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Opinions of Friday, 25 August 2023

Columnist: Ghadym

Do you know that democracy is on the gallows?

A building A building

One of these problems is that it’s hanged many a nation and has found itself now on the gallows. 

While it has headed in the wrong direction all these years and has had many nations hanged, it is heading now the wrong way to its detriment.

It is a global crisis, democracy has failed and has failed miserably. A crisis that needs urgent averting. Talking of averting the crises that plague democracy, we need to understand why the ends and means are wrong and establish a different set of goals and ways of achieving them – ones applicable to this current age of the 21st century.

One may ask how it is possible to avert a global crisis that is so complicated- yet one only has to step out and then they shall realize it's only a matter of setting out an alternative course and process to get there and it is not so difficult.

Given this thought, one can say solutions offered to the world have always been based on those that have no geographical bearing on many nations that are sold this democracy.

What is difficult, and could well be impossible, is the ability of Democrats to
truly adapt or transform both their course and their culture.

Instead of change, blame-shifting has been the game. Media blows issues out of
the proportion for a time and politicians have grown tough skin and immunity over their bad practices and blatant corruption.

Even the people, go on doing the same thing but expect different outcomes. Even
When some acknowledge the scale of the crisis, they shrug because meaningful
change is more difficult to face than the prospect of electoral annihilation.  

It has come to a point where humanity is waking up to the fact that democracy has been interpreted wrongly in many ways, and, it doesn't look like democrats are capable of transforming themselves let alone transform the world.

It is not surprising therefore that people are rising to carry the torch for change in other ways they think necessary like the famous Jerry John Rawlings did, in efforts to see a more equal society, perhaps to find a system of rule that ensures equity and sustainable enough.

These fight now against the oppressing democrats.

Do you appreciate the fact that democracy seems to be a mirage rather than a tangible social change mechanism?

One must appreciate the fact that the crisis is not tactical or cyclical but existential because it is cultural and structural.

Over time, social democracy which was the fair basics and equity was in its fiber has suffered a pushback and has obviously and dramatically through the electoral processes declined to almost eradication.

Capitalism has absorbed social democracy and what is left in between cannot be
defined as democracy.

Social democracy has been strangled to death in Africa and small nations, the West but used this system to build itself to sustainability before moving away to the mirage that is sold to the world.

In Ghana, the CPP has been gallowed and their remnants absorbed by the NDC
but called forth in some sort of resurrection seemed to have been revived with a
glimpse of hope when the daughter of Kwame Nkrumah showed up.

Her father's shoes were rather too big for her to fill, so she made a show of the socialist party that meant hope for the nation of Ghana.

Having dirtied her hands, and walked on too-high shoes, she could not pull beyond being in the shadows of the NDC. Some in the party have used it to aid the capitalist party NPP and so it has been at its best level in the polls through rigging and manipulations which has put the most incompetent and corrupt right-wing government in living memory in power.

The NDC which is supposed to be a social democracy has lost its way and heading in the wrong direction and more so in the wrong way by competing with the NPP in every way they think possible.

Extremely expensive elections have made democracy in itself extremely cheap with no value at all to count on.

Now Ghanaians are counting for the last time on the NDC to rescue and redeem the
situation. But before then, the question is, what is it about the means and ends that got social democracy into this mess in the first place, and what are the alternatives?

With democracy itself on the gallows, what can we do to bring back Kwame Nkrumah's socialism which in fact would have evolved into a sustainable social democracy?

Ghana and the rest of Africa must act now. There is no time to waste because the
founders of democracy have lost it. They are almost at the brink of collapse. They are on the gallows awaiting death.

How do we redeem the problems and what alternatives are there?