By Francis Kwarteng
“Every time we start a new project, we always ask ourselves the same question: What can we do better and different?” (Ricardo Guadalupe).
The specter of Ghana’s Orwellian democracy
Max Romeo has called the church “a den of thieves.”
And we say the Flagstaff House (and Parliament) is a cesspool of sophisticated, professional thieves.
In the end, a vote for the NDC or the NPP will constitute an endorsement of political criminals, murderous thieves, nation wreckers, kleptomaniacal crony capitalism, and the politics of the belly.
It is not as if we do not know what these parties represent.
And yet, it is also as if we do not know anything about the personalities and humanities of those at the headship of these parties.
NDC and NPP are one and the same poisonous, blood-sucking animal. Whether social democracy and neo-liberalism they are the same in the typical Ghanaian philosophical and political vocabulary.
Either is an empty rhetoric, and both lack scientific and moral substance as fact far as national development, standard of living and quality of life of citizens are concerned.
The point is that it is the same stale dish that is served to Ghanaians every four or eight years, party after party, regardless of which party is in power. Alas, Ghanaians have failed to see this.
Ghanaians are even in denial about the existence of these wolves-in-sheep’s-clothing blood-sucking animals.
Trojan horses these political parties are!
Closing remarks
With the nation currently in social-political mourning over the explosive volume of idle, unemployed graduates and youths, a defining Sisyphean millstone around the country’s neck, these unemployed graduates and youths have constituted themselves into tenuous expendable appendages to the diabolical political machinations of the ruling elites.
These diabolical political machinations and the preponderant media focus on the two major political parties, the NDC and the NPP, undermine the efforts of these youths who could otherwise have provided the critical mass required for positive change—that is, an opportunity to usurp the status quo.
This also grossly narrows the possibilities for technocratic and moral transformation of the country beyond the stifling orchestrations of the faces behind the country’s executive dominance and duopolistic dictatorship.
These youths therefore become dispensable conduits for channeling away public angst against the excruciating failures of the ruling elites, onto a pastiche of other players in the political game who may not directly have a hand in the management of the state.
Add ignorance, religiosity, uncritical education, mass poverty and illiteracy, uncritical imitation of foreign ideas and values, and rampant political corruption to the mix of youthful ennui and the result is a bonfire of potential anarchy.
Ghanaians should therefore be extremely careful as they vote in these coming general elections, else their sham democracy resolves into an internecine diarchy in which the NDC refuses to cede power because it loses the general elections but somehow believes it won, and the NPP on the other hand also refuses to accept defeat because it loses the elections but somehow believes it won. This dicey situation is likely to amount to a destructive dilemma—a potential reason war.
If the outcome of the general elections is just too close, in which case no candidate secures the required percentage, then certainly recourse to ballotage is the appropriate choice.
But a decisive electoral win by a third party will remove this dicey situation of destructive dilemma from actuation.
This is why electors must vote with the consciences and not because they have been bribed to vote for a particular party or candidate, not because they come from a particular region, and certainly not because they come from a particular ethnic group.
Certainly, issues-based democracy is the way to forward. But our sham democracy is far from this progressive brand of political expression.
Yet again, unfortunately, this has never been the case.
In exchange for disappointing crumbs from the nation’s political criminals, these idle youths knowingly and unknowingly collaborate with the ruling elites to destroy their future after they [the latter] have managed to secure a future for their families and cronies.
Here, listen up you idle youths of the nation, Nkrumah’s Ghana:
“Arise Ghana youth for your country
“The nation demands your devotion
“Let us all unite to uphold her
“And make her great and strong
“We are involved
“In building our motherland
The center is not holding—things are falling apart.
Where is Chinua Achebe?
Where is Achebe’s “There Was A Country,” as it were to teach our leaders some hard useful historical lessons in war, national betrayal, genocide, famine and disease, and national disintegration?
End of three-part series!
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