This is 2020. A year of madness; a year of violence; and a year of ignorance. The campaign for the hearts and minds of the electorates has turned into one long wish list. In the middle, as usual the ‘idiot’ and ‘tribe man’, who are brandishing little, little shiny things with a lot of promises to convince voters to cast their votes and give them political power to rule this country. There is no subject so petty, so personal and so absurd that our desperate politicians are not proposing to have government give the citizens free. Not surprisingly, there a few Ghanaians left who do not ask politicians to subsidise their businesses, their wives and their appetites.
The Presidency of the state, a position that should be held by people of integrity,’ is now been touted as Big Brother, Father Christmas and Magician by idiots’ and ‘tribe men’ who insists that government should become like a doting grandfather to all Ghanaians. Presidential power has made our politics more heated, more suspicious and erratic. The winner takes it all. The loser stays hungry. In this quest for unbridled power, is the ‘idiot and the ‘tribe man’, unruly, bitter and destructive politician, who win, most of the time.
The ‘idiot’ has no mental defects. He promises much but delivers so little and propaganda is the tool. The ‘idiot’ is a self-centred, selfish person who is in politics for self-gain and selfish personal pleasure. The ‘idiot’ has no virtue and no character, and has no allegiance to any ideology.
The ‘tribe man’ tag is not necessarily about ethnicity. This is a mental situation. The tribe man exploit the safety of the small group for his benefit. The tribe man is afraid of differences but uses difference to deal and convince people to pursue parochial sectional gains, most times with force and intimidation. To the small groupings, the ‘tribe man’ seem like a warrior but he is hollow in his reasoning. They exploit ethnic differences, class divisions, hate, and envy. The tribe man forces people to accept his categorisation, the discourses of “privilege” and “victimhood,” and politically loaded terms such as “minorities,” “diversity,” and “gender.”
Multi-party democracy, no doubt, has brought within the fold of political parties, opportunists – fifth columnists who simply want to use the party as a meal ticket. We cannot say we blame them. These people bring zero value to the debate. Their entire livelihood is made up of advancing conspiracy theories, gossip and character assassination. These people are frauds. They care nothing for good governance and nothing about the development of the country. They are an embarrassment to the country, and to the people who work hard to make political discourse in this country about ideas and principles. They have no business in Ghanaian politics.
We need to snap the country out of its identity trance by exposing the actors, their actions, their double speak and their empty rhetoric. The first thing to do is to dismiss the pork-loaded ploy to make the 2020 election about personalities instead of about the cost of entitlement policies on the taxpayer and the poverty it brings to the individual. As we consider our next leaders, what lessons are there for us to learn? Voters should understand that election success cannot be viewed as separate and distinct from governing failure. We should question the wisdom of leaders who establish entitlement programmes to solve all perceived problems and seem not to have a compass or any guiding principles. Our politicians think it is the role of government to provide sanitary pads to girls, is there any task inappropriate for government?
At the root of our poverty is simply the failure of public policy and the failure of political parties to take the debate beyond the mundane. The NPP team, the NDC team, my team, your team have failed in the choice of policy direction. Classical liberals that once extolled an open economy in an inclusive society and polity characterised by freedom of thought for individuals, the rule of law and property rights, now pushes policies that make the state a strong benefactor in the lives of individuals and breed dependency, passivity and servility. The label free market capitalism has been thoroughly twisted by the ‘idiot’ who has never figured out where real wealth comes from, the contribution of freedom to its creation, and the role of property rights in securing prosperity. This, after all, should be the ultimate aim of development policy. Things go wrong when we move away from a Ghanaian cultural identity centered around hard work and toward tribal identities.
Almost all our politicians have become social democrats or socialists and they seem to have completely lost their sanity? From the current epidemic of using abusive language, to the shockingly brutal and dishonest fallacy that the government could control the economy to protect the ‘common man’ from the vagaries of the free market, to the glorification of gargantuan corruption and policies of dependence, it shows clearly that Ghana is sick with a mysterious – and yes, crazy – internal enemy. The truth has become malleable, depending on power and who drives the narrative. It is now their truth and our truth. All the noise about helping the poor is about nothing but, political power. The indiscipline and the violence they unleash on the campaign trail is a good example. All the happy talk, vague promises, political programs, perhaps an angry, envy-soaked tirade or two against the ‘regime’, are just desperate ploys to win personal political power and not about the public interest.
The ‘idiot’ and ‘tribe man’ have allowed truth to be politicised over sound economic principles. The entitlement policies would bring worst economic atrocities. In fact, majority lack economic problem-solving abilities. All they have is an expansive view of presidential powers. After all these years, they still retain a magical view of the power of a president and of politicians, generally. They have created a culture of dependency. We have become an ugly generation of the dependent and the ENTITLED. In our ‘doped’ state of dependence,our ‘idiot’ leaders continue to create and serve the poor opium policies of free — FREE Healthcare, FREE Education, FREE Housing, FREE Income guarantee, and FREE Welfare … our forefathers who created the vibrant cocoa industry and the entrepreneurs who followed them to create new towns, habitats and productive wealth are rolling over in their graves.
And guess what? The majority of us have become ‘idiots’ and ‘tribe men’ in our own ways. While most have lost faith in the state, they still believe in government and magic.In the chaos, the turmoil, injustice and the politician’s inept leadership they seek peace and hope in the supernatural. The ‘sakawa’ schemes, the long journey to Benin and the willingness to sacrifice at the altar of the devil for easy money shows clearly how ludicrous our entitlement mentality becomes. Ghanaians are tired, worn thin by perceived injustices, corruption, false promises and desiring change and prosperity, but they are unlikely to find it in more entitlement programmes. It is impossible to build up a healthy society on class envy and class hatred. In a free society, citizens do not turn to the national government to solve every problem.
The growth of the nanny state has made us to miss so many opportunities to grow our economy and reduce poverty among our people and the reason is simple. Several times in our history, we have voted for the ‘idiot’ and ‘tribe man’, all of them creeping Marxists, who believe in the powers of big government as the provider, not citizens.The time has therefore come for a return to a property-owning state – a time when there was virtue in hard work and our people lived according to a strict moral code of individual initiative and a personal responsibility for success in the rural agrarian economy, which was free in all ways.
This election year offers all of us the opportunity, once again, to pick the person we thought would make the best president. Whom can we trust with power? Who among the candidates is honest and principled? It is a good bet that no matter where we are on the political spectrum—socialist, free market liberal, or something else— we want honest, humble and incorruptible men and women in government; not the ‘idiot’ with a bag full of bad policies and fallacies that will treat citizens as children, bankrupt the nation and perpetuate his power. This is the bottom line: If we want better leaders, we must become well-informed and more demanding voters. This election year, we must send a clear message to the ‘idiot’ and ‘tribe man’, indeed to all our politicians, that we will not take their failures, and betrayals anymore.
By Kwadwo Afari
The post This 2020 election should go beyond the propaganda (1) appeared first on The Chronicle Online.
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