Let Us Aim To Make Ghana Africa's Most Free Society!

I could not help feeling sorry for Mother Ghana, when I recently heard

calls from a number of practicing journalists that the bad nuts in the

profession ought to be reined in, through controls of one kind or the

other. Professor Kwame Karikari was the lone voice advocating leaving

the status quo untouched. What is it, dear reader, which motivates

those who think that we ought to busy ourselves with empowering

tomorrow’s tyranny with the building-blocks, to enable such a regime

muzzle the right to freedom of expression, of future generations of

Ghanaians? Do they not understand that we are in the knowledge age –

and that it is only those societies in which there is a free

interchange of ideas, in which the leading-edge ideas will come to the

fore: and help propel nations (like ours!) towards a prosperous

future? Why should we not rather seek to make our country Africa's

most free society, and once again become a beacon for those of our

fellow Africans who live under some of the most brutal dictatorships

in the world – and inspire them to fight to create free societies too

in their oppressed countries?

Should we not tolerate the transgressions of the unethical; the

uncouth; the biased; the irresponsible; and the corrupt; in the

profession, in exchange for continuing to enjoy the freedom to

criticize and check those who lead our country: and make it impossible

for tyranny to ever return to blight the lives of present and future

generations of Ghanaians? Instead of wasting our energies thinking up

clever ways to restrain the media, let us rather aim to make Ghana as

free a society as the United States of America is, if not even freer

than that bastion of freedom. It is shortsighted in the extreme to

think that in the Internet age, anyone can effectively control free

speech, anywhere on the surface of the planet Earth.

Can the criticism-averse and smug-geniuses amongst those who surround

the president at the Osu Castle, for example, who loathe one simply

because one dares expose them for the third-rate individuals they

really are (who are only lucky to be at the seat of power on account

of their being in the entourage of the presidential candidate of

today's ruling party in Ghana, the National Democratic Congress (NDC),

during the campaign for the December 2008 presidential elections!),

ever stop an old fool like me from speaking my mind online, even

though they are making a stab at it? We must not let the sins of

unprofessional journalists (who have sold their consciences for a

handsome profit to crooked politicians!), and a majority of whom have

not even mastered the basic tool of their profession, the English

language, to ever stop ordinary people from enjoying the right to

express themselves freely in newspapers and on the airwaves of the

electronic media, in our homeland Ghana. Period. A word to the wise…

Google: "ghanapolitics".