Are Ghanaian leaders and politicians “stuck on stupid”?

In this day and age many Ghanaian children study under trees where they are constantly exposed to the elements.

Many a child who is just fortunate to study in brick-and-mortar classrooms does so in deathtrap.

Those six unfortunate children who died recently, those several others who unfortunately died yesteryear, just yesterday, all did so—sadly—in what seemed like rejected ectopic pregnancies of cold deathtraps and sweltering slave ships that also pass for authentic brick-and-mortar classrooms.

Yet we know who the slimy perpetrators of these heinous crimes are, these shameless and hypocritical moirologists called politicians.

Leadership crises, gross mismanagement of the public purse, institutional corruption, and political wickedness are the grand ghost authors of the mournful, harmful obituaries of these innocent children.

These wicked politicians have taken to writing the obituaries of innocent Ghanaian children even before they are born, burying the future of these children in the ashes of bitterness.

And yet these shameless, wicked politicians build strings of castles and mansions to the tune of tens of millions of dollars—for themselves.

And yet these shameless, wicked politicians buy a fleet of expensive cars for themselves.

They even steal some of these expensive cars for their private use.

Yes, the taxpayer’s money, that is it—the secret to the material success of our political morticians.

The wicked politician’s growing fat at the expense of the taxpayer. This is to say, the taxpayer’s hard-earned money foots the humongous bills of his children’s premature and preventable deaths, such as happened in the case of the six children—their angelic souls should rest in peace rather than in pieces—and others’ orchestrated obituaries at the hands of the politician, and the like.

The wicked politician is indeed a bloodsucker, a scheming leech with an effective scolex. The alleged discerning taxpayer, we are consistently told, knows the politician inside out and yet he goes all the way to vote the same politician into office—year in, year out.

For instance, maintenance cost for the fleet of cars kept at the presidency and the fuel for this fleet of cars, Oh Ghana, are borne by the poor hardworking taxpayer.

While the taxpayer grows anorexic on account of his political immaturity and ignorance, while expectant mothers cry out for medications and beds, while the nation’s networks of rutty and rusty and unmotorable roads continue to remain highly accessible burial grounds for citizens, while open defecation elevates Ghana to the seventh dirtiest country on the planet, while unemployment and institutional corruption gnaw at the soul of the nation, these wicked sybaritic politicians continue to live extravagantly while feeding the citizenry on fact lies.

In fact the taxpayer is totally lost in the misty dustiness of abject ignorance. The wicked politician, on the other hand, is a dead wood in the thick of absolute coldness and, as well, floating in the limbo of stupidity and, once again, this, as far as his lack of scientific and technocratic grasp of the intricacies of nation-building building is concerned.

Why won’t both then be caught up in the quagmire of accelerated arrested development? The taxpayer is afraid of, and thus stands in absolute awe of the redoubtable political superstition built around the all-powerful politician, the ruling class.

Now, we are being told that the descendants of those who vigorously yet avowedly resisted or campaigned against independence for the Gold Coast are going to spend millions to celebrate Ghana’s sixtieth anniversary.

The Ghana@60 logo which Akufo-Addo unveiled recently is being linked to another shameful act of international plagiarism—allegedly, and this, coming after the infamous international plagiarism vis-à-vis his inaugural speech.

Scheming, clueless Akufo-Addo says “corporate Ghana in particular will provide the funds for the anniversary.”

Oh yes, the man is not clueless after all. He actually knows what he is doing.

Payback time to party loyalists and financiers, we guess! The National Democratic Party (NDC) did it. Vicious circle! Politics of equalization! And so the New Patriotic Party must also do it.

And when two elephants fight, the grass-taxpayer suffers dearly and bears the brunt of the elephantine tussle.

Why corporate Ghana in particular?

What terms define this quid pro quo? In other words what does corporate Ghana stand to gain?

Which specific entities within “corporate Ghana” are going to foot the bill for the anniversary?

Are their names going to be made accessible to the public?

And the issue of conflict of interest: Are these entities affiliated with the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in any way?

Did they contribute to Akufo-Addo’s campaign?

Will the government award them sole-source or no-bid contracts in exchange for footing the bill for the anniversary?

Transparency and accountability and probity should guide this controversial decision of asking “corporate Ghana” to provide the funds for the anniversary.

For this is not the time to turn our fragile open-defecation democracy into or entrench the politics of the belly, prebendalism, crony capitalism, and kleptomaniacal corruption.

Do we know that in our beloved country, as in hell, corporate Ghana is the insensitive politician’s partner-in-crime, an underground economy that deals in and warehouses reprobate public corruptocrats, political criminals and murderous thieves?

In Ghana more particularly, thus, the Orwellian doublespeak of the political or ruling class threatens to contaminate the moral fabric of society, for better or for worse.

You look up, when the politician decrees otherwise. Such is the trendy character of political realism in Ghanaian politics.

Property-owning democracy for social democracy!

Social democracy for property-owning democracy!

Political thieves and criminals are celebrities and saints and angels.

Celebrities and saints and criminals are political thieves and criminals.

In Ghanaian politics the end always justifies the means.

In Ghanaian politics correlation does always imply causation.

Mahama for Akufo-Addo.

Akufo-Addo for Mahama.

The same nauseating local stench, nothing changes.

Though the political and ideological colors are in plain white and black, there exist no nuances between our pied open-democracy, there exist no subtleties in the stale sandwich we call schadenfreude duopoly.

The Ghanaian politician who feels he is invisible and untouchable and redoubtable, and is over the moon so long as he succeeds in wrecking havoc on his country, is also an epitome of mediocrity, stupidity and shame, and a disgrace to human intelligence.

The Ghanaian politician is undeserving of human society, a threat to human civilization and moral decency, and thus he must be banished from any civilized society. His political mind falls outside the responsible profile of moral quantum, a fixture of his mental landscape antithetical to the progressive profile of transparency, accountability and probity.

The Ghanaian politician is therefore an endangered species that must be forced into extinction, into perpetual retirement, just so he will no longer pose a threat to himself and his society.

The national flag:

He has reduced “green” to a desert.

He has turned “yellow,” the gold, to foreign interests on the cheap.

He has turned “the black star” over to internal colonialism and economic slavery.

He has turned “red” into tears of blood for those citizens perpetually trapped in a vicious circle of social-economic hardship.

The national flag he has turned into a used toilet paper!

REFERENCES

Ghanaweb. “Ghana@60 Celebration To Cost GHC20m.” February 10, 2016.