Goodbye Tweedle-Dee, Welcome Tweedledum! By Cameron Duodu

Anyone who judges Ghanaian politics from the heated argumentation that takes place on the country's numerous FM radio stations will erroneously conclude that the two major parties that are represented in Parliament -- the ruling National Democratic Party (NDC) and the opposition New People's Party (NPP) -- are poles apart when it comes to policy.

This is because the parties have spokespersons who are differentiated more by the raucous manner in which they argue their case in the media than by any substantive differences their parties display in what they say and do. “If you don't have a case to make, shout about it!” appears to be their motto.

There is so little difference in their policies that one would be forgiven if one mistook them for the characters, ''Tweedledee' and 'Tweedledum', of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland.

The electorate, for one, realises this, because in the presidential election of December 2008 (which brought President John Atta Mills of the NDC to power) the result was incredibly close: Mills obtained 50,23% of the votes, against 49,77% won by his NPP opponent, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo. And that was after a runoff -- because no candidate had managed to obtain a commanding majority in the first round. Left to the electorate, it seems, a coalition government would be the ideal political arrangement for Ghana.

For, indeed, both the NDC and the NPP are wedded to the “market economy” system which the IMF and the World Bank have succeeded in pushing down the throats of any country that expects the two organisations to provide it with balance of payments support.

The question of who pays for education, health and housing, and the extent to which the provision of water, electricity and communications should be subsidised -- the fierce battleground of socialist and capitalist-inclined parties-- has all been almost totally greyed out of the contemporary political discourse in Ghana. The more sardonic members of the intelligentsia describe the current polity as “stomach politics”.

No-one mentions the possibility of providing unemployment benefits for school leavers who cannot find jobs. Job creation, 'seizing the commanding heights of the economy', higher taxes for the rich: all these which, in the years immediately following independence in 1957, formed the bedrock of the debate on Ghana's quest for post-colonial social transformation, have been tossed into the shredding bin of expediency politics.

Thus it was that for almost the whole of the first six months of the NDC, led by President John Atta Mills, taking over power from the NPP, the preoccupation of the new Government seemed to be the repossession of Government motor vehicles, bungalows and other property improperly commandeered by some members of the outgoing administration. Admittedly, the attitude to public property of some members of the outgoing Government was outrageous: (perhaps the most shocking evidence of this was provided by the outgoing Speaker of Parliament, who was found to have emptied his official residence of all its furnishings, in the mistaken belief that they formed part of his 'retirement benefits!')

So, the populace fully supported the retrieval of public property for the state. However, the zeal with which some of the incoming “power men” pursued their predecessors was such that it was not lost on the public that “envy politics” was at work, especially as the motivation of many of the pursuers seemed to be revenge.

This made some of them careless: for instance, the car of a bank manager was seized, in the mistaken belief that it was an official car that had not been returned to the government pool. In another instance, the NPP Presidential candidate's own personal car was seized -- only to be returned later with an apology. Cynics were not slow in pointing out that the use of many of the public properties retrieved was soon being enjoyed by the retrievers.

Eventually, President Mills had to step in and publicly affirm that no “witch-hunt” was being conducted against members of the former administration. The President used the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Ghana's first President, Dr Kwame Nkrumah (on 21 September 2009) to call on his fellow countrymen to stop bickering and join him in embarking on "a politics of inclusiveness" in which the government would tap "the views and opinions of the finest brains, irrespective of their political colouring or ethnic background".

He noted that the nation needs "the ideas and opinions of all, including teachers, civil servants fishermen, farmers and members of all professional bodies, to find the best possible way to redeem the people from the clutches of the "poverty, deprivation, illiteracy, squalor and want", which were threatening its "smooth and orderly development". Ghanaians should "not lose hope because of the current situation" for there are rays of hope flickering through the skies". With focus and hard work, "a better Ghana" could be built", the President added.

Will the followers of President Mills listen to him? Will they adopt the spirit with which he couched those words or will the tail wag the dog