JymWrites: NPP Using Ghanaians As Collateral Damage In The Fight Against Corona

It has been a stretched fight against the novel coronavirus in Ghana, from 2 confirms cases in March to 22,822 confirmed cases in July. How did we get from 2 cases to 22,822 cases in less than 5 months? A question we all have to answer as Ghanaians because we have all seen how our leaders micro-managed the pandemic.

Governments approach from the beginning has been questioned even though they may have done their best, an overall assessment will prove that the government have micro-managed the corona crises. The results are seen in our confirmed case counts. From hesitation to lock the country down to lifting lockdown rules too soon in a time when we’ve realized that the cases are increasing. All these were done with no proper data to explain the governments’ decision.

In the face of all that, our leaders chose elections over the safety of the Ghanaian people. The NPP government first open schools as a ploy to get the opportunity to open the doors for their party’s election. They allowed the elections with no proper guidelines, with no data to show that it was safe to let people out to vote and the only thing they offered was their words, “politics of words” the same politics of word we have witnessed for over sixty years from politicians in Ghana.

The government went further to allow the EC to compile a new voter’s register for the 2020 elections. A process which takes over 40 days and allows the EC to cluster registration centres. This means that we are indirectly promoting public gatherings and putting the lives of Ghanaians at risk. The constitution may have a timeline in which elections must be held but what is the primary purpose or responsibility of the constitution? Is it not to protect the citizens? Laws were made to keep the Ghanaian safe when the president lifted the lockdown, but during the NPP primaries, it was as if those laws were suspended for them to conduct their elections whiles religious leaders were being arrested for these same laws.

Our hospitals are overwhelmed and under-prepared should this pandemic get out of control. Health workers do not have access to the needed and required PPEs. Medications to help manage to treat COVID patients are not enough and test kits, oh and about that, we all know where we stand. In the face of all this, an election is a topmost priority for our government. I am not saying life shouldn’t get back or go on; all I’m asking is what is the priority of our government in these unusual times?

Our government’s responsibility to protect the people has been placed behind their interest to win the next election. We see it in how they started with lifting restrictions and asking students to go back to school without proper planning and forward-thinking. We could’ve prioritized mass testing and protecting citizens instead of releasing them to go fend for themselves. For example in the case of students, the only thing they provided was masks and sanitizers which not even close to being enough. Again, the government could’ve done better in protecting students than just giving them two face masks and a bottle of sanitizer.

Now we are allowing the EC to go to their campuses and register them for elections, whose interest is being served here? The students who are barely safe or the government who is more interested in winning elections every four years? Before you defend them, ask yourself, will your rights be of use to you if your health is deteriorating? Between your rights to vote and your health, which will you prioritize? We have risked everything for elections, even though we all know NPP nor NDC will change nothing. We have all seen where the country is at the moment after the NPP boiled about how the economy should be run. The parties putting our lives at risk have been running this country since I can remember and I have never seen or heard a single strategic policy that they put forward to set this country on its feet.

We are so much on our own that we can’t even begin to imagine, our politicians don’t care about us and here we are killing ourselves for them every day. People are fighting to register and vote for them again this year when we cannot tell what they have done for the country looking at all they’ve promised and all that is available for them to change the story of Ghana. They come with the same stories and we give them the mandate and at the end, they produce the same results. Are we not sick and tired yet?

The blunt decisions we see our leaders making today was as a result of the same blunt decisions they made years ago. If our leaders had the foresight and drew the right policies a decade ago, those decisions would have served as foundations for better decisions in times like this. We could have leverage on innovation and technology in times like this to organize elections and better protect the citizens. We are nowhere as a country, it is as if there is a race and we haven’t even made our minds if we are going to run.

There is so much inconsistency in the Ghanaian system that shows that we are tirelessly preparing this country towards an explosion. It is time we wake up, NDC and NPP are killing this country. They are sharing the rest of the country and we are helping them do so with passion. Sometimes, I don’t know if it is our leaders who are lost or we the people since we keep helping them to rip-off this country.