Politics is serious business. It is from political parties, serious ones of course, that the president, who in turn forms a government, is chosen by the people. It is not for nothing therefore, that Electoral Laws exist to ensure that the serious business of politics is not contaminated by jokers who understand next to nothing about the nuances of running a country.
Unfortunately and regrettably, we have allowed what should otherwise be a serious business to be occupied by jokers who ironically are being funded by money siphoned indirectly from state coffers. The means by which such funds or subventions, as some cynics prefer to refer to, are siphoned for the purpose is so complex that it can hardly be isolated for legal action to a large extent. But for such oxygen, the jokers who parade themselves as leaders of non-existent political parties would not even make headlines in the media.
They are paid as it were, and allowed to operate as parties for creating nuisances on the political space when they can’t boast of offices across the country.
In some past editions we had cause to question how some of the so-called groupings were registered by the Electoral Commission (EC) in the first place, given the fact that they come nowhere near satisfying the requirements as spelt out in the Electoral Laws.
It would appear therefore, that the EC deliberately overlooked the Electoral Laws just so all manner of persons can style themselves as flag bearers of political parties.
Yesterday, a man we are constrained to highlight in our editorial column made headlines when he said he formed a political party just so he could continuously attack the flag bearer of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) Nana Akufo-Addo. Bunkum!
We do not know whether it is for this reason that his non-existent APC was registered as a political party. Floating and managing a political party is not like doing a failed pizza business as Hassan Ayariga did and eventually went bankrupt. Politics, like business, demands a high dose of intelligence to be viable and successful, which Hassan Ayariga lacks.
For a man who would allow himself to be used by the NDC to cough anytime Nana Akufo-Addo commenced to speak during the last presidential debate, he can be regarded as a man with little or no intelligence worth the candle. It is amazing that such characters would be tolerated as players on the political space.
Why should we allow the likes of Hassan Ayariga and Akua Donkor to reduce our politics to chicanery with the connivance of the ruling party and the EC? Don’t we appreciate the importance of raising the bars to give politics the deference it deserves so characters who go into it do not do so because they want to make things uncomfortable for those they hate? Or as demanded by their paymasters?
Is that how low our politics has degenerated? No wonder we are still groping in the dark so many years after independence with our so-called elites facilitating the nonsense because it inures to their parochial interests. Ghanaians have a choice to make about who should lead them.