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Coming from a country where problems facing the residents of a local community in a particular constituency or a region is believed to be only solved by a minister, Member of Parliament for that constituency or assembly member for that community, it is very difficult to change the minds of the people to fight for their own development instead of solely relying on government officials.

As their reliance on government officials to solve their problems for them deepens, so it makes certain politicians explore in their areas of deceit by ways of finding means to tell lies for their electorates to believe them and elect them as their leaders in the various law making bodies.

Since many of these selfish politicians think it is only by telling lies that can push them up or get them elected by the people, they device all sort of lies some very unsubstantiated and very liable against some people that they believe the electorate in their constituencies will believe and vote for and some have succeeded in that with others putting themselves in trouble where the accusers have sought redress through the law courts. Some of such cases are still before the courts.

Many are those who claim that politics is dirty looking at the way some of our politicians physically or verbally attack other persons of political parties who do not share the same opinions as they.

Their mouths rant with insults when their opponents are speaking something different from what they believe in and when they think their opponent could win more votes to cause them defeat.

But in reality and truth, politics is not as dirty as some of us think. It is a nice game where one with the best strategy wins and to win one has to device scientific strategies that can let him be accepted by the majority of the electorate.

Therefore it is very sad that many residents in Ghana have this perception that politics is dirty so the best way to win an election is to embark on politics of deceit, lies, libel, tones of promises that he knows he can never fulfill.

To throw a big challenge, politics has lived with Africans since generation and to support the argument, before the white man came to the shores of Gold Coast, our historians tell us that our chiefs were ruling not with iron fists but in consultation with their subjects.

They sat in state where issues of concern were brought forth for discussions and the ordinary person's opinion was sought before the final decision was made by the chief which everyone had to obey.

Apart from that, politics is a critical study of events of the past under the leadership of certain persons and find out whether their policies implemented brought the freedom and development yearned for by their subjects and if there was the need to support them or kick them out and get new experts to implement new policies that will benefit the masses.

In this direction, Ghanaians can be praised for that since they do a lot of research before they vote for a particular party. If not so they would not have voted for the NPP in the 2000 elections after haven listened to Mr. J.A.Kufuor's campaign message on the economy at that time which he said was "in shambles".

After his eight years term in office, the NDC managed to wrest power from his party because they managed to convince the electorate that the NPP government can never improve the economy of the country and Ghanaians voted for the NDC to come to power.

Whether they did their home work well before voting for the NDC or not, the cries raging from the constituencies of "ye nu yenhu" tells it all. Do not take the good thinking Ghanaians for granted and if I say this I mean, they are very assertive and even five months in office of president Atta Mills, they have started to complain on the airwaves that what they were made to believe are not what they are seeing now.

Politics of deceit or truth, trust the Ghanaian electorate to assess the leaders in government and effect a change when the time is due therefore president Atta Mills should not waste time but fix the economy if he claims it was bad when he took over from Kufuor otherwise Ghanaians are going to show him and his NDC government the exit come 2012.

President Atta Mills, please open your eyes like an eagle, ears like that of the parrot and act swiftly to ensure that no dirty water pass under your bridge otherwise 2012 will be unfulfilled dream for you to get re-elected as Ghana's president.

Some of us do not want to hear from you making flimsy excuses if things do not go your favour as people who could not climb mountain Everest complain that the boundaries prevented them from climbing it.

Credit: Stephen A. Quaye, Toronto-Canada. [teemagi2003@yahoo.com]


Source: Stephen A.Quaye

"The views expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of Modernghana.com." To have your articles publish, please submit them to editor@modernghana.com.

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