Opinions of Sunday, 4 July 2021
Columnist: Prince Ayerakwa
The political and social climate in Ghana has become hazy in recent times. Many concerned Ghanaians remain agape with the unfortunate incidences going on in this country as a result of overly security personnel intrusion.
When you look around the streets and see what is going on, you become marveled at how things are done inappropriately.
It seems that our security personnel only go through hard physical training intended to manhandle people. What superpower has been vested in the hands of Ghana military men that scare people at first sight? A law that allows security personnel to brutalize suspects or even if they had committed a crime is a no law at all.
This is not Ghana that we know-peaceful country. Things are not going on well as Ghanaians expected. A lot of things ought to be fixed. It's not about NDC or NPP; it's about making Ghanaians content and happy. That is the prime purpose of being a leader.
It is sad and distasteful that politics has compelled many Ghanaians to imbibe the culture of EQUALIZATION AND NORMALISATION.
Current governments use previous government experiences to justify their mischievous acts. What is the essence of change if the current government uses alibi as governance?
The brutalities from military men in the past few days are getting out of hand. The vulnerable majority will not continue to watch and remain silent as they are continuously being treated as fowls and pigs. Ghanaians should draw lessons from countries with war and conflicts histories. They emanated from a small spark that was not addressed at the earliest, making it escalates. Lessons from frustration-aggression theory indicate that when someone is frustrated for a longer period, they yield to aggression. When frustration and aggression reach crescendo, consequently, the damage becomes unimaginable and irreparable.
In advanced countries, as argued by Twene Jonas, a social media commentator, security personnel(police, military men, etc) are their friends. But in Ghana, men in military uniforms are seen as scarecrows.
Where Justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither persons nor properties will be safe (Frederick Douglass).
Technology has changed things. What we are witnessing today is online demonstrations. People have been expressing their displeasure about how the leaders whom they trusted so much have turned against them.
Others want to join the fix the country demonstration on the streets which has been hijacked. When symptoms instead of causes are addressed, wounds are merely bandaged not healed and they may fester (Rothman). There is an interest-based conflict occurring instinctually among many Ghanaians.
Ghanaians experience with the previous government has bubbled up resulting in public outrage and are acting as citizens, not spectators. It's long overdue for concerned Ghanaians to vent their anger. Politics and governance are to better lives. Anything less is a tragedy.
Ghanaians wake up to hear negative news every day:
literary brutalities, flooding, judgment debt, continuous borrowing, increase in prices of goods, etc., and they can't be silent anymore.
It's about time the government cooperated with citizens to restore hope and confidence since the bases of conflict among humans stem from struggles between classes( political or powerful class versus ordinary or vulnerable class). When the frog is inundated with water, it belches.
I use this same medium to advise my fellow Ghanaians that no matter how the situation may be, violence will never be the best option. Ghanaians should smoke the peace pipe with the leaders of the country. Let's think of humanitarian crises, dependency syndrome, failed state, genocide, amputation, mass rape, and stagnation of development, social disintegration, refugee crises, famine/hunger and starvation, premature deaths, among others as negative consequences of conflicts and desist from any acts that can incite conflict or war in Ghana.
Our government teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy (Louis D. Brandeis).