Remember when years gone by when what mattered most in the world was to hurry to school in order to sing the alphabets as if they were songs and then hurry up home to play a game of crown-cocks? At that time, nothing else mattered except the things that friends said which got you agitated enough to take away your plastic ball before the football match was over; "m'agye me ball" .
Funny enough, that is what the whole political life is gradually becoming. We spend a lot of money and other resources bantering about the possible meaning of what someone said some days ago to some group of people, or possibly psycho-analyzing him/her in order to read meanings hitherto unintended when some speech was made. After all, we have a more than willing gossip crew who in the name of investigative journalism become serious threats to our national security without even knowing their error.
Nowadays, it is almost as if a current journalist is one who succeeds in getting a politician or his/her allies to lock horns in a never ending give and take of what some political figure did to cause the under-development of this nation and where the nation would have been had he/she not done what he/she already did. While it is good to get different sides of a story, journalists should understand that they owe it to the masses, most of whom depend on them for information, to report accurately what was said without adding their own flavors and seasoning to the facts. The whole issue of analysis should be left to experts who are expected to be impartial and unbiased. But it appears in Ghana, politicians and journalists have become experts in all areas of national life; from religion, through education, economics, medicine, and the list goes on.
What is achieved at the end of the day is that we have a lot of wrong versions of true facts out there that the listener is left totally confused. To make matters worse, radio and TV panelists are made up of representatives from political parties instead of analysts who are believed to be experts in their chosen and respective fields. Only in so doing can we achieve any value from the national political discourse. At the very least, when faced with facts, expert analysts agree unlike party faithfuls who would rather defend the indefensible. After all, who would ever want to be accused with pointing the left hand to his/her father's house?
Current events have saddened me to the extent that were I with super-human powers, I would immediately cause some serious discomfort to all responsible for completely diverting national attention from more important issues to banter about trivialities, such as the level of remorse the president had when he apologized to former President Kuffour and the Chief Justice, or what Akuffo Addo meant by "all die be die" and for that matter, which category of people make up Akans according to Akuffo Addo. As a people, is it not just plainly reckless to leave such issues as how to block the revenue leakages at the ports, improve education, energy, transportation, employment, etc. in order to talk about comments passed by one person or the other which, in the long run, would not be valid contributions to the main issues of national development?
We have become a nation of toddlers who have failed to see the necessity of keeping our country clean, respect our elders and leaders, think of making rather than consuming products, solve problems rather than cause them, show good initiative rather than thwart existing ones, and the most disheartening of all, allowing ourselves to be led astray by a few favor-seeking, fame-thirsty and power-hungry individuals who would do any and everything to see that they are the center of attention and none other.
If we are not able to change, then election periods will always become volatile moments when any little thing would plunge the entire country into chaos or worse still, war. The youth should know that they are better than they are made out to be by some unscrupulous politicians. They have what it takes to make it in life without tying in their lot with politicians to curry political favor. The Journalists whose careers are built on sensationalizing every bit of news item should be aware that the instability the court will affect them as well in the event that the nation bursts into flames. As for the few bad nuts within the political parties, the question is at what point is the state more important than personal interests?
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