Stop The Scurrilous Politicking!

When Nana Akufo Addo was being unfairly accused of taking drugs during the campaign for the December 2008 presidential election, I wrote an article condemning those making those outrageous allegations.

I was incensed that for reasons of political expediency, unprincipled individuals were assassinating the character of a brave and decent human being, who had devoted his life to public service, and who rather than opting to live a life of luxury because of his wealth, had rather chosen to risk his life for his country: by twice going into the trenches, to join the fight to restore democracy to a Ghana tyrannized by despotic military rulers.

I did so as a matter of principle: For, I do not like Nana Akufo Addo’s Akan-dominated party, and its Akan tribal-supremacist antecedents. As an Nkrumaist, I detest a political party - some of whose Akan leadership have always secretly wanted Ghana to be a federal state, made up of the pre-colonial tribal entities – so that their tribal Chiefs will be able to regain their status as sovereigns: which they lost when their predecessors were colonized by the British occupiers of what eventually became known as the Gold Coast.

Dr. J.B. Danquah, as we all know, once arrogantly dismissed Nkrumah’s Convention People's Party (CPP) as a regime made up of “Ntafuo” and “varendah boys.” That disparaging remark by Danquah sums up perfectly the disdain the Danquah-Busia tradition has always had for non-Akans.

I was therefore scandalized when I heard the pure poison emanating from the airwaves of Choice FM on the evening of Saturday 12th June, 2010 – which was broadcasting a current affairs discussion programme, in which the recent unfortunate exchanges between Mr. Atto Awhoi and Mr. Herbert Mensah (about events during the campaign for the December 2008 presidential election) was being discussed by a number of obvious New Patriotic Party (NPP) supporters.

I immediately fired off a text message in protest to the producer of the programme, which I shall reproduce here: “Common decency demands that party supporters across the spectrum put aside politicking, remember their own humanity, and condemn those monstrous insinuations about the president’s state of mind. We must not say such things about even our worst enemies.”

We all watch and listen to the president on television, do we not, dear reader – so how can any sane mind think that a man with such a lucid mind is somehow mentally unwell? It says a lot about the nature of our nation's politics that even well-educated individuals and supposedly cultured individuals could say the kind of outrageous things that were said by those four individuals who were guests on the said Choice FM programme ("Ghana Speaks") that evening.

It is a real pity that people like that who ought to know better, were so lacking in compassion that Saturday evening.

How could such obviously intelligent individuals fail to see the political advantage they would have secured for their party, if they had stated that they were not going to follow the bad example of those who put themselves beyond the pale, when they said those horrid things about Nana Akufo-Addo during the campaign for the December 2008 presidential elections – and would not dignify the rubbish said about the president’s state of mind by seeking to make capital out of it: but would rather choose to condemn those who say such dreadful things about their fellow human beings just because it is politically expedient to do so.

I have also often wondered why intelligent people like that pretend that they are not aware of the effect in the real world, of dealing with a budget deficit: in order to secure the long-term future of a nation.

When they switch into their “enkoyie-mode” propaganda and go on endlessly about life in today’s Ghana under President Mills, are they not aware of the hardship facing citizens in even relatively prosperous nations such as Greece; Portugal; Spain; Ireland; the UK; France; Germany; and the US?

Are the governments of all those nations not more or less taking the same steps our government is taking to reduce that ghastly budget deficit left behind by their NPP regime – resulting in real hardship too for their citizens? Are some public servants in many of those nations not having their pay-packets reduced – with some doctors in Latvia, for example, having their pay reduced by as much as 70 percent?

Politicians in Ghana must end the scurrilous and self-serving politicking the engage in, on the airwaves of Ghana’s many FM radio stations – if they want to win the trust of ordinary people who truly love Mother Ghana, particularly the independent-minded swing-voters: whose crucial votes will decide who becomes president in December 2012.

Tel: (powered by Tigo – the one mobile phone network in Ghana that actually works!) + 233 (0) 27 745 3109.