Nduom Shrewd, Purposeful and Conviction Politician

POLITICAL parties in this country have staked their honour and dignity on a code of conduct prepared by them in conjunction with the Electoral Commission and civil society groups, led by the Institute of Economic Affairs, yet they resort to invectives against their opponents.

While the average politician is averse to the commonly held Ghanaian belief that politics is a dirty job, they do not care a hoot in heaping upon their opponents all sorts of insults that they can think of depending on the expectation of their audience at any given time.

The situation is such that the tendency looks as if the surest way to win an election is to list all the weaknesses found in your opponents and top that up with baseless allegations of criminal conduct.

Indeed, the resort to insults and defamation of opponents is more awful within parties when the primaries are on to select a candidate for a political party.

That is why in recent times, some of the aspirants for the flagbearership of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), for instance, have had their names smeared, either through text messages or media reports.

It is against this background that we have taken note of the advice given by Dr Papa Kwesi Nduom, one of the presidential hopefuls of the Convention People’s Party (CPP) that supporters of the party should refrain from the resort to insults and name-calling against their political opponents.

According to Dr Nduom, since parties are built with people and elections are won by numbers, it is important for activists of the party to guard against any indecorous language or the use of language likely to affect the sensitivities and sensibilities of others.

The first example of the fact that Dr Nduom meant everything he said could be discerned from his admission that it was unfortunate that some of the programmes and projects embarked upon by Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah could not be continued because of the fact that events have changed in the course of time. He did not blame any subsequent government.

That is recognition of what other governments after Dr Nkrumah have done to move the country forward. That tone is different from those who do not see anything right after the demise of the First Republic, perhaps forgetting the Third Republic involved activists and functionaries of the CPP, even if they came under a different name. This could be because in their attempts to fruitlessly erase the memory of Dr Nkrumah from the country’s history, the military dictators who overthrew the CPP government had the feeling that the name of the CPP could not be mentioned in Ghana.

Our thinking is that it would not be enough for political activists and leaders to admonish their followers not to use foul language against their opponents. They themselves must demonstrate unequivocally that they abhor the use of vulgar language.

Action, it is said, speaks louder than words. Therefore, where candidates rhetorically appeal to their supporters to respect their opponents, but they themselves resort to language that is uncivil, or violent in nature, there is no way that we would have clean orderly and peaceful electioneering.

Dr Papa Kwesi Nduom has not only appealed to his supporters to be civil, he himself is using language that is sober and soothing. That is what has been lacking in some of our political leaders. But that is what is mean to respect the code of conduct freely agreed to by all the political parties. Welcome, sober political campaigning and civility.