The Political Enterprise

Political office seekers always claim to have the interest of all the people at heart. They never get tired telling the people about themselves and about splendid policies they are capable of implementing. Seeming selfless, they sound very concerned about the plight of the masses.

And with silver-tongued rhetoric, their mouths lay claim to all the solutions to social and economic problems, giving assurance that if elected to form government, they will usher in a new era of unprecedented prosperity, progress and peace. But do politicians really hold the key to utopia?    

Two Settings
In an organized human society, any political group may claim to hold the key to utopia.

Ghanaian society, in particular, may on one hand be likened to an unbroken vista of farmland under cultivation with bird songs and great promise in the sky. On the other hand, it may be likened to a city scene, all asphalt, concrete, steel, and iron worked neatly together. At first glance, only contrasts are apparent. The city scene looks hard and barren.

The open field holds potential for life and growth in the seed that has been sown into its plowed, fertile soil. This field might, in a few months, be transformed into a sea of corn. Or may be weeds, if it is not tended properly. It all depends on what is invested into the soil.

The city scene contains as much potential for life and growth. Its seed is the little children growing behind those doors. What sort of men and women will these little children grow to become? Will they learn to be responsible for creating peace and progress? Will they learn to be truthful and honest?

Or will they only learn to worship acquisitive success as preparation for future career, to respect only money and power? Leadership examples and beliefs and values being taught these little children growing behind those doors would determine what characteristic quality of society Ghana will have in the future and its resulting breed of politicians.

The impact of assumptions on human nature on decisions that shape society may be illuminating.

Impact of Assumptions
Ghana's political history has often taken the form of power struggle between groups holding two opposing sets of assumptions about human nature. On one hand (the right hand), there are those who implicitly hold that human nature is irredeemably corrupt.

The conservatives value the individual to a fair extent but hesitate to give the individual too much liberty for fear he would abuse it. Moving further right, the individual is definitely an object of distrust.

Still further right, out to the totalitarian extreme, one discovers contempt for the average man. Right-wing ideologies of all degrees share the notion that the masses have to be protected from themselves either by appeal to traditional checks on human nature as for example law and order or by the rule of some benevolent, specially endowed elite.

The latter may consist of those who have proved their superiority through birth, or wealth or age or years of education.

They often support belligerent policy and where corporate wealth is located, they tend to cooperate in order to make money. To this category, the defunct Progress Party, the Popular Front Party and thriving New Patriotic Party belong.

The left-leaning ideologies favoured a rather different set of assumptions about human nature and are grassroots-oriented, revolutionary and like the right, prone to utopian declarations.

The problem of society originates in the system and so tradition must be rejected in favour of change. The task is to set the people free so that the innate goodness of human nature could flourish.

Differences arise, however, among moderate liberals, the socialists, the communists and the Maoist on just how men are to be set free.

The National Democratic Congress, the Convention People's Party, the People's National Convention and the erstwhile People's National Party fall into this group. It is interesting and even frightening that in their extreme, the two systems of ideologies converge.

A group with special knowledge confers upon itself the role of saviour of the people. In a nation like Ghana, the masses are not ready to understand the CPP or NDC's equalitarian society or the NPP's elite, privileged, property-owning, meritocratic society; so the planners use whatever means is necessary to see to it that the people accept these ideas whether they are ready for them or not.

A person is not a person but a pawn, a means to an end, a thing, an object to be manipulated, used and discarded. What then is the function of government?

Function of Government
In the area of social life defined as the public interest, government is the supreme agent authorized to regulate conduct. Order in any society is ultimately maintained by legitimized force vested in the governing party or clique who intervenes when the informal safeguards of conscience, moral norms and public opinions fail to check conduct define as antisocial.  Continued    Source: Daily Guide - Daily Guide

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