You have goofed, Honourable Zenator

A Member of Parliament (MP) should focus on making laws and desist from making public statements on national issues she lacks the requisite expertise in. That is why Honourable Dr Zenator Agyeman-Rawlings, MP for Korle-Klottey, should not have linked the recent upsurge in crime in the country to the fight against illegal mining – galamsey. (See: “Galamsey halt the cause of recent bullion van robberies – Zenator Rawlings”. Ghanaweb.com, 18 June, 2021). Such a scandalously impetuous linkage ought to offer a sit-up for a serious national discussion in our dear country.

What makes her presumptuous declaration significant is that not only does it discredit the government’s fight against the galamsey menace, but also provides an ignominiously acute insight into the terribly low level of competence bedevilling some of the key players in our political landscape. While her declaration is consistent with the “paint the government black” syndrome that unfortunately typifies our politics, it particularly underscores the repugnant fact that some of our politicians may be woefully under-qualified for their positions, although they are fully salaried at the expense of the Ghanaian tax-payer.

For the Honourable MP to cavalierly aver that crime rate has skyrocketed because galamsey has plummeted is perplexing at best and nauseating at worst. It also confirms her solemn support for galamsey, a testament to an accentuation of lawlessness. You see, if despite all the efforts being expended by the government to end galamsey, with people getting arrested and people’s implements getting destroyed