Politics of Insult, an Uncivilized Understanding of Democracy in Ghana
Governance and the election of political leaders bring healthy competition into the body politics of any nation that embraces it.
Multi-party democracy and its framers posited that it was to bring about the competition of ideas, policies, and programs for the electorates to brainstorm and make their informed election choices based on the policies and to ensure, they make informed decisions as to which of the political parties has the best policies that are implementable.
Sadly in the last three decades in Ghana, our politics has not only become violent or been taken over by some elements who want to win power even if it means bending the rules of the electoral process but they have introduced abusive language and the culture of insulting opponents to make opponents unpopular. This wrong approach to politics has become the norm.
The two major political parties in Ghana, the NDC, and the NPP seem to have recruited individuals they call their communicators. These persons have sharp teeth and are acclaimed to be wells full of derogatory statements, captions, insult infested jargons, and proverbs and dehumanizing words.
Very often, they do not defend policies and programs of their parties objectively nor engage in intellectual discourse but rather, use insults, unhealthy sentences, and use their own coined jargon and phrases to paint others black.
Election 2020 is not likely to be different because many of these individuals who do these damages to our emerging democratic process are still around and functioning. However, Ghanaians continue to become more sophisticated in their election and voting decisions after every election.
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It is expected that Election 2020 will see some of these individuals showing off their destructive approach to winning electoral power which takes away some of the beauty of our democratic way of electing political leaders in Ghana.
Politics of Insult, an uncivilized understanding of democracy in Ghana needs to be tamed. But in an election where the stakes are high, these crook ways of making one’s political party and ideologies popular whiles demeaning the other most competitive party will take center stage in Election 2020.
The Peace Council of Ghana would have a lot to do in this regard if this uncivilized understanding of democracy in Ghana will alter for good.
The various political parties have a role to play to take out politics of insult as Ghana matches toward December 7th.
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The NCCE, Civil Society Organizations, The electoral commission, and other stakeholders cannot stand aloof on this critical negative attitude and behaviour. The time to start sensitizing the electorates in now.
Politics of Insult is an uncivilized understanding of democracy, let us put a stop to it. The battle for political power on only programs, policies and our vision for a prosperous Ghana where opportunities are created for the present generation are catered for. Doing this also requires plans that consider posterity and it takes visionary leaders to do this.
This way we can focus on how best to convince the electorates to give us their mandate to turn the political, economic and social fortunes of this nation around.
Let us all allow our emerging democracy to mature and go beyond insults, acrimony, and tagging of opponents with derogatory names. The voting population must also avoid this act.
The social media must not be an avenue for Ghanaians to hide behind Facebook and the likes to pour out insults and derogatory comments that do not add any value to the nation Ghana.
We all have a role to play and you are the next on the list to do the right thing.
Source: Wisdom Hammond | electionsinghana.com