One of the most hilarious stories in the build-up to the 2020 general elections was the claim that some Members of Parliament (MP) on the majority side of the House used “collateral” deities to buy votes from electorates. Yes, that’s right.
Thus, electorates were made to swear to the deities brought by MPs before the MPs could dish out torrents of cash in exchange for votes with the belief that the deities would strike electorates who voted otherwise having taken the money. That was how sorely desperate the governing New Patriotic Party, NPP, in their maniacal ambition to stay in power at all cost.
In political studies, it’s called pork barrel politics: the use of monetary inducement, usually stolen state cash, to buy one way back to political power.
What many of the electorates didn’t realize was that, no deity is that crazy as these MPs to mistake the owners of public funds for those who steal them. The electorates could actually take the money, swear by whatever deities these unprincipled politicians brought, and still voted against them. That money actually belonged to the electorates. And the cardinal principles of every truthful deity are fairness, justice, awareness and support for the vulnerable and the oppressed.
That’s why the people of Assin North must leave no stone unturned in taking back their stolen money from the NPP government and still can vote against injustice, unfairness and nauseating incompetence in the impending by-election.
Fellow Ghanaians, like it or not, in the High court of the Hawks, and maybe I should say in the High court of the Cabal – the political and economic vultures of our groaning nation – the chicken is never declared innocent. That’s why it would be easy for Satan to escape hell on the Day of Judgement than for Hon. James Gyakye Quayson to be exonerated by the High court.
But this so-called criminal case levelled against him is an eloquent testament to how low our justice system has descended, and battered. Under President Akufo Addo, there’s an outright declaration of war on justice, truth, integrity, probity and accountability.
Indeed, a nation that boasts of stomach clerics can’t be lacking in the roll call of stomach judges. But we shall all meet our Maker all alone.
It’s a pathetic scene and a sobering epiphany. And that is a palpable summary of what has become of the Ghanaian political experimentation.
But you see, with the mixture of euphoria and anger of the constituents of Assin North dying down and rising at the same time when the Chief of the area has to warn the government of engaging in offensive and insulting pork barrel politics, to the exercising of legal “gymnastics” by the Attorney General on the James Gyakye Quayson case, the tragic demise of a young lady and the subsequent greedy-comedy of her alleged family having to switch to the ruling New Patriotic Party, one sees an exciting, crucial, and very critical by-election unfolding.
Fellow Ghanaians, and we are really in critical times; we are without doubt in moments of our national humiliation, fulmination, condemnation, annihilation, and mess with the heightening unacceptable lethal economic terror and the miscarriage of justice meted out to citizens by custodians of justice that has left loose misery, drudgery, pain and agony, all over the country.
Adults are wailing, babies are shrilling; Chiefs are groaning, subjects are yelling; the rich are crying, and the poor are dying; even the president himself occasionally sheds crocodile tears when rating agencies speak truth to power about his ailing and most downgraded economy.
In fact, due to the astronomical prices of goods in a perpetual ascendancy without a corresponding increase in remuneration, food stuffs have been very untouchable, prices of petroleum products continue to soar, water and electricity tariffs are at all time high and skyrocketing beyond leaps and bounds.
Literally, it has become a “death wish” today in an attempt to do business, and to feed one’s family. It’s simply terrible. Yet our destroyers cling on to their unjustifiable and most insulting political chestnut of “breaking the eight”. Our pain and hunger is never their own; theirs is to stay in power forever. We begrudge them not; we don’t blame: they have found peace, wealth and comfort in corruption.
But man shall not stay in power forever. And Nsawam Prison shall be the final destination of majority of these national enemies – thieves, gangsters, and hardcore criminals masquerading as leaders.
Indeed, there’s really nothing to describe and characterize the gradually unfolding national calamity as the 1966 Italian Cinecittà movie title: “the good, the bad, and the ugly”. Our nation has never bled this profusely.
But fellow Ghanaians, let us ask ourselves today, seven years ago, were things really this bad and porous? Do we need God to send down His angels to vote out, in fact, force out of our seat of government, our nation wreckers and economic destroyers? How prepared are we to take back our future and destiny of our country? Can we show our commitment in this impending by-election in the Central Region in Assin North Constituency?
Most certainly, there’s no gainsay that the NPP as a political party in government has actually become the most poisonous and venomous thorn in the flesh and veins of every citizen with the increasing economic mismanagement that is collapsing and shutting down the country in a slow motion. But, have the good people of Ghana learned any bitter lesson?
It was Manasseh Azure who observed in the build-up to the 2016 general elections that, if an honorable man contests in an election with a goat in some parts of the country on the ticket of certain political parties, it’s the animal that would win. Would the constituents of Assin North going to succumb to primordial sentiments such as tribalism in exercising their franchise, or they would stand and vote for competence, truth and justice?
The Central Region and others have analyzed to be swing Regions. The Central Region has never been claimed as the stronghold of any political party –and the Assin North in particular, has been swinging between the NDC and the NPP since 1992.
The seat has been won four times each by the two political giants in the country. The NDC since this fourth republic has won the seat in 1992, 1996, 2012, and 2020 while the NPP won it in 2000, 2004, 2008, and 2016.
Analyzing the statistics, one finds that with the exception of 2008 and 2020, the political party the Assin North Constituency swings to usually win the presidential elections.
Closer examination suggests the Assin North Seat is really a key determinant of the presidential election depending upon the political party that wins it. In the 2008 general election, it was obvious Hon. Kennedy Agyapong won it due to the deployment of his heavy financial arsenal. A reason why the NDC won the presidential election but didn’t win the Assin North Constituency. And had it not been the “magic justice and verdict” by the Supreme court which favored the NPP’s electoral hanky-panky, the NDC was going to be the winners of the 2020 presidential election. Maybe Ghana’s accursed economy the government is struggling with is due to that criminality perpetrated against the NDC if the 2020 election was actually stolen. So the thieves can’t find peace. Everything is falling apart.
Perhaps, the NPP is attempting to legitimize their 2020 election “victory” by now trying to win the Assin North Seat in a by-election. But, our elders say a man who is too hungry must neither fall into the cooking pot nor eat with both of his hands.
The criminalization of James Gyakye Quayson and subsequent expunging of him from Parliament is another ticking time bomb of injustice, consequences of which, would be more destructive, devastating, and disastrous than the electoral fraud in the 2020 presidential election. And let nobody engage in any political whataboutism.
In fact, one of the reasons why this by-election is of paramount importance to us, is the potential wrath of God it’s likely to trigger having unjustly snatched the Seat from the NDC and the candidate in particular.
That’s why it’s crucial that every Tom Dick and Hary, sick or dying in that Constituency has to rise up to uphold, and protect the Seat for James Quayson.
Boot-for-boot.
Image Credit: Element5 Digital/Unsplash
