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Opinions of Sunday, 24 July 2016

Columnist: Kwarteng, Francis

Expensive shit-bombing politics [1]

PREAMBLE

This title attention-grabbing title may seem offbeat in our literary repertoire but that, regrettably, is exactly what Ghanaian politics is.

What our politicians are extremely good at is, in fact, shit-bombing the electorate with grandiose electioneering promises which are largely ignored at the moment of execution on account of the greed of incumbent advantage and in favor of the enrichment of the few, the cream of the crop.

Thus for lack of a better expression or phraseology, we are forced to see our politicians essentially as greedy, unconscientious arsonous shit-bombers.

These shit-bombing politicians are known for overvaluing the nation’s duopolistic kleptomania.

In many important ways therefore, all these earsplitting cacophonies about Ghana’s “gateway democracy” in the Western media amounts to nothing other than exercises in logocentric elitism.

A perfect example of this kind of Orwellian politics is shrouded in the unnerving metaphoricity of the shit-bombing of “the Asante Akyem North Constituency Office of the New Patriotic Party (NPP).”

This speaks to the path of moral decadence our Orwellian duopoly is pursuing. This path of moral decadence is probably the cause of our shit-bombing politics, the particular shit-bombing of the afore-referenced office for instance.

Yet this major cause, arguably a strategic indiscretion on the part of whoever is behind this shameful exercise of shit-bombing politics, has suddenly become another normative instance of finger-pointing, of the politics of equalization, of passing the buck. Impunity is the end result.

Impunity and immunity for corrupt politicians become the ultimate prices we pay for the politics of equalization.

One school of thought says the shit-bombing circus-at is the aesthetic handiwork of the incumbent National Democratic Party (NDC).

The other school of thought believes it is an inside job, a self-inflicted act of sabotage.

Whoever is behind this disgraceful act of arsonous shit-bombing may be lost in the foggy landscape of partisan politics where these two schools of thought dominate political discourse.

In Ghana serious crimes related to arson in highly sensitive places go unresolved and more often than not, partisan politics alone encumbers forensic arbitration of any work related to national security and intelligence gathering efforts of the National Bureau of Investigations (BNI) and the national security, to mention but two.

Here:

“Even though perpetrators of the act are not known, some of the executives are pointing to a case of sabotage by ardent followers of the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC).

“These persons they believe are uncomfortable with the visit of Mr. Akufo-Addo because they feel his presence will prove damaging for the fortune of President Mahama, the Presidential Candidate of the NDC, in the constituency.

“Some residents who spoke to Myjoyonline are also pointing fingers at some insider persons whom they believe are responsible for the act.

“They say the cracks within the party in the constituency is to be blamed for the act. They believe one of the feuding parties wants the flagbearer to see the divided front ahead of the November polls…”

Tracy Chapman’s “Talkin' 'Bout a Revolution… Lucky Dube’s “Crime and Corruption”…Fela Kuti’s “Expensive Shit”…Bob Marley’s “Burning and Looting”…K’naan’s “Somalia”…

Boko Haram…Al-Shabab…the Lord Resistance Army…

The Bolga Bulldogs, the Invincible Forces…

The Sea Lions…the Kandahar Boys…Azorka Boys…

What is next for Ghana? And for Africa?

Ghana’s national politics has become the most popular hallowed vulgar language of shit-bombing, no less, in our body politic.

And more particularly so in the fermented womb of the Fourth Republic, Rawlings’ Fourth Republic…

The crazy-baldhead era of the Abacha’s $US2 million…of the Abacha’s $US5 million…Sakawa largesse from the Nigerian coffers…stolen money…possibly…kleptomaniacal criminality of the highest order…

It is borne out of a patently sick national conscience which is, in turn, mangled by or riddled with bullets of moral hypocrisy and contradictions, as well as of in-your-face salvoes of calculating political lies and mischief.

A country that is merely a wobbling stack of cards made of no durable, high caliber building blocks of moral materials in a sinewy gridlock of progressive nationalism other than the lackluster political metaphor of shit-bombing, especially in the case of a body politic whose moral scaffolding as derived from the example of the shit-bombed NPP office is lost on the national conscience.

That is a country whose ruling class is no more than rag-tag Boko Haram political and moral jihadists, crazy baldheads, and Tower-of-Babel kleptocrats…Bloodsucking political gangsters…A country whose very presumed existence…material survival…depends on universal corruption and a dubious duopoly…

A country whose Fourth Republic is founded on a crime syndicate of political patients suffering from bouts of hypochondriachal monomania…A dispensational timeline with no inherent logic of genuine patriotism…Social combustion…political conflagration awaits such a dubious system of duopolistic kleptomania…

A dangerous cabal of men and women who do not love their country…Murderous thieves in professional blouses and skirts and suits…A bunch of dainty sanctimonious thieves and criminals…

Crazy-baldhead men and women for whom patriotism is something else, another convenient phraseology for illegal disbursement of judgment debts to cronies and kleptomania…crony capitalism…nepotism…

A country whose political system some misguided journalists, scholars, and commentators generally refer to as a “gateway democracy.”

A “gateway democracy” not unlike the lyrical infrastructure of Steele Pulse’s “Door of No Return,” of the House of Slaves…on Gorée Island…Senegal…of Nelson Mandela’s Robben Island.

We shall return with Part 2.
REFERENCE

Ghanaweb. “NPP Office Shit Bombed Ahead Of Nana Addo’s Visit.”July 17, 2016.