on enjoying power. He therefore either does not see what is going on or seems to care less as long as he is allowed to enjoy his power. �What is going on with his people underneath the shade of the umbrella including those who are chopping the state uncontrollably is of no consequence to him,� Prof. Gyan-Baffour stated. President Mills, he noted, was presiding over a highly divisive ruling party and country, which did not augur well for the country�s democratic governance. According to Prof. Gyan-Baffour, Ghanaians �know that the divisions and hardened factionalism in the country are unprecedented and inherently dangerous for our democracy�. He urged the Commander-In-Chief of the Ghana Armed Forces to show that he was firmly in charge of the country to save the nation from the financial hemorrhage, resulting from over GH�600 million judgement debt payments. However, NDC MP for Asawase, Alhaji Mohammmed-Mubarak Muntaka, described the performance of President Mills in the last three years as unparallel. According to the former Minister of Youth and Sports, President Mills had delivered in three years what his predecessors could not deliver within the same period. Ghana�s economy, Alhaji Muntaka observed, had been well managed by President Mills and the country was on the path of accelerated growth and development. He cited unprecedented macro-economic stability including single digit inflation and massive infrastructural development throughout the country. He mentioned building of schools and roads as some of the achievements of the Mills administration. Alhaji Muntaka, however, admitted that much more still needed to be done to further improve the standard of living of the people. Daily Guide