Letter from the President: Going after PC

Countrymen and women, loyalists and opponents, I hate snitches. For those of you ‘colo’ people who do not know much about hip-hop lingua, a snitch is someone who tells people things you’d rather they keep to themselves.

So let’s say you are working in an office and you use the company photocopier to run your private ‘secretarial service’. One day, while busy running copies for a whole book for your neighbour’s daughter one of your co-workers enters the office and chances upon your unofficial endeavour. You don’t say much, and he doesn’t either. The next day, however, you are called into your boss’s office and issued with a memo. The snitch has done his job and you are about to lose yours.

That’s why I hate snitches. In our party, we’ve had the discomfort of dealing with one particular snitch from a certain village in the Asikuma area in the Central Region. PC, for that’s the name of the snitch I am referring to, talks too much. He claims he’s not interested in our chop-chop and so whenever he sees anything going wrong, he’d open his mouth and say things we’d rather he kept to himself. He’s even gone to the extent of publicly criticising me in the most uncharitable manner. We all know that ‘zero tolerance for corruption’ has gone to the dogs. But we prefer to speak about it in ‘hush’ tones. Not PC. He’s all over the place literally pointing accusing fingers at everyone lucky enough to be placed in a position to plunder.

He speaks as if he belongs to the opposition. But surely, he’s one of us. On some occasions, I’ve heard him speaking bitterly about how parliament has become a rubber stamp. Being an MP for the ruling party, PC knows that his job is not a very exciting one, since all he does is to sit there in the chamber and approve government legislation with his unquestioning colleagues – no questions asked. He’s been encouraging his fellow ruling party MPs to stop passing every legislation without critically examining its possible impact on the nation and its people. In a ‘normal’ country, such an attitude will be welcomed and commended.

But, you know, Sikaman is not a very ‘normal’ country and we have zero tolerance for people with dissenting voices. So I don’t like what PC has been doing. Most other members of the party are also not happy with his attitude. We’ve advised him to be careful on numerous occasions and to just join us to enjoy the ‘chop-chop’ while we are still have power. But PC will not listen. He seems to enjoy talking more than ‘chopping’.

Unfortunately, his efforts have been attracting commendation from many quarters and that’s making us all the more incensed and angry. Recently, a group of Sikaman citizens in the ‘diaspora’ decided to honour PC for his untiring efforts at rooting out corruption. Apparently, he’s done more for the anti-corruption campaign than the office of accountability has. Scared by the prospect of having such a snitch in the party, some have been trying all they can to silence him once and for all. Various strategies have been tried all to no avail… until just last week, when we got the news.

Apparently, PC has some very strange skeletons in his cupboard. The story is that PC has broken the law by marrying a second woman, even though his first marriage has not been dissolved. This is no big deal, is it? He hasn’t stolen anything. He hasn’t raped anyone. He hasn’t snatched anybody’s wife. He hasn’t committed murder. Neither has he robbed anyone at gunpoint. But having tried so hard without success to bring him down, PC’s detractors are using accusations of bigamy to wash away his moral authority to talk against corruption, governmental inefficiency and incompetence, nepotism and job for the boys. The story that PC is engaged in a relationship with another woman under the same roof with his first wife was so important that it received frontpage prominence in the Daily Graffiti.

The story was specially written by the editor himself. I was on my way out of the country when I heard that the story had been published and I was incensed. They decided to strike PC when I just turned my back for little while. Perhaps, this is one more reason for me to stay at home a little bit more. The point I am making is that I knew about this long ago and I had told those who wanted to use it to bring PC down that it didn’t make sense. These same people who are using this story to malign PC and destroy his reputation will argue strongly about our African heritage in other circumstances. But not in this one. They forget that as African men can marry more than one woman. It is those white folk who brought in all this issue of bigamy. Otherwise, the situation PC finds himself in would simply have been just another case of polygamy, which in our cultural setting is completely acceptable. I am not condoning PC’s conduct and his total lack of respect for his wife of 35 years. The fact remains that he’s broken the law. But this wouldn’t have been a big deal if he hadn’t been such a pain in our necks. All this is a shameful attempt to silence him for good.

But I will advice PC to remain calm. He should not lose hope. He should stand his ground and continue to do what he’s been doing. If he handles himself well, all of this will blow over and he won’t lose an iota of his moral authority. First, though, he needs to stop saying silly things to defend his actions. For example, he was heard on radio saying that he decided to end the relationship with his first wife because she was unfaithful and she infested him with gonorrhoea. If he didn’t like the woman that much, the most sensible thing for him to have done was to just go ahead and divorce her. How difficult is it to divorce a woman in this country? By failing to get a divorce and by bringing a woman to stay in his matrimonial home with his wife still around, he’d shown gross disrespect to the woman who has borne him three children and he’s broken the law. Granted that if a different person had done this, this would have been no news but it is PC Anti Corruption Campaigner we are talking about here. He should better retrace his steps and head towards the courts to get a divorce immediately. Then he should firmly regularise the relationship with the second woman and I believe everything will be alright again.

For now, I believe that all right thinking citizens of this country can see what’s going on. I am ashamed that someone will try to bring down a man in such a manner. But that’s what you get for being a snitch in a place like Sikaman, where PhD is not a degree but an attitude which says: “pull him down.” I hate snitches but what is being done to PC is not fair. It’s not right. And it’s an abominable way to bring down an honest man.

Excellently yours,
J. A. Fukuor
(fukuor@gmail.com)