Dzifa Gomashie
The country’s body politic has been tainted by characters who have made the otherwise decent enterprise look like the preserve of hate speech mongers.
With next year’s general election fast approaching, a section of the public, especially political activists have made it their business to engage in smear campaigns against their opponents.
Sadly enough, these developments reach a crescendo anytime we are faced with a national challenge such as the humanitarian disaster that has occasioned the spillage of the Akosombo Dam.
In more serious societies, the people unite in circumstances such as the catastrophe in the Tongu area to find solutions to the problem. In our case, some of our leaders capitalise on the pain of compatriots to score cheap political points.
Unfortunately, those engaged in this dangerous game are people we voted for to provide the needed leadership to improve our wellbeing.
One of the highest Honours, we as a country bestow on our people for meritorious service is the Order of the Volta. We believe that the way our people are conducting the business of public affairs in recent times is not good enough.
We are forced to ask the question whether the country can boast any role models in recent times.
Some of the people we used to hold in high esteem could not stand the integrity test during the banking crisis. Presently, some of the pronouncements of our leaders in politics, media, civil society, religion and academia leave sour taste in the mouths of many people.
Some have become Jack of all trades, masters of none providing prescriptions for challenges they have no iota of ideas about. So now those who are teaching social sciences at the universities are prescribing solutions to the engineering problems at the Akosombo Dam.
Such people just want to be heard and it is quite disturbing these professors have found allies in some media houses to impose their ignorance on us with their ugly noises.
A few years ago, some of our compatriots proposed another honour in sharp contrast to the Order of the Volta for those who are bent on defecating on our national pride, especially those who have verbal diarrhea when there is a debate on any issue of national concern.
This honour is christened, the Order of the Vulture, for those who have turned vices into virtues thereby leading many of our people, especially the youth astray.
In one particular political tradition in our country, there is an unannounced competition for insults and mudslinging, and those who “perform well” are rewarded with positions. And so even with a matter as dire as the disaster caused by the Akosombo Dam spillage, some NDC leaders including MPs and lawyers went for their brushes to paint the President of the Republic, Nana Akufo-Addo in the NPP colours, claiming he was mute because of politics.
The MP for Ketu South, Mrs. Dzifa Gomashie described the President as being insensitive to the plight of the flood victims because of the voting pattern in the region.
If our politics, which normally is a contest of ideas, has not become so divisive would Mrs. Gomashie play politics with an issue as dire as what our compatriots face in Tongu instead of mobilising national action to ameliorate the sufferings of the victims?
Again, if the culture of the Order of the Vulture has not become part of us as some want to swim with pigs or join vultures on the dumpsite, would Lawyer Tamakloe retort “what nonsense” in reaction to an anecdote by President Akufo-Addo at Mepe last Monday?