“THE
POLITICS OF INSULT IN GHANA’S BODY POLITICS”: MY CANDID TAKE ON THIS PHENOMENON.
Ghanaians are a particular group of people who take so
much pride in the respect they accord to the elderly in society. It was very
rare growing up to hear a young man denigrate the hard earned reputation of an
elderly man who has excelled in his chosen field of endeavour in public but it
seems this is not the case anymore.
The advent of multi-party democracy from 1992, has
brought with it the opportunity for people to express views on whatever is
happening in the country provided, they exercise this right with the
responsibility it goes with it. For sometimes now this canker of insult has
silently crept into our political landscape, which has become a source of worry
to every well-meaning Ghanaian.
Ever since the nation went to the polls in 2008, the
two main contestants of the elections namely Nana Addo Dankwa Akuffo Addo of
the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) and President John Evans Atta Mills of
the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), have come under barrage of
“insults” ranging from Nana Addo being a “wee” smoker and drug peddler to the
president being gay and a man who has a child born outside wedlock with another
woman. Such statements or comments by individual who purport to be supporters
and sympathizers of the two leading political parties in the country do not
augur well for the very democracy we claim to practice.
These two reputable individuals have somehow been
keeping quiet for so long that the insults hurled at them have now become
something “normal” in the Ghanaian political context. Had they hauled
individuals who tarnish their reputation into the mud to the law courts, for
them to really prove such distasteful and disparaging comments and invariably
sentenced into prison or given hefty fines it would even discourage others who
plan on towing such lines. This is because some Ghanaians tend to feed on
rumours and hearsay not taking time to verify as to whether what is being in
the public domain is true.
I sometimes marvel as to why leading members of
political parties are quick to give political meaning to any unsavoury comment
made by a sympathizer or supporter of their party, forgetting that they will be
at the receiving end someday. Instead, they should condemn such comments in no
uncertain terms for society to acknowledge that they do not condone wrong
doing.
Sometimes we Ghanaians think as though the country is
sacrosanct from experiencing what has taken place in countries like Liberia,
Sierra Leone, and Rwanda who have witnessed bloody civil wars. Rwanda for
instance slid into civil war primarily due to an unsavoury comment made by a
journalist on a radio station describing a minority ethnic group as being
“cockroaches”. We should at all times be guided such incidents that has become
a scourge in the psyche of the nations, and are still reeling from it.
We should therefore guard the prevailing peace that
Ghana is enjoying with the utmost jealousy that it deserves, since the nation cannot
afford to pay the painful price of as has been the case with the aforementioned
countries. We should endeavour at all times to be circumspect with the comments
we make concerning our fellow Ghanaian. Political talk show hosts across the
country should bold and compel individuals who make distasteful comments about
others to retract them and render an unqualified apology or be made not to
speak on their networks again.
We have only one nation that is Ghana and we should
keep it as intact as it has been since independence.
Eric Oteng Jesse
Santa Maria, Accra
Ct3652 Cantonments,Accra.
