A few days ago, the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) undertook a major decongestion exercise to rid the Circle Interchange of hawkers who had usurped pavements earmarked for pedestrians.
While we salute the Rapid Response Taskforce of the AMA for the efforts, we would ask that they do not follow the path of others before them.
Their predecessors, after grabbing the headlines following their success with decongestion exercises, soon lose their guard only for the hawkers to return with a vengeance.
Today the places where the hawkers had constituted dangerous nuisances now look beautiful and neat with pedestrians walking at their own pace without the usual hustle and bustle created by the usurpation of the place by the strangers.
Our greatest fear has however come to pass. We were expecting unpatriotic and uncivilized politicians to use the exercise to win cheap political leverage and it has happened.
No sooner had the exercise been over than a certain NDC activist Solomon Nkansah go on air to say that the hawkers deserve what has befallen them, adding that the NPP deceived them to vote for them and now they have been forcefully removed from the place.
We wish we did not tread on this path. We are constrained to be a bit harsh in our condemnation of such imbecility from a man who has been around for so long in politics to understand what is in the best interest of the nation and what is not.
The national interest supersedes the parochial interests of selfish politicians such as this man. Such unproductive inciting of the hawkers against the state should not be entertained under any circumstance.
We never heard the NPP tell Ghanaians that they would be encouraged to work against the interest of the state when they vote for them. He sounded as though the NPP during their campaign told hawkers who breach bylaws that they would not be sanctioned for their actions.
It is the duty of all politicians to seek the progress of the nation and to understand the importance of such actions as are being taken to restore sanity in the country’s various departments.
So Solomon Nkansah is implying by his remarks that had the NDC won the polls the hawkers would have been allowed to take over the pavements and endanger the lives of pedestrians who would then be compelled to compete with motorists on the roads. That should tell Ghanaians the nature of the party the man represents.
The action of the AMA at the interchange should not be condemned by any well-meaning citizen of this country, regardless of party affiliations.
The objective of political parties is to assemble citizens who share the same ideals that in their views would move the country forward and to propel these to win political power.
Indeed no party would win political power if their intention is to run the country down by allowing lawlessness to rein.
It is totally nonsense to embark on such silly trips simply to make a ruling party look bad in the eyes of hawkers when indeed the actions of these persons are an eyesore.
The late Salifu Amankwah ruled the Circle area like a dictator but he achieved his objective of instilling discipline.
He belonged to the PNDC and eventually NDC. What about that?