By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
April 8, 2015
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net
The decision by a remarkable number of young prominent media operatives and other young professionals to throw their hats in the ring, in the lead-up to Election 2016, ought to come as good news to Ghanaians on the lookout for competent and progressive personalities among the membership of our National Assembly Representaties, otherwise known as Parliamentarians. The problem here, however, is that it is not very clear to me whether each and every one of these water-testing candidates are in for the progress and development of our country, rather than being first and foremost in the race for themselves. For let's face it, the job of parliamentarian is unarguably the most lucrative job in Ghana today. And I am quite certain that Ghana's parliament is already replete with a remarkable percentage of young progressive professionals.
And it is for the foregoing reason that I do not necessarily agree with former President John Agyekum-Kufuor that the decision by unarguably enterprising young Ghanaians like Messrs. Kojo (Kwadwo?) Oppong-Nkrumah, George Andah and Gilbert Aggrey (aka Abeiku Santana) to become professional politicians would redound to the benefit of the Ghanaian citizenry at large (See "Kufuor Lauds MP Ambitions of Oppong-Nkrumah, Santana, Others" Ghanaweb.com 4/8/15). We even hear that Mr. Kufuor's media favorite, Ms. Gifty Anti, is smack among the pack. The former president is, however, apt to observe that "Naturally, they [i.e. these young professionals] should want to make an impact because, after all, it is their nation and it is their future; and if they don't help shape it well, they will live to suffer [and regret] in due course."
What is also true is that the people whose mandate these urban young professionals are seeking in order to both govern and manage the affairs of their prospective constituents and the nation at large, ought to ask these water-testing parliamentary candidates, especially the media operatives among them, the same hard questions that people like Mr. Oppong-Nkrumah have had occasion to pose to their political and parliamentary predecessors. It simply ought not to become a mere popularity contest, whereby the mainstream media fixtures among the contestants facilely coast to victory on the sheer strength of their formidable media presence.
For instance, I want to see these young men and women roll out comprehensive platform agendas that they intend to doggedly pursue as handsomely paid representatives of their primary constituents and the nation at large. I would also like to see debate moderators and editors and publishers of the leading newspapers and the electronic media grill powerful and influential would-be parliamentarians like Nana Oye Lithur, Gilbert Aggrey and George Andah vis-a-vis the precise methodologies by which they intend to realize their agendas and/or political objectives, as well as their electioneering campaign promises.
For example, each and every one of these candidates ought to be able to readily recite from their proverbial fingertips the most pressing needs of their prospective constituents, and what they have done or attempted to do about the same in their present capacities, which ought to serve as meaningful signals to the people they intend to serve that, indeed, they possess what it takes to help meliorate their most basic and dire socioeconomic problems. It is only through such systematic questioning and grilling that Ghanaian voters would be able to sift the genuine statesmen and women from the patently slick opportunists.
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