Politics is a complex engagement. For those outside government, criticising those at the helm is an easy picking, almost effortlessly.
While such criticisms are good, by ensuring that the rulers are kept on their toes and do not veer towards impropriety, they lose their sincerity when mischief as mostly is the case in our political ambience is what drives them.
When they take over from those they criticised and even paid the willing to embark on demonstrations to make the country ungovernable towards advancing their dirty cause, they soon realise the reality of governance.
As for the targets of their propaganda, society’s vulnerable, they realise too quickly how they were lured to join other demonstrators in the streets with placards whose inscriptions they hardly understood.
The series of chaotic demonstrations Ghanaians woke up to last year were intended to make the government unpopular. That was why the protests were hinged upon such rather intractable subjects as illegal mining and falling value of the Cedi and sometimes corruption.
It was as if those engineering the street indiscipline in the name of demonstrations could do better in managing the situations.
The demonstrations against illegal mining and its negative impact on the environment and the health of the people paid off and the opposition won the polls.
That the quality of a play can be determined in its early stages, is an Akan adage highly applicable in the political situation in the country today.
There is no denying the fact that galamsey is on an unusual ascendency. The innovation of diverting the course of water bodies now in motion in some parts of the country is scary.
The Black Volta in Buipe is a sorry sight as the colour is a worrying muddy. It shows how much illegal mining activities are taking place and impudently so by persons who could not care a hoot about the impact of their operations.
Those who led the demonstrations at the behest of persons seeking power by all means are still around but indifferent or no longer watching the water bodies in especially the gold-bearing areas of the country.
Those who think there is inordinate hypocrisy in the country are not wrong seeing how quickly these so-called galamsey activists have gone silent.
With many of them compensated for their demonstrations through government appointments, seeing no evil and speaking no evil is the preferred option.
A couple of days or so ago, we were treated to a story of about 400 persons undergoing training to come and fight illegal mining on our water bodies.
The Navy who are in charge of the training would do their best to instil the required discipline in them to fight galamsey, but would not be able to change their mindsets.
The trainees will upon the completion of their four-week training join the ranks of the illegal mining to make fortunes for themselves. After all, they are party boys who have received their dues for supporting the NDC to come to power.
We thought galamsey was going to be wiped out within the first week upon the assumption of office of the NDC. Will the state of emergency to serve as a catalyst against galamsey be imposed as the then President Akufo-Addo was being pushed to do?