Never in the annals of the history of Ghanaian journalism, have the elections to select the leadership of the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA), been so crucial, than is the case today. Freedom of expression, in our homeland Ghana, is under siege - as media houses, and media professionals, are regularly assaulted (both physically and metaphorically), by their many illiberal-enemies in our corruption-riddled society.
What Mother Ghana desperately needs, today, are a GJA leadership made of principled media professionals, who will seek to expand the frontiers of freedom in our country, yet further - by seeking a reinterpretation of the constrictive aspects of the constitutional roles of the National Media Commission (NMC), and the National Communications Authority (NCA), for example.
The Ghanaian media landscape, most certainly does not need a GJA made up of mercenary-and-cynical-hacks, who will work secretly, in tandemn with our would-be oppressors, to constrict freedom of expression in our dear Motherland.
The next leadership of the GJA must be world-class individuals, who will have the integrity, quickness-of-mind, creativity and independent-mindedness, needed to enable them outmanoeuvre the dark forces ranged against the work of Ghana's media professionals, who constitute the fourth pillar of our democracy, and serve as accountability-watchdogs, in an African democracy that is imperilled by the unfathomable-greed slowly destroying it.
In light of that, it would therefore be disastrous, for Mother Ghana, were the wrong type of media professionals (lackeys and highlings of today's dominant-dark-forces - the big-thieves-in-high-places - who secretly wish to impose a tyranny on Ghanaians to enable them perpetuate their rule), to be selected to run the GJA.
Let it not be said of us that when freedom of expression was under siege, and
and the dark clouds of tyranny loomed over our country (whose very existence as a free society in which the rule of law prevails was threatened by powerful and greed-filled elites), regime-cronies, and sycophantic praise-singers, were elected to lead the GJA. No. No. No.
Media professionals in Ghana must never lose sight of the fact that a key feature of the 4th Republic, thus far, has been the evolution of a self-serving political-duopoly, made up of the two largest political parties, in Ghana, the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), and the biggest of the opposition parties, the National Democratic Congress (NDC).
When in opposition, they are both sanctimonious, and give the world the false impression that they are fighting for common-good-causes, critical for the overall well being of ordinary people, and working hard to protect the national interest, at all material times. Nothing could be further from the reality actually motivating most opposition politicians, however. And it is important that the new GJA leaders instinctively understand that motivation underpinning life in the political wilderness in Ghanaian politics.
Alas, the grandstanding and playing-to-the-gallery tactics, whiles in opposition, are merely meant to entice the electorate to vote for opposition politicians, and enable them to successfully emerge from the political wilderness, which all the NPP/NDC duopoly's members, dread to be banished.
Conversely, when in power, the need for ruling party's to fund their operations, nationwide, and thus make it easy for them to retain power, when election time comes round, simply means entering into alliances with Ghanaian society's big-thieves-in-high-places, whose sole aim in entering politics, is to create wealth for themselves, their family-favourites and dark-money-specialist regime-crony-tycoons.
Alas, only a new GJA leadership, made up of bold, fearless, imaginative and independent-minded media professionals, who are accutately aware of the machinations of the party-hardliners that collaborate with the perfidious thieves-in-high-places, who dominate both the NPP, and, the NDC, when in power, can protect freedom of expression in today's Ghana. To elect lackeys and sycophants of the current govenment, to lead the GJA, would be tragic.
Sent from Samsung tablet.
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