Wednesday 29 June 2016

Women In Ghana Must Demand Gender Parity Now - And Make That The Basis Of Their Support For Presidential Candidates

The astonishing personal attack launched by the New Patriotic Party's (NPP) Kennedy Ohene Adjapong MP, on the chairperson of Ghana's Electoral Commission, Madam Charlotte Osei, marks a new low-point in our nation's politics.

The NPP must move swiftly to condemn the boorish Kennedy Ohene Adjapong for his totally unacceptable behaviour. He is a disgrace to their party and a coward for insulting a respectable woman who deserves her dignity - just as his  own wife Mrs Kennedy Ohene Adjapong does deserve her dignity.

Gentlemen don't attack women in such vulgar terms - and the NPP's many well-bred and well-mannered gentlemen, who are in the majority in their party, must demand an immediate apology from Kennedy Ohene Adjapong.

On her part, Madam Charlotte Osei ought to take comfort in the fact that the vast majority of decent and fair-minded Ghanaians - male and female - feel outraged by the slanderous insults hurled at her, by the NPP's verbally-aggressive and uncouth Kennedy Ohene Agyapong.

His vituperative tirade against the chairperson of the EC - that pure nonsense on bamboo stilts from this barbarian who would be a nobody if so many Ghanaians did not foolishly worship the wealthy in society as gods - shows clearly that for some errant Ghanaian politicians, there are no limits to the depths of appalling and dispicable behaviour, to which they are prepared to sink.

Unfortunately, ours is a nation full of serial-philanderers-in-high-places who consistently defile underage girls, and get away with it, because they are powerful and influential men in Ghanaian society.

One day the impunity that currently enables them to escape justice  will come to an abrupt end - and they will then be exposed one by one as the depraved monsters they actually are.

For the moment, alas, misogynists indeed rule OK in Ghana. That is why as we speak, there are tens of thousands of vulnerable women trapped in unhappy relationships, and loveless marriages, suffering in silence behind closed doors, across our homeland Ghana. They are the cowed and helpless victims of vile and amoral men.

Without question, the demonisation of the person of the EC's first female chairperson, would never have occured to the same extent that it has, if she had been a man. However, she will shame all her cynical critics by holding truly free and fair elections this November, to the admiration and applause of the entire world, God willing. Amen.

Unfortunately, the sad thing in all this, is that in the main, Ghana's womenfolk have not all condemned that unacceptable demonisation of Madam Charlotte Osei, by our hypocritical politicians, and their mean-spirited mercenary-lackeys, in the Ghanaian media world.

For some of us, it is unbearable to think that those narcissistic, unprofessional, tiresome and mostly third-rate journalists also have overblown ideas about themselves, in addition to their many sins against Mother Ghana. Some in that mean-spirited and partisan rented-media crowd, are the worst of the misogynistic demagogues, in our midst. Pure poison. And unpatriotic on top too.

Thus, that outrage,  has unfortunately been allowed to take hold, in the propaganda battles between the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC),  and Ghana's main opposition party, the NPP -  the constituent political parties that make up the amoral and corruption-riddled NDC/NPP duopoly - on the airwaves of television and FM radio stations across the country. Pity.

That is why our womenfolk, who constitute the majority demographic-grouping in the total population of Ghana, ought to draw the same conclusion from the abominable, unspeakable and unpardonable insults that that philistine, the ever-so-loud Kennedy Ohene Agyapong - who knows the price price of everything under the African sun, but hasn't the faintest idea of their intrinsic worth - heaped on Madam Charlotte Osei, the EC's chairperson.

The time has now come for Ghanaian women to stop allowing themselves to be treated as second-class citizens in the nation that they virtually carry on their shoulders, and demand gender parity now. Today. Not tomorrow.

That should be their focus in politics - instead of playing second fiddle in political parties to the mostly worthless and irresponsible men who dominate our nation's politics and virtually control political parties in this country.

Ghanaian women must, at the very least, be guaranteed half the seats in Ghana's Parliament, be given half of the total number of  Cabinet positions any President of the Republic of Ghana selects amongst those he or she appoints as government ministers - as well as have half the total number of  senior positions in the top echelons of all our institutions of state, and sundry public-sector entities, reserved for them.

Any presidential candidate who commits to allotting half the total number of cabinet ministers he or she appoints, to women, deserves the support of Ghanaians.

No serious modern African nation that wants to prosper can afford to ignore a talent-pool that is more than 50% of its total population. One of the reasons why tiny Rwanda is doing so well is because it values the talents of its womenfolk. We ought to do so too in Nkrumah's Ghana.

If it is indeed true that Dr.Paa Kwesi Nduom is said to have no reservations about any of the above in private, then the time has now come for him to state that openly, and publicly commit to that as a priority policy he will implement if elected President.

Ghana's womenfolk in turn will vote for him in their numbers to become the leader of the all-inclusive administration he has promised to form when he becomes Ghana's President.

Above all, no presidential candidate who does not commit to the needed constitutional changes that will bring about gender parity in Ghanaian society - begining with reserving half the seats in Parliament and Cabinet for women - should be supported by any of our womenfolk. Period.

Committing to that ought to be the basis of Ghanaian women's support for presidential candidates in this November's elections. Ghana emaa abre. Haaba.




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