CAN POLITICS CURE OUR WOES. By Mustapha Abdul Hamid Bawre

This week has been perhaps the saddest week for me in my entire political life. At the same time, it has set me wondering and asking myself a few genuine questions:1. Can politics and politicians cure the ills of our society?2. Are we as Ghanaians genuinely interested in the truth or are we all hypocrites?3. Can we ever make our leaders genuinely accountable to the wishes and aspirations of the people?4. Is there too much politics in Ghana?5. Can really honest people engage in politics?

I am sure these are questions that all of us have been asking ourselves. All of us have our own answers to these questions. But I guess it is high time we asked these questions openly, so that we can have a national conversation that inures to the benefit of everybody and ultimately the nation. Politics is generally translated as statecraft. In other words, politics is the art of managing a state. If politics is the art of managing a state, then the question arises as to whether political values ought to be truthful and honest or insincere and hypocritical.

When we were growing, we were told that “politics is a dirty game”. What it means is that politics and for that matter politicians are a bunch of dishonest and crooked individuals whose values are twisted. If politics is the art of managing a state and the management process and the managers are a bunch of crooked, dishonest people with twisted values, then how does politics advance the course of a nation?

Some answer that “it is not politics that is dirty, but dirty people make it dirty”. Well I don’t know which comes first. Whether it is politics itself that is dirty that then dirtied its players or it is the players who are dirty and who made it dirty. It is the chicken and egg situation. And the argument will rage till perhaps the end of time.

But whether it is politics that makes its players dirty or it is the players that make politics dirty, the question still remains whether indeed politics can cure the ills of society. According to Aristotle, well being consists of ends and the means to achieving those ends. Therefore for men to achieve their ends, their means and ends must always agree. So when men set for themselves good ends but make a wrong choice of the means towards attaining those ends, the ends will not be achieved.

And to my mind, this is perhaps the principal reason why we have been wallowing in this quagmire for such a long time. We have decided as a nation that we want prosperity for ourselves and therefore for the nation. This is perhaps the ultimate aim of all nations, for as Aristotle states, “the happiness of the individual members of a state is the happiness of the state”.

But the problem is that while our end is good, the means that we have chosen towards the realisation of that end is bad: dirty politics. What is worse is that we have accepted the dirty politics as the true politics. And we actually glorify it. We have decided as a nation that the truth hurts and therefore we should avoid as much pain as possible by hiding the truth and living the lie.

I have come under intense heat from politicians of the NPP and especially admirers of former President Kufuor because I stated that in my view he made certain judgments which in my view turned out wrong in spite of his huge success as President. In other words, as NPP people we should insist all the time that our leaders are incapable of error or wrong judgment.

And as NDC people we should insist that leaders of the NDC are incapable of wrong doing. In other words, we should raise our political leaders to sainthood. While I may be compelled never ever to openly reveal wrong in the NPP, I am hard pressed at attributing such divine qualities to human beings, more so when those human beings are politicians.

Indeed I find it absolutely contradictory, that we say that politics is dirty, yet when people reveal the dirt, we cry foul. To my mind we are clear to ourselves as a nation where we want to go, but I guess it will take a while to achieve our collective aim if we decide that politicians be raised to sainthood.

Presidents are entrusted with literally the destiny of the people over whom they preside. Today Atta Mills is President. He is clothed, fed and transported around with our money. Not just that, but he literally has power to do with our money what he wants to do with it. When he has finished his four year mandate, we should not have the right to ask in spite of whatever successes he may chalk, what other decisions he took which were not exactly beneficial to us?

Or must the asking necessarily be done only by NPP people? Must NDC people who ask these questions be termed enemies of their party? Some body told me that indeed every body recognises that my assertions were correct and legitimate. But the reason people are outraged is that as an NPP person, the impact is greater. According to him we should leave the wrong side of Kufuor’s rule to the NDC so that we can dismiss it.

In the same vein, the evils that Jerry did should be left to people like us, so that it will be easy for the NDC to dismiss what we say as the ranting of Jerry’s opponents. So what we are literally saying as a nation is that there should never be a genuine attempt at soul searching. There is virtually an agreement amongst us that criticism should not be a serious matter. We should criticise just for the sake of opposing others.

“An unexamined life” they say “is not worth living”. And who is better placed to examine our lives for us except ourselves? Others will argue that yes, we can examine the ills of our governments but we should do so secretly. In other words, as they say “let us not wash our dirty linen in public”. But the linen (in this case the nation) is public linen. And public linen can only be washed in public.

A President presiding over a nation can hardly be reduced to a private matter in my view. Indeed whether he was NDC or NPP he was virtually a President for all of us as indeed Atta Mills says he will be as if he has a choice anyway. So why people will think that one half of the nation should concentrate only on trumpeting the good of the President (in this case his party people) and the other half should concentrate on trumpeting his ills (in this case his opponents) beats my imagination.

I am hard pressed at accepting this rather ridiculous arrangement.
While politicians have this rather ridiculous arrangement amongst themselves and while it retards the forward movement of the nation, the other segment who say they are not politicians stand aloof. Indeed they claim that it is the business of politicians and not theirs.

At the end of the day however, it affects their working conditions, their salaries, their productivity and ultimately their happiness and by extension, the happiness of the nation.
That is the reason Aristotle said that human beings are by nature political. “From these things it is evident then, that the city belongs among the things that exist by nature, and that man is by nature a political animal.

He who is without a city through nature rather than chance is either a mean sort or superior to man; he is without clan, without law, without hearth”. (Aristotle’s Politics, Page 37).
Therefore we have all turned ourselves into hypocrites and also ostriches, preferring to bury our heads in the sand and pretending that all is well. This way we can never make our leaders accountable for anything.

May be I am trying to be correct as they say. May be correctness is not workable after all. May be I am being idealistic. May be there are no ideal situations. May be I am being overly patriotic. May be patriotism does not pay. Whatever it is I think that we need to generate a debate that will set us rethinking our political values.

I have travelled around quite a bit. I think that there is too much politics in Ghana. The airwaves are dominated by too much politicking. While I thought that this political awareness will put our politicians on their toes, rather it provides for their continued comfort. Every morning when I hear the voice of “Dr. Asemfofro” or “Y2K” I know immediately what kind of argument they are going to put forth.

That kind of discourse does not generate genuine national debate. Frankly the phenomenon of serial calling does not convince any body of the respective positions of these serial callers. I am not against serial calling. I love their voices to the extent that they defend their party positions. But how many genuine fence sitters get convinced by these positions? I dare say none.

While too much politics may therefore be a measure of variety of opinion, which of course is an integral part of democracy, it has the tendency to stifle genuine debate and genuine national discourse.

For now, a great number of honest and intelligent people shudder to engage in politics because of the insincerity of politicking. But it is the inaction of those who should have acted that has afforded the opportunity for evil to prevail.

But have I attempted an answer to any of the questions with which I set out to write this article? No! Indeed I am more confused than I started.