Is God NDC Or NPP ?

It is probably a providentially splendid thing that Abugri Kusasi is such an unmitigated coward. If the grey-haired bloke had the genetic make-up and disposition of Kwesi Pratt, Kabila or Tony Aidoo, he would have launched such a blistering attack on the repetitive betrayal of the masses by politicians, that the latter would have had no alternative but to mend their errant ways and bring God into our politics.

Do you reckon there could ever be peace in any human or social activity from which God is effectively shut out? Political violence this week? You bet there was. Casualty tally? Four very, very dead and several cracked skulls, punctured body organs and broken limbs.

In many cases, “broken” meant the gruesome, hacking up of limbs with machetes in mad butcher style.

The battle ground? Agbogbloshie in Accra. (I never can pronounce the darned name, Jomo!) The combatants? It was claimed in the media that they were migrant NPP and NDC youth from up north. Some folks said we natives of Northern Ghana were bushmen.

“...Cutlass, no be grass wey farmers dey take am cut? Ibi human beings?” Quot erat demonstrandum, Jomo! One of our critics had proved it with one stroke of simple logic: We the Savanna people are bushmen. Oh yea?

Youth. North. Violence. The three words keep showing up under the scanner of critical linguistics, anytime I attempt a modest analysis of politically and ethnically-related violence here. High protein mind food for sharp thinking by all the anthropologists, political and social scientists in town.

I watched the World Athletics Championships with a cynical eye: One athlete sails across the high jump or pole-volt bar with remarkable grace and ease or accelerates with a sudden massive burst of blistering power and braces the tape a century ahead of the pack and what does he do?

He flexes his biceps and throws two clenched fists in the air before pounding the skies with them: See? I am a champion. I accomplished this by own might and skill.

Another obviously relishes his victory no end, but nevertheless drops to his knees, offers up a silent prayer along with the glory and signs himself with the cross before springing to his feet again to do a light victory prance.

Some surgeons will usually enter the operating theatre with surgical gloves over their hands and a fervent prayer on their lips, knowing that even in medical science, the answers to some questions lie with the Father of Jesus Christ in Heaven.

Awed by the complexity of what they know about the universe, many great physicists end up so humbled that they begin to carry themselves with the simplicity and innocence of little children.

By contrast, there are those who, after learning to calculate one plus one and getting three-and-half, are either ashamed to publicly proclaim God or deny His existence altogether. When someone tries bringing God into the realm of intellectually sanitised discussion of any issue with a scientific basis, folks do not take him seriously.

Yet it is precisely because God has been locked out of our politics that the same words from the dictionary of conflict keep getting thrown up again and again: Clash, arson, bloodshed, corruption…

The other day, Mills acknowledged that the great republic was going through dire economic straits and suggested that all and sundry offered up prayers for God’s intervention.

One commentator wrote in an article that Mills’s response to the problems facing the economy was “laughable.” Mills he wrote, ought to remember that God and Heaven help those who help themselves and that the days when manna rained from heaven to feed multitudes were over.

Mills he continued, had not been elected President so that he could sit at the Castle “eating kenkey and fish and drinking wine.” Does Mills quaff wine, do you know? Black or white?

I suspect that politicians, journalists and political propagandists shut God completely out of their pursuits, because they know God’s presence in politics will moderate their actions and demand truthfulness, sincerity, honesty, and respect for others of different political persuasions.

Without God, mass media and politics become mercenary: Journalists deliberately and very consciously write headlines and text to provoke, demean, cause disaffection, lie, denigrate, ridicule, and divide the people, all in the pursuit of political power.

The words spoken by many political leaders and their followers in political conversations across the partisan divide are often acidic, barbed, razor sharp and insensitive.

The absence of God in national politics is taking a toll on internal party harmony too. We have the Alan Kyeremateng and Nana Akufo-Addo wings to do full justice to disunity in the NPP and the Mills and JJ wings to do likewise in the NDC.

JJ was back on the now famed boom block this week, publicly riling away at Mills’s administration as usual.

He delivered a public speech in Kumasi city and grumbled loudly that Mills’s administration “lacked the revolutionary spirit to govern the country.”

The political pensioner said, “the wrongdoings and misdeeds of public officials that culminated in the birth of the AFRC in 1979 and the PNDC on December 31, 1981 were still rampant today.” What?

In the Mills administration? What are those wrongs and misdeeds and who, in the new administration are perpetuating them?

The man did not say. If things did not change immediately for the better, “the party would advise themselves”, the man said. What did he or the party propose to do? Throw away the Constitution and replace Mills with the ghost of the first PDC Chairman? JJ did not say.

JJ wants cadres of the NDC to “immediately rescue the party” from some people who are aliens to the NDC” What form would the rescue take? Why does he not name the aliens? “

JJ says the “hijackers” of the NDC had used money to win key positions in the party.” Oh, is that what some people with money in the party are doing? Why is he not exposing naming them and exposing their misdeeds? Who knows?

Some incompetent people our man also further griped about were occupying some ministerial positions. Who are these ministers of state? JJ did not say.

JJ revealed that the party leadership had met two days previously and expressed concern about the performance of Mills’s government. “I wonder why they are not making it public and always waiting for me (JJ) to say it”. Quite strange that one, because as you can see, JJ himself did not really say anything beyond the overly generalised statements replete with threats and anonymous references?

Methinks if all NDC and NPP leaders, activists and their media friends launch a massive hunt for God with sincerity, all shall be well with Osgayefo’s Pan-African Israel. If they find Him, they may ask if He is NPP or NDC.

By George Sydney Abugri