“Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbour to compromise whenever you can.”
Abraham Lincoln
“If there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers.”
Charles Dickens
CAVEAT LECTOR (Let the Reader Beware). It is like its counterpart: Caveat Emptor (Let the Buyer Beware), fully expressed as: “Caveat Emptor, quia ignorare non debuit quod jus alienum emit” (Let a purchaser beware, for he ought not to be ignorant of the nature of the property which he is buying from another party). Readers may choose not to read this piece, if it will spoil their appetite.
As the US votes kept coming last week, one could hear Donald Trump say: “We were winning in all the key locations, by a lot, actually, and then our numbers started miraculously getting whittled away in secret.” Then: “It’s amazing how these mail-in ballots are so one-sided. It’s a corrupt system.” He planned to go to court, because he alleged fraud. His supporters chanted: “Let every legal vote be counted”, and “stop the steals”. Mail-in voting had for long been used, and three states vote exclusively by mail-in for all their elections: Hawaii, Oregon and Washington, and ironically, Donald Trump himself had voted by mail.
Go to court? Is that why Trump padded the Supreme Court with sympathisers of his party? Some people criticise lawyers for perversion of the rule of law, maintaining the privileges of the wealthy and powerful, using sophistry and “ad hominem” arguments (based on feelings of prejudice rather than facts), and twisting the meaning of words in unfamiliar source. Our minds race back to Alexander Pope: “A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep or taste not, the Pierian spring; There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, And drinking largely sobers again.” Then we recall what the riotous anarchist, Dick the Butcher, said in Henry VI, as a rough solution to the problems of the society: “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” Jack Cade: “Nay, that I mean to do… some say the bee stings, but I say it is the bee’s wax, for I did but seal once to a thing, and I was never mine own man since.”
It is not surprising that many white racists – and it is institutional racism – say they cannot unite (with the Democrats) now, because “the wound is too open”. The Democrats are grinning to the top. Ironically, all Americans are immigrants but the racism in a lot of them makes them treat all non-whites as low-class citizen, not “All men are equal”, as the American Constitution bids them. Biden is proud to say he is Irish. His great-great-grandfather Edward Blewitt, had left Temple town, Cooley peninsula off the coast of Ireland for America in the late 1840s, and he was not an exceptionally brilliant student but got a first degree in Political Science, and later got admitted into the American Bar as a lawyer. Trump is German, and his mother, Mary Anne McLeod came from Hebridean Isle off the west coast of Scotland. His father, Fred Trump, came from Bobenheim am Berg, a village in the Palatinate, Germany to America in the 1880s, but when he visited Scotland in 2008, he said: “I think I do feel Scottish.” What about Kamala Harris, the Vice President-elect? Father, Dr. Donald Harris, a Jamaican economics professor at Stanford University. Mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris from India. Kamala says America is a land of probabilities, and opportunities. This is the lady Trump describes as “the meanest, most horrible, most disrespectful.” Kamala is a pacesetter for blacks and for women. Belligerent Trump would not behave like a unifier – reminding the world COVID-19 is a Chinese Disease!
Donald Trump did not appear to a lot of people as a President who exuded charm. He reminded some of us of Field Marshall Idi Amin of Uganda, the dictator of Africa. And who wouldn’t love Biden? The man whose father told him: “…keep the faith”; his grandmother told him: “spread the faith”. We pray for him to succeed in the “Battle for the Soul of America”, despite the “embarrassment” of Trump refusing to continue the “handover process”. And who would go for President Trump who uses salty language: “Joe Biden was only a good Vice President because he understood how to kiss Barack Obama’s ass.”
And who says the success of the Democrats in the US depicts success of the NDC in Ghana because “when America sneezes, the world catches a cold?” Are the features or elements the same? Yes, both Republicans and NPP use the elephant as their logo, but that is just where the similarities end (the Democrats use the donkey, NDC uses an umbrella). Biden was not a defeated candidate like Mahama who is seeking a comeback, and because of a female Vice President. Then, Brigitte Dzogbenuku of the Progressive People’s Party; or Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings of the National Democratic Party; or even Akua Donkor of the Ghana Freedom Party should win hands down because they have gone a notch higher, to be leaders of their respective parties. If anything, the NDC is getting close to the Republicans, some people think, for the penchant of their leader to use imprudent language. Maria Tabaka says: “No one has to be more masterful in crafting their personal brand than a presidential candidate – the eyes of an entire nation (or world even) are on you.” In politics, your words matter.
In reference to the Airbus Saga which the Special Prosecutor alluded to in his Report on the Agyapa Deal, John Mahama who had been an Assemblyman, a Member of Parliament, a Deputy Minister, a Minister, a Vice President, and a President, noted: “If you (Martin Amidu) were man enough, present Agyapa and do a report on Airbus separately. And I will come as a man and answer you on Airbus. If you think I’m indicted in Airbus, accuse me directly. But because he is a coward and he knew they were going to discuss Agyapa, he put a paragraph on Airbus to equalise the discussion. I mean, what stupidity is this Ehhh? “Et tu, Brute?” “O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts, and men have lost their reason.” The great orator, Marcus Antonius, at Julius Caesar’s death could not contemplate the reason for the treachery. We cannot comprehend this remark either. We are writing on American election, so we have no business discussing Airbus? And the wordsmiths would tell you, there are less pungent synonyms for “stupidity”. Forget about “idiocy”, “feeble-mindedness”, “absurdity”, “nonsense”, “lunacy”, “fatuousness”. What about “shallowness” or “imprudence”? Sammy Gyamfi could have used the word “stupidity” and all we would have said would be: He is a child, “The thing make our mouths big, we dey pray God, you too go grow, by-by you go know.” In Ghana, we often use “unfortunate” for a detestable incident. Among the five broad principles of equity is: “He who seeks equity must do equity.” So Mahama starts a running battle, which he eventually loses because it lacks a sense of presidential decorum. Joe Biden, when forced to comment on Trump’s refusal to cooperate with him on the “transition”, was caught saying: “… how can I say this tactfully…” We always admonish people and say with Andy Rooney “Keep your words soft and sweet, you never know when you will eat them”, and Bernard Shaw says: “Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.”
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From Africanus Owusu – Ansah