June 4 - A reflection

On a day like this, I miss Papa J the face and moral compass of our society born out of the June 4 1979 revolution in Ghana! 🇬🇭

Even more, the spirit of positive defiance against moral decay in public life is totally and utterly missing from our conscience as a nation.

Timidity and exaggerated deference towards authority has completely replaced the backbone of young people of Ghana.

Wrong is only seen to be done by those who belong to a different political party from our own.

We see no corruption as long as the subject of interrogation is our friend, puppet master, comes from the same ethnicity or political tribe.

Justice in Ghana has been reduced to “doing good to our friends and bad to our perceived enemies” - even when we cannot tell the difference between our friends and enemies.

While political opponents see each other as enemies and are prepared to destroy each other for power, we-the-people get caught up in this bubble and turn a blind eye to the real enemies - the corrupt people in authority regardless of their political coloration.

Political party colors have now become a ruse for the corrupt elite to hide behind for mass protection from the same poor people they have stolen from. The moral decay in our polity has been given impetus by the cover of political party colors and the sub-culture of collective guilt or innocence that has provided an exit for the free escape of the real enemies of the people.

We seem to have lost our collective righteous indignation in a country where nearly ten Ghanaians are shot and killed during a so-called democratic election by security forces - who by the way took their unlawful orders from the ruling political forces - and yet there is no public anger expressed against such injustice four years later.

What should we expect in the next election from the same political and security forces? Clearly, there will be a doubling down on impunity where there are no consequences from the masses!

Surely, if the youth of 1979 were angrier and thirstier for justice, If they were more defiant against injustice in the polity, if they were less timid and less exaggerated in their deference towards authority, then clearly the Ghana of 1979 was better than the Ghana of today. And that simply means this country is not moving forward. It is not even stagnant. Ghana is moving backwards - thanks to its timid young people of today!