One year after the demise of President John Evans Atta Mills, the former law lecturer has been described as a tragic leader who should not have contested the 2008 presidential election.

In an exposé on the late Head of State published elsewhere in this paper, the Editor of The Chronicle, Ebo Quansah, says as a result of a terminal illness afflicting the late President at the time he led the nation, he allowed people to misuse his power, instead of being a check on those he appointed to help him administer the nation.

"It is my respectful belief that the late President of the Republic should not have contested the 2008 presidential election. As a matter of fact, the former President's health was not the very best at the time. Long before nominations opened, Prof. Mills had been diagnosed with a terminal disease," states the Editor.

Mr. Quansah claimed that long before nominations opened, the former Head of State had been diagnosed with a terminal disease, and was hospitalised in South Africa.

"In spite of the outpouring of grief and eulogies that are still being offered one year after passing away, the brunt truth is that his government seriously under-performed in all sectors of national life. With the President indisposed, the leader of the nation, at that point in time, was hardly conscious of how things were done around him. Simply put, people around him misused his power and condemned his regime to an also run administration of trial and error," the journalist stated.

The article states emphatically that had the former President been well, there was no way that GH¢51 million of state cash would have been parceled out and doled to Mr. Alfred Agbesi Woyome, described in official circles as a financier of the ruling National Democratic Congress, under his watch.

He claimed that in spite of the findings by the Economic and Organised Crime Office that the late President tried to stop the payment twice, when the scandal came to his attention, it was Prof. Mills himself who authorised the payment, after he had been surrounded by hawks in his administration to do so.

"It was not only the Woyome scandal that people in his administration "created, looted and shared," under his watch. The late Professor was supposed to be in charge of state coffers when leaders of the National Youth Employment and Entrepreneurial Development Agency squandered more than GH¢200 million of state cash in various deals," the columnist alleged.

The article states that under the ill and infirm leadership of the former President, state assets were misapplied without sanctions from the very top. "It is an open secret that in the formative times of the Mills regime, some key appointments were made without the President being aware.

"In spite of roof-top advertisements of building a Better Ghana sold by overzealous party agents, the nation bequeathed to Ghanaians on the President's death was divided and an economically weaker nation, with most of its citizens unable to eke out a meaningful living. In all honesty," the writer claimed. "The Presidency occupied by the deceased leader was tragic for the nation and its people."

In spite of his limitations in government, the former law lecturer was recognised by the writer as a scholar of international repute, and an asset to the nation in many other fields.

He was also classified as a very honest man, an attribute said to have convinced former President Jerry John Rawlings to choose him as his Vice-Presidential running mate in the 1996 presidential election.