Political Party Manifestos: Why We Shouldn't Accept Them

I dedicate this article to Team Accomplish, the most inspiring group of young people you can ever find in Ghana.

Anytime I put on a non-partisan hat or manifests strong views unfriendly to partisan politics, I'm told to be pontificating my bed time milo. Others probably think that, out of frustration, am rewinding my sorry story to lobby sympathy of public air time. Well, that is not the case, the truth of the matter is that the 'inertia of the status quo requires an inertia of dissent'. As far as the idea is soaped on the wings of partisan trajectory, it takes only a corn of non-partisan gravity to land it in sheer honesty.

Some people know politics too well; they are technocrats, experts, pundits, diplomats or 'political scientists'. They analyze government policy and conduct immaculate research on government business. They can tell which country practices capitalism, debate that we should learn from Chinese communism and recommend socialism as a drug to our hypertensive economy. However, the success of their views that go as far as the retina of their own partisan eyeballs is as predictable as its failures reeking of smoke liberated from anemic capsules. Maybe, their only success is that partisan views are left unchallenged leaving them to sing glory glory in the midst of stark mediocrity.

In the light of this, we are in crisis because as a people we lack the temerity to challenge ideologies and philosophies. We are too hospitable and too peaceful that we accept anything without the least probing. Within this nest has partisan politics thrived and become Sword of Damocles. The fact is that corruption is not the cause of our poverty and misery; it's just a symptom of it. The real cause is lethargy. We ritualize our 4yr voting system and elect people into power without demanding accountability, transparency and sustainability. We think we care, we may do, but in actual sense we don't care enough.

That said, the idea that a single political party's manifesto becomes a first child that teethes into a national developmental agenda, with all due respect, is hogwash. What we have failed to understand is that politics is about policies and so real politics is the honest and sincere search of alternatives grounded on an exercise of conviction. It is however important to note that, this search of alternatives cannot be fully explored from a single party's point of view because there are always outcomes better than others and they could only be discussed and embraced exhaustively by reaching consensus on a non-partisan ground zero. The story of partisan politics has been read so a sorry times that currently political parties are accusing themselves of stealing each other's manifesto. How bad can this get before we rescue them with a non-partisan gospel?

A manifesto is a set of objectives and policies outlined by a political party or a candidate with the hope that the people will vote for them. At best a manifesto is an intention. On another level of perspective, the people are the majority stake holders in any nation, we are the employers, politicians are employees, and they literally work for us. How then would an employee draft his own feel-good job descriptions and hand it over to an employer while in search of the job? How could we possibly demand accountability when the usual excuse is that they need another term to finish what they promised to do for us? Hopelessness. Shouldn't the peoples' manifesto be written by themselves, assembled into a national developmental agenda which every political party in power will adhere to for sustainability? Does one become a rebel by demanding for a peoples' manifesto rather? Yes, our non-partisan views are always rendered insignificantly laughable because they claim we don't know the politics.

Don't let anyone deceive you into believing that politics can be compartmentalized, neatly packaged into a box and stored away somewhere safe. You don't have to be a dodgy diplomat to discuss it; you don't have to be a genius. It's not about theories, it's not about political science degrees, it's not about economic figures and statistics, its not about the huge inflation and scaring GDPs and its not about teas and committees, neither is it about standing orders. It is about the guy selling 'bofrot' (doughnut) on the streets, its about the long queues in the hospitals, it's about the 2yr rent advance payment, its about the water that doesn't flow and the electricity which is erratic. It is about 'reported' cases of buruli ulcer in Amasaman, it's about malaria killing loads of kids before they see their 5th birthday. It is about the search of alternatives based on an exercise of convictions, 'the agency of joy'.

Partisan politics wasn't ordained by God, it was built and sustained by humans and a time has come to subject it to enough scrutiny of mass public interest. Be bold, stand up and challenge it, ask questions and probe it, and when they ask you, tell them one thing- 'the inertia of the status quo requires inertia of dissent'! Say Amen to this!!

Gideon Commey (2012)- Community Organizer, Writer & Poet- [email protected]