Monday, 8 April 2013

Supreme Court Verdict: Violence Will Lead Politicians To ICC

Author's note: This piece was written on 30/3/2013. It is being posted today because I was unable to do so on the day. Please read on:


When all they are doing,  is said to amount  to  merely playing politics, there is nothing more despicable  than  clever people seeking  to subvert the will of the people, by clothing themselves with high-sounding principle -  to make their sinister enterprise appear  noble and respectable to decent people.


The question is: What moral right do those extremist politicians (from across the spectrum) threatening  to take our nation over the precipice have,  to risk the peace and stability of Ghana, in pursuit of naked and selfish ambition - threatening the future and  collective well-being of millions of families,   whose only prayer is that God grants their nation's political class the wisdom never to destroy Ghana:  by allowing it to descend into violence and chaos?


Today,  there are concerned patriots who insist that our nation is being held to ransom by hypocrites playing politics to feed their massive egos - and secretly dreaming of sending  their personal net worth into the stratosphere:  at ordinary  Ghanaians' expense.


They accuse those hypocrites  of glibly   mouthing  noble phrases and empty platitudes,  which  they lack the moral-fibre  to justify using,  as  the justification   for their unreasonableness -  in seeking power through  means other than  the ballot-box:    exploiting legal technicalities to attempt a power-grab by stealth,  after glaringly losing a free and fair election.


Perhaps those uncharitable  critics might be a tad unfair - but their opinions are  out there in the open nonetheless.


Clearly,  judging from the results of their  policies whiles in office - since the promulgation of the 1992 constitution -  many politicians  seek power not to bring about rule by saints.


Otherwise,  why,  during the election campaign for the December 2012 elections,  did we never once hear leading members of the two main parties, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the New Patriotic Party (NPP),    state unambiguously that they would publicly publish  their assets as well as that of their spouses, before assuming office and at their tenures' end?


And why did both parties  not swiftly follow the example of Paa Kwesi Nduom's Progressive Peoples Party - and publicly  publish  the sources of their parties'  campaign funds for the December 2012 presidential and parliamentary elections,  too?


Why did both main parties  also never once breathe  a word  about reforming many aspects of the public-purse-draining entitlement culture of our educated urban elites - such as  the daylight robbery that the payment of obscene sums in compensation packages (including  Arabian-oil-Sheik-type perks)  to the  boards and top management of so many public entities,  represents, I ask?


Are the cynics in our midst not therefore right,  in asserting that the  plain truth is that nothing much in Ghana would have changed,  had the results of the December 2012 presidential election gone in favour of the candidate of the main opposition party the NPP?


Would we not in all probability have  ended up being  given  the usual excuses by their new administration too that the previous regime had destroyed  the economic prospects of Ghana - and that it would take at least a decade to clear up the mess their opponents had left behind: just the exact length of time  the party's presidential candidate had once said it would take to transform Ghana economically?


So why burn Ghana because this time round too the NPP's candidate  did not win an election that many independent observers acclaim for its fairness and for being free?  And,  after all, could  he too not be third time lucky like the late President Mills was in the end,  when he finally won in December 2008?


Well, we  all know that it is not ordinary people who will resort to violence at the behest of ruthless paymasters to destabalise Ghana after the Supreme Court eventually delivers its judgement.


Those who will carry out acts of violence around the country,  will be the armies of mostly  conscienceless self-seekers,  who do not know the meaning of the phrase  "sacrifice for the common-weal" - the confounded  foot soldiers of political parties: each with a secret personal agenda to rip Ghana off successfully,  with their paymasters obligingly looking the other way.


So let no politician  who will direct and coordinate foot soldiers to go on the rampage -  when the Supreme Court announces its decision after the hearing of the election petition by  the NPP's  presidential candidate challenging the result of  the December 2012 election is concluded -  think for one moment that decent-minded Ghanaian nationalists will sit unconcerned,  and allow them to escape appearing on the radar of the International Criminal Court (ICC),  for the crimes against humanity, which  lighting the flames  of widespread conflict in Ghana will  amount to.


The ICC awaits all politicians in Ghana planning violence,  who when the Supreme Court announces its verdict,  intend to unleash  those blinkered  myrmidon-types -  whose idea of democracy is a mental outlook that makes them say in response to every wrongdoing by political parties and politicians: "My-party-my-tribe-right-or-
wrong" - to cause mayhem in our dear nation.


With respect, no politician  - whichever political party he or she  belongs  to  - will be allowed to set Ghana ablaze and get away scot-free -  without facing the ICC's prosecutors and appearing before its  judges at The Hague.


No Ghanaian politician's personal ambition to be president -  be it President Mahama's, Nana Addo Danquah Akufo-Addo's, Paa Kwesi Nduom's or the  feisty Madam Akua Donkor's    - is worth destroying Ghana for. Period.


For their information,  the days of impunity in Africa,  amongst the continent's politicians,  are long gone.


Is Liberia's former leader Charles Taylor not  living proof of that reality -  incarcerated as he is in  his UN jail cell  in The Hague: despite once feeling he was a Master of the Universe and invincible?  That is why none of Ghana's politicians  who is sane must  ever tempt fate.   A word to the wise...


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