If Party Loyalty, Why Not National Surrender?

EDITORIAL

Anytime one listens to political party campaigns, a repeated slogan is loyalty to party and party principles as a basis or critical qualification above any other reason for election. The most recent killer is when Kofi Adams as contender for the position of the National Organizer for the National Democratic Congress (NDC) was given a killer punch by Yaw Boateng Gyan, the incumbent that loyalty is more critical despite any other qualifications to the job.

A lot is said to give meaning to party loyalty. Some say it is about the readiness to go to every extent to ensure the good standing of the party even to death. Others argue that defending the principles of the party and winning more souls or members to the party’s fold represents an unflinching loyalty to same. It is often the case that members of any party tend to reward such individuals by voting for them in competitive elections for various positions in the party. Many a person who seeks to rise in the ranks of the party would endeavour to earn the accolade loyal member.

However, when it comes to the national situation, the issue of loyalty takes an entirely new twist. It doesn’t matter how much disloyal one has been or is being. The rise to higher positions on the national sphere is regardless of that. It is more about who can win the majority of votes. To the extent that people who adverse findings are made against, still find their way to higher offices in the national sense.

For the purpose of specifics, we would want to single out the first Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Mr. Ebo Barton-Odro for mention. This man has acted in several ways to the detriment of the nation yet he is occupying an Office so high in the august House of Parliament. His despicable behaviour came to the attention of the Supreme Court where in the highest court of the land said among other things that the public officials who superintended the payment of the bogus judgement debts to Isofoton and Watervaille, ought to have known on the face of available documentation that the claimants had made dubious claims. Yet no one is questioning this man. Why?

We are yet to hear political office seekers campaign on the subject of loyalty to nation as it is often done in internal political party contests. If we were to encourage that phenomenon, much of the stagnation and retrogression we witness in Ghana would be a thing of the past.

One wonders how a loyal national office holder would or could allow what happened in Ghana’s campaign to Brazil 2014. Just watching the presidential commission into the Brazil fiasco is enough to ask, would anyone allow his/her money to be wasted like that? If not why would they do that to a suffering Ghana in the name of party politics?

Or is it the case that our party loyalty breeds national disloyalty? That the more loyal we are to the party leads us to be disloyal to country and people? Whatever Ghana is going through is the making of the Ghanaian. It is so amazing that people get unto the national scene through party loyalty and then use that office to betray the cause of Ghana.