Editorial: The NPP/NDC political circus goes on

It does not seem to be getting better. In fact, politics in Ghana is looking more and more like a botched joke - as our comic-book characters fire shot after cheap shot at one another, whilst a country struggling under the weight of poverty and underdevelopment looks on, hopefully unamused, at their circus act.

First the President of the Republic mounts the soap box and accuses his predecessor of plotting to stage a coup d'etat, of soliciting funds from a foreign president to do so.

As calls for 'proof' amplify, two days later that former President steps out of his prepared speech, to tell an audience of London students that Ghana is ripe for a military takeover. It was as if the two statesmen conspired on this one. A few days later and back in Ghana, the former President holds a press conference – as if to out-stage his successor at the theatre of politics. He broadly attacks the current President, his Government, his Judiciary, and even Ghana's religious leaders. He alleges corruption, atrocities; cites the agreement of the United Nations Secretary General with his general disillusionment with Ghana; and even claims to have enough weapons to stage a coup in Ghana even without foreign support.

The Minister of Information reacts by reminding Ghanaians that the former head of state was a serial coup maker, who executed former leaders. He rebuffs the former President's sweeping allegations – but Government's rare decision to address the familiar boom speeches added fuel on the fire of the conflict, which adds zero percentage points to our GDP.

The wounded former President cannot let it lie and about a week later the opposition party re-joins the circus. This is what their General Secretary, Asiedu Nketia, had to say at a press conference yesterday:

"The NPP government, faced with a real prospect of losing power in a free, fair and democratically held election in 2008, is already planning the physical elimination of their political opponents."

He continued, "The real plan agenda is to use the announcement of the fake coup as a pretext to unleash assassins to eliminate key figures within the NDC as well as other critics of the government within the media."

Another allegation – cooked up in some propagandist's kitchen - and another round of political mud-slinging which is sure to follow.

Yet while our political leaders enjoy themselves in the boxing ring, taking the nation through this dizzy, giddy, silly ride on the never-ending political circus, the gap between our poor nation and the developed world widens.

While our leaders and former leaders stay at each other's throats – launching allegations and counter-allegations, accusations and retaliations, against a backdrop of hysterical party members and gleeful propagandists, the culture of indiscipline rules indisputable. Standards of education remain poor. Criminals, lucky enough to escape lynching, slash their victims with impunity.

Homelessness increases. Corruption continues to enjoy some level of immunity from prosecution.

Even last week, as the rhetorical to-and-fro between Ghana's President and his nemesis was in full sway, the country's teachers continued to strike over poor pay and poor conditions; the latest exam results revealed yet another drop in school standards; and a new corruption perception index generates the usual NPP/NDC no-who-causam verbal combat.

Why, under a Government so committed to human resource development, to education and healthcare, to development, to good governance, does real progress seem so slow? Why does it look like the people are yet to fully come on board the psychological train to middle income status and a far better quality of life, generally?

Perhaps because all attention remains focused on the political boxing ring only a few can enter; a match so irrelevant to so many countless millions of Ghanaians; yet they watch with such religious compulsion as if they are powerless in re-directing the leadership course of Ghana.

The danger, however, is the greater political apathy that could result from our political leaders continuing to feed the public with this unbalanced diet of political junk food. Then another NPP-NDC fight seems little more significant than the current excitement over the defeats for another president, thousands of miles across the Atlantic.

Yet, another Kufuor-Rawlings stand-off is hardly the point, when medical care remains poor, when public transport is at the mercy of rudderless trotro drivers, over 2.5 million Ghanaians remain homeless, when regular lights-out look set to continue, dimming the 'Golden Age of Business', when running water and electricity are little more than a dream for many rural areas in Ghana. What the leaders of Ghana need to be doing – those with power, and those who are still hung-up on having lost it – is thinking of these millions of ordinary, everyday Ghanaians, for whom their back-and-forth politics couldn't be less relevant.

When Rawlings alleges problems with Kufuor's government, instead of re-doubling his efforts to address the crying development needs of this country, instead of proving his political weight, his leadership worth to his opponents, he fires the ball straight back at them, playing the same childish circus tactics Ghana should long ago have outgrown.

Last week, The Statesman made some waves by accusing the former President Rawlings of clownish behaviour; of deliberating seeking to destroy the democracy he brought into being and the country he lead for 19 years. Today, we call upon the ruling party not to be drawn into the same trap of political games, semantic ramblings, and trifling pronouncements, whilst the people of this country look on in frustration for a leadership which can steer them out of the clutches of 20th century poverty and into the promise of 21st century prosperity.

For Ghana does not need this leader or that leader to launch a coup or stop it; it needs a mature crop of leaders who can work together for the good of this country, presenting their separate constructive models of the way forward; it needs political parties who challenge and motivate one another, and not simply fight – it needs a President who can inspire confidence in his people so we can have confidence in ourselves to succeed.