Shall we ever see this in our politics

I was just browsing on the net and came across a news item on a site I’d never previously visited – “indy100.com” – which attracted my attention so much that I felt I should be able to ask a few questions about what’s going on in Ghana in our struggle against the spread of Covid-19.

The heading of the article read:

“Labour Politician expelled for saying Boris Johnson ‘deserves this’ after he was moved to intensive care”.

And indeed, that heading tells the whole story. The mayor of a town in Derbyshire has apologised and been expelled from the Labour party after she said Boris Johnson 'deserved' to have Coronavirus.

“Shelia Oakes, who is the mayor of Heanor and a Labour councillor has had the whip withdrawn by the Amber Valley Labour Group after she made the comments on Facebook, meaning she no longer represents the party. Oakes reportedly responded to a post asking people to say a 'little prayer' for the PM on Monday night, after Johnson was moved to an intensive care unit”.

So I asked myself, could this ever happen in Ghana – that an opposition party would go as far as expelling a prominent member of the party for making a similar heartless comment about our President should anything like this happen to him especially in this our crisis era? I doubt it. Thank God, our President is hale and hearty and still going strong in spite of his age and leading our battle against Coronavirus. As a matter of fact, comments from top officials of the opposition NDC make it very clear that they would have jubilated if our President had been struck dead (God forbid) by covid-19. And I think it’s a crying shame.

For example, it is on record that Kwame Dzokoto, a Comedian and failed NDC parliamentary aspirant, claims that it was President Akuffo Addo who imported Coronavirus into Ghana. Is there anyone out there who doesn’t see this as an unguarded statement coming from a former parliamentary candidate of the largest opposition party in the country, considering the fact that he didn’t have any evidence to support his claim? And when a day after the President’s first address to the nation on the pandemic when he announced that the confirmed positive cases in Ghana stood at 19, the aspiring but failed ‘Honourable’ man derided the President that he lied because the figure had jumped to 21. Meanwhile, today as I write, the number is no longer 21 but 313 and six deaths. So was he too lieing then? He should check on the Coronavirus Dashboard and see how figures keep changing all over the world.

Shortly after the President’s address announcing restrictions on movements and gatherings and advice on how the population should comport themselves the only message the General Secretary of the NDC decided to give Ghanaians was that the real intention of the address was not to deal with covid-19 but to “find space to put the pieces of the rigging equipment together so that by the time anybody could say Jack, the election had been compromised.” Woaa look! Nowhere in any of the President’s addresses since the Covid-19 outbreak has he made any mention of elections but apparently to the NDC General Secretary the most important issue in the world worth discussing now is the “ELECTIONS” which are scheduled for the end of the year.

And of course, General Mosquito didn’t end there. Apart from continuously disputing figures without providing any evidence to the contrary he went further to boldly state that he would continue to make politics with the pandemic until the President had been tested for the virus. So what do you think he was hoping for? ‘Hurray, I said it, the President has tested positive for Covid-19 and is not fit to contest in the next Eletions.’ But sadly and shamelessly, even after the President and his household have been tested and proven to be negative he continues to make politics out of a pandemic which is striking people down not only in Ghana but globally.

Perhaps he may still not believe the results but I thought seeing the President going on with his duties as we all see should be enough to convince Mr. Asiedu Nketiah. Meanwhile, he himself has not been bold enough to get tested as the likes of former President Rawlings have done. And yet his party is not telling him anything. Perhaps they forget that it is not even impossible that some, or indeed many of us, may not live till the date of the Elections. Or we may get there but there would be no Elections at all. And if that happens I wonder what those who cannot survive in a country without Elections would do.

I’m not sure the political rivalry between the NPP and NDC is any different from that between the Labour and Conservative parties in the U.K. or the Republicans and the Democrats in the U.S. But whereas in the U.K. an opposition party would expel a member for saying their sick Prime Minister “deserves” being taken to Intensive Care in our case what our opposition party does to a member who wishes evil on our President and wrongfully tags him for importing Covid-19 into the country is rather applauded. Meanwhile, as at the time he was making this statement, Kwame Dzokoto knew very well how Covid-19 first entered Ghana. It’s a crying shame!