Disingenuity at Work: What Went Wrong?

When people steal, we send them to jail. When children lie, we punish them. When elected officials lie, we give them power, and say that is propaganda. He who disagrees with the latter is just an opposition mole at best. Just as sex sells in the entertainment business or so I was told, so does propaganda does in Ghana politics. However, propaganda in Ghana politics is what’s standing on our way to the Promised Land. To a Ghana, where there is equal opportunity and hope for all. To a Ghana, where there is honest discussion and true democracy. Our current government is not in any way moving us towards that land. If for anything, it’s moving us farther apart from the Promised Land through propaganda.

As the learned economist, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia , once said “The Lesson from history for governments is that you cannot manage the economy with propaganda.” I beg to differ because the lesson from history is quite the opposite. Government can manage an economy with propaganda just as the NDC is doing. Disagreed? The Soviet Union is one example, there it is. I win.

The Soviet Union is a classic example of a spectacular propaganda machine at work. The citizens were told by the government to be living in ‘paradise’, everything was alright with their countries. Citizens were not allowed visit to other nations except friends of the regime. Citizens from Soviet nations who tried to flee the union were medically examined for psychiatric treatment because no ‘normal person’ could possibly saw all those cushy life style in Soviet nations and tried leaving. The propaganda was so loud and so clear such that the Soviet citizens bought that story. The people lived in that loop for so long until the invention of Television which changed the calculus. The Television allowed the people to see for themselves the truly cushy life style of the West. Sooner or later, the Soviet Union crumbled, and gave way to proper development and democracy. In hindsight, that is what President John Mahama government is governing Ghana with: propaganda.

Not in the same par with the Soviet Union but in a very similar way. The president and his government think Ghana is doing well, and the critics are just being cynical. As if to say the critics don’t just get the ‘enormous’ development because they don’t want to. Don’t take it from me; take it from president Mahama’s own mouth. He said, “Indeed, I also say when you sit in a car or in an aero plane, you don’t see how fast it is going because you are sitting in it. But when you stand outside and you see a car pass by you 120 miles per hour, you’ll see that that car is really going very fast and it is the same with an aero plane.” In other words, we neither can know when we are hungry nor can we know when we are unemployed. Instead we need a bystander (in this case, his administration) to tell us.

If you challenged this premise as dangerously deceptive. The president’s responds is simple; believe in me. As he said the other day, “if any country will make progress, it is based on the faith and believe of the citizens of that nation that their nation can be great, strong and prosperous. That is the difference in the rate of growth of nations”. By his logic, why ever work to earn a living? Just sit down and have faith that you will earn a living. I agree. That is silly and dishonesty at its best.

However, our propagandist government isn’t denying citizens the permit to travel outside the country like the Soviets did. Instead, it threatens its people who are unsatisfied to leave the country as if to imply Ghanaians are leaving in heaven and everybody in the world leaves somewhere else. Remember General Nunu Mensah infamous ‘if you are unsatisfied with Mahama government leave the nation” speech. It’s true that the government hasn’t openly said that Ghanaians are living cushy life styles than the rest of the world but I wouldn’t put off any deceptive propaganda pass this propagandist government. It is so good at doing propaganda from shifting Wayome daylight theft blame on the NPP to pushing through an outrageous tariff increase. All of these are due to the government skillful lying machine to woo the people to support virtually any bad idea.

And if history is anything to go by, we are in this propaganda for a long time. In the case of the Soviet Union it was the Television that brought them transparency to reject the status quo. In our case, it’s going to be our own vigilantes citizens such as Martin Amidu. Citizens who will dare to challenge the NDC propaganda machine with the ugly truth.

That truth is simply missing in our political discourse today. Reporters and citizens alike seem too much interested in the rats’ race, i.e. the political fights between political parties. For instance, Murtala’s says 90% of GYEEDA contracts were signed by the NPP or the NPP says Ghana’s performance was abysmal in 2013. As usual, reporters are likely not to investigate the truth of either statement. In an ideal society, wouldn’t you expect the media to investigate both statements to inform the public? Apparently, Ghana is not an ideal society yet. And the people are less interested in truths or facts either. All what they need to hear is what the politicians say. Thus it, and nothing else. Reporters are too busy reporting the headline news on what the politicians say without following through to determine the accuracy of those catchy statements, example the NDC’s defector national anthem of “government has put measures in place to mitigate the suffering of Ghanaians” without mentioning a specific thing .To my utter surprise, without reporters asking for specifics. Reporters are too passionate to report on the promises of politicians without following through to those promises execution. For instance, General Aseidu Nketia was still insisting on the implementation of one time premium for NHIS as far back as October 2012. Today, no one is speaking of the onetime premium until come 2016. To be fair, Mr. Fiifi Kwetey said in September 2013 that the onetime premium was unrealistic but no one knows his parties position on that yet. The list goes on and on. For Ghana to change, the media will have to perform its constitutional mandate of being the watch dog of every government for the masses.

Ghanaians on the hand care less about substance than show off. How the leader looks or talks is more important than what the leader actually says. Or what the leader does to improve their lives. A case in point is President Mahama’s State of the Nation address last week; some people (I hope not the majority) were so much focused on how the president answered the questions than what the president actually said. Almost, no one cared to know whether what the president said was truth or half-truths or outright lies. For Ghana to change, the people will have to demand accountability from elected officials.

It’s easy to dehumanize politicians as thieves or thugs, accuse the media of being partisan or incompetent and blame everybody else but ourselves. But the problem is ourselves (myself included)—our lack of interest in holding our leaders accountable or demanding the media to perform its constitutional task. As President Barack Obama once said “The government is as good as the people who elect them.” For us to have a better government we have to become better people (demand accountability and integrity from our government) we expect our government to be—accountable and trustworthy.

The ideas expressed above are that of Umar Najeeb Mohammed, a Ghanaian student in the US. He can be reached at [email protected]