When personalities from different political divides meet on any media or public platform, they mostly argue vehemently and project their party, their policies and their candidate(s) above each other’s or in some cases, one another’s.
Sometimes the tension goes high, they may even lose their temper and speak with fury, and in most cases the host manages to calm them down. You hardly hear them shifting from the issues and insulting one another, It is mostly an educating and revealing encounter that keeps knowledge-loving audience stimulated intellectually.
But you know something? this banter ends at the studios! When the show ends they don’t go about arguing everywhere they meet and throwing insults at one another here and there.
Away from the camera or the console, they chat heartily, they laugh and crack jokes, they eat together, they help one another., they build friendships, some of them are the best of friends, and they respect and care for one another. And so they grow together. People who are close to them would agree to this, even your friends at the parliament house.
Unfortunately the media doesn’t capture much of these, let’s say it is of no interest to them, and to us as well. We see just one side, but that side is not even the side we have adopted.
Leave the politicians, Parliamentarians and party leaders and come down to the supporters. What do we see? They are mostly on each other’s throat! As if they are paid to denigrate and insult one another, wherein their victory lies. Even on WhatsApp groups, they make enemies of each other, insult one another and build up rivalry. It is as though winning a WhatsApp insult contest means winning the general elections.
The sad thing about this encounters is the fact that it transforms strangers or sometimes friends into enemies simply due to differences in their political stance. There are many of us today who harbour dislike and disdain towards people they’ve not seen or met before, simply o. The basis of politics
This is an unprofitable venture. You don’t benefit from the insults. Your readers don’t. Your political party doesn’t. No one does! Not only does insults and abusive language lack the capacity to win elections, insults cannot build our nation. Our politics must be decorous and progressive, and this is our decision to make.
I write with a bleeding heart, our generation must get it right. We have to uphold mutual respect and treat one another with utmost dignity. Politics is about choice, and Ghana is a multiparty democracy. We must respect everyone’s choice and act wisely at all times. Change starts from you and I, yes change starts from us. Even if some of our leaders are not leaving us with good examples to follow, we must chart a new course and set new standards for our generation and generations yet to come. Your language, most often, tells the kind of person you are. We need to be mindful of this. Brothers and sisters, things must get better, but not by insulting one another over political issues.
It is said that when a mad man makes away with your towel and clothes whites you’re bathing, chasing him for it only shows there are two mad people. Of course, no one jumps into insulting another without provocation. Notwithstanding, we need to learn to keep our cool and not descend into the gutters on the least provocation. Let’s make a difference.
Like Martin Luther King Jr said, “We must learn to live together as brothers, or perish together as fools“.
Don’t forget that all men are brothers, and our Ghana deserves better from us.
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