Ghana Election Talk (Part II)

*GHANA ELECTION TALK 2012 (PART TWO) BY CAMERON DUODU*

*

The Ghanaian Times *27 November 2012

If you only use the Internet – and especially *Ghanaweb* – as your main

source of news about the 7 December 2012 Ghana election, you will be making

a great mistake.

You would get the impression that the election campaign is full of vitriol

and that Ghanaians are holding each other by the throat, rancorously daring

one another to “vote for the wrong party and see.”

In fact, even before the main candidates signed as "peace pact" on 27

November 2012, the campaign was largely going quite on in a smooth and

peaceful manner, as I found out for myself, when I attended a political

meeting at Koforidua, in the Eastern Region. l saw the Ghanaian populace

exhibiting their usual good humour, even as the Internet dishes out its

huhudious verbiage.

I couldn’t help wondering at the amount of time and space propagandists

on the Internet are prepared to waste on such irrelevant topics as the

alleged early exit of Nana Akufo Addo, the NPP candidate, from Oxford

University. What has education at Oxford University got to do with giving

good toilets to villages like Kasoa (where a bad toilet recently killed

people?) Is it only at Oxford that one can learn that people should be

provided with safe drinking water? Or good schools? Or health posts? Or

good roads?

I come from the bush and there, we would put a few down-to-earth

questions to the propagandists, that should lay the ghost of that

ultra-snobbish non-debate for ever:

Question: Did Nana Addo spend a year at Oxford University on a government

scholarship?

Answer: No! He was sent there by his own father.

Question: Then, why is it that if he left Oxford after one year of his own

volition after going there of his own volition! -- and even his enemies

have published the fact that Oxford has confirmed that he was NOT expelled

from the University! -- the propagandists are going on as if he wasted any

funds contributed by the Ghanaian taxpayer? Did the Government contributer

to his upkeep?

Answer: No. He only cost his father a few bob.

Question: Did the father complain to anyone -- especially the propagandists

-- that his son had 'wasted' his money?

Answer: No! The father was a very worldly-wise man, and must have chalked

up the son’s one year at Oxford as a worth-while experience. Indeed, he was

even luckier than some of the most prominent Britons, whose progeny were

regularly "sent down" from Oxbridge! But being "sent down" doesn't prevent

them taking good jobs in politics or the City. In fact, unlike the

nanti-Akufo Addo brigade, Britons generally regard the "University of life"

as a better place for a good education than the cloistered walls of

Universities!

Question: When he left Oxford, did Nana Akuffo Addo obtain university

education somewhere else?

Answer: Yes, he studied at the *Sorbonne*, in Paris, where he acquired

French, and also at the University of Ghana, *Legon*.

Question: So, if he obtained such a broad education from three different

Universitiers in three different countries, then why are people talking so

much about his exit from Oxford after one year?

Answer: Obviously, they are jealous of Nana Addo! They wish THEY had had

the opportunity to go to Oxford. They cannot conceive of the idea that

someone could leave Oxford after only one year and still amount to

something in the world!They are judging him by their own limited yardstick!

Question: Has Nana Addo amounted to something in the world, despite leaving

Oxford early?

Answer: Go and read the *Ghana Law Reports *. and see the important cases

he was involved in!

I would never have thought that the NDC propaganda machine would be so full

of *would-be snobs! *They want to diss a man who went to the Sorbonne, the

stamping ground of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoire, because he did

not leave Oxford with a degree….I mean....

Question: So why are they doing it?

Answer: Because they want to insinuate darkly, without providing any

evidence, that he did something 'wrong' at Oxford. They say he didn’t

mention his one year at Oxford in his *curriculum vitae.*

Question: But don't people only put their *achievements* on their CV?Whom

woiuld you impress with an entry that says, "Left Oxford after one year"?

Are these people mad or something?

Answer: Yes – I suppose they would only be satisfied if Nana Addo

cluttered his CV with such negatives as:,

“I did not bed (sleep with) Simone de Beauvoire at the Sorbonne!

“I did not go to the Place Pigalle every night to pick up prostitutes when

I was studying in Paris!

“And I was never fished out of the Seine River in Paris at 3 a.m in the

morning, smelling strongly of *absinthe!”*

Because of the irrelevant questions being asked of Nana Addo by NDC

propagandists, NPP propagandists have also -- regrettably -- begun to cast

aspersions on the educational qualifications of both President John Mahama

and Vice-President Kwesi Amissah-Arthur. I strongly urge the NPP

propagandists not to be trapped into "retaliating" and to desist from

delivering low blows to the NDCF candidates. You see, it is so demeaning.

It implicitly endorses the ignorant view that educational

qualificationsnecessarily determine the knowledge a person possesses.

But that is

patently untrue: many *'autodidacts'* -- Thomas Edison is an example --

equipped with a great deal of native intelligence, have contributed

immensely to the world both in the arts, the sciences and politics. But

the Ghanaian intelligentsia is so full of crappy exam-consciousness that

all they want to be able to say is "I passed the Common Entrance! I got a

first! I got a two-one!" As if someone who got a two-two didn't work for

it, or that exam jitters do not exist to thwart people's expectations from

exam results. They are so, so superficial. The question should be: what has

a person used his education for, not *how or where *he got it from!

