President John Mahama has been offered a rare opportunity to prove his disdain for the politics of invectives in the country.
It has been reported that an aide to the Interior Minister described as fools those who criticise the failed ‘Nkoko Nkitinkiti’ project.
This insult which aims at the good people of this country is not only painful, it reflects the intolerance level of this government.
Unless the aide is called to order immediately, we shall be compelled to take it that he has spoken the mind of his boss and for that matter the government.
The culture of insults is one we have complained about for a while now but constrained to add that the President’s role in planting and nurturing it is indisputable. That is why when he now calls for a national forum on it, we find it a matter of derision.
During his first tenure, he was quoted as telling then Candidate Akufo-Addo that he might be sleeping when he claimed that he did not see the good roads that he John Mahama had constructed in the Western Region. There are many of such insults which he rained on his predecessor and other Ghanaians he found to be unsupportive of him.
Hypocrisy is something which is retarding our democratic journey so far, and, unless we treat it, we shall not achieve the desired goals required of us as a nation.
We have heard about a few people talking about the level of insults that has visited the country in the past few months, the impetus for which has been provided by the good and bad social media, especially TikTok.
Putting the blame on all politicians as these observers seek to do is as hypocritical as it is inappropriate.
Let us identify the source of it all, as only then shall we be on our way to tackling it head-on.
We should be bold to call them out who prayed openly for the death of the former President and described him as the master serpent of corruption.
Who said Akufo-Addo might not steal state resources personally but would have his brothers do so on his behalf so he can depend on the spoils when he is on retirement? We should be bold and stop skirting round the reality.
For now, let us admit it as citizens of a country which is expected to be a decent one, that the ambience has been fouled by insults, some of them too graphic they are unrepeatable.
The President’s body-language enmeshed in contradictory remarks as being observed won’t help matters.
We state unequivocally that his claim that he only hears about the recent arrests of TikTokers in the media cannot be true.
Ordering the Police to stop arresting persons alleged to have used hate speech on TikTok, cannot be what we want as Ghanaians, he said. This points at his preference in this conundrum we find ourselves in today.
Our take is that he would prefer a legislation to gag the people of this country even as his hounds continue to be on the prowl, spewing vile nonsense on their targets.
Let us try this approach: President John Mahama should decommission Kevin Taylor, and all others, we can bet, will ceasefire on the raging hate speech.