-------

Now, I was sitting ‘my somewhere’ drinking a cold beer on a sweaty

afternoon at Ashale Botwe, and munching my way through some glorious roasted

ripe plantain and groundnuts, when, completely out of the blue, two

Ghanaian women demonstrated for me – without, of course, taking any notice

of me – the fun that the election campaign’s slogans and songs are

generating for members of the populace.

One of the ladies sang, trying to imitate the radio adfverts: “*John Mahama

aaa na ookoroh!”* (It is John Mahatma who is going [to be President] ).

And she danced a little jig from her hips down. I hid my mouth, unable to

stop laughing.

Then, as if they had rehearsed a *pas-de-deux* (a dance executed by two

people) the other one also responded with a jig, whilst singing this

retort: * “Yebedii bi keke! ”* (We came to do nothing but eat some [of

the money!])

My word! It was priceless! Where else but in Ghana would you get such

beautiful spontaneity? Yet people think we’re going to chop one another’s

heads off on 7 December! They just don’t know Ghana, do they? The rascals

who resort to violence will be laughed out of court – by the ordinary,

sensible, humorous people of Ghana -- such as the two ladies who made my

day! Why should such good-natured people have to change their easy

attitude to life, because of a mere election? I mean -- dancing a jig and

singing at midday, for no apparent reason! Boy, Ghana sweet oh! Work hard

and get money, and lower your expectations, and 'Ogyakrom' won't hold too

many terrors for you.

----

Another interesting discovery I made on my recent trip is that

thematuritywith which Ghanaians are approaching politics these days is

sometimes

quite astoundingly breath-taking. Whereas in the past, politics could

break family ties, to say nothing of the bonds of friendship, the same

cannot be said of today. The evidence for this is that the spokespersons of

*both* President John Mahama and his main opponent, Nana Akufo Addo, are

siblings!

Yes -- they are John Jinapor (Spokesperson for Mahama and the senior

brother) and Samuel Abu Jinapor (spokesperson for Nana Addo, and the

younger of the two brothers)!

In fact, their relationship has been the source of serious vexation to

one of the more idiotic NDC Internet propagandists. This guy suspects

treachery everywhere, and wonders how the two brothers can sometimes

“ride in the same car” together! He speculates endlessly about what they

might be talking about. Backward as he is, he clearly implies that they

might reveal secrets to each other! But he lacks the intelligence to

realise that were they to reveal their bossews' secrets to each other, they

would simply cancel each other out! He is so atavistic! Does he not know

that politics is about *ideas?* That, in any case, some people take the

ethics of their chosen professions so seriously that the two Jinapors have

probably sworn not to talk politicsd to each other? If they've had the

moral strength to join two different political parties, why can't they also

be upright enough to vow not to discuss each other’s politics, when they

are together? I bet they kid each other endlessly -- and why not? They are

full-blooded Ghanaians equipped with Ghanaian good humour, are they not?

It says much, not just for the two brothers, but also for their respective

employers, that they can accept that no person should be judged merely on

the basis of his family relationships, or other associations, only, but on

the basis of his own actions and performance. I doff my hat to all of them

and commend their political maturity to the rest of their followers, some

of whom regard party politics as a dirty game to be carried out as if it

was a vendetta waged by “blood enemies”. I am sure that both Nana Addo and

President Mahama – as well as the two Jinapors – get their ears full of

silly denunciations of their situation, by intolerant or fanatical members

of their own parties. The brothers, in particular, must hold on to their

positions in a steadfast manner, for they are setting a really good example

to all Ghanaians, in terms of sheer political tolerance. Well, it

shouldn't surprise

us, should it? Who invented the "skirt and blouse" way of voting? Not the

ordinary men and women of Ghana?

('Skirt and blouse' is a sophiosticated way of voting, whereby the same

person can vote for a *presidential *candidate from one party and yet vote

for a different *parliamentary* candidate from another party!)

======

I end this article with a heartfelt plea to our so-called journalists and

-- especially the pamphleteers masquerading as journalists: Please,

whatever you do, *do not invent news*. In an election campaign, there are

so many issues that can be used to fight your opponents. So there is no

need to resort to the invention of falsehood or the distortion of the truth

in such a manner that you attribute statements to people who have never

entertained the ideas you claim they possess. SUCH ACTIONS DISCREDIT ALL

JOURNALISTS and earn us the distrust of the public.

By the same token, propagandists should desist from deliberately lying

about things their parties have *not *done. It is unedifying, for instance,

for the NDC to have claimed to be distributing free laptops to individuals

in institutions (who do not exist) and then have to come back to publicly *

“correct”* what were called “*anomalies” *in the exercise. Above all, the

NDC should remember that it is public money that was used to obtain the

laptops and that their distribution should therefore be done scrupulously

on the basis of objective criteria and not to achieve cheap party

political advantage.

For, mark it upon the wall: anyone who takes the Ghanaian electorate for

fools has got a good think coming. Kufuor lost the election for the NPP in

2008 largely because he ignored the resentment with which people viewed the

new Flagstaff House he was building, the money for which could have been

better used to improve, say, the Nsawam-Suhum-Apedwa road. The people

know what a bribe is, and they can ask themselves the question: if these

people had any good intentions about improving life for us, the people of

the country, why would they need to bribe me to vote for them?

As my head-teacher used to say when we continued talking after he'd warned

us to keep quiet: "Some people are kicking against the pricks!"

--

www.cameronduodu.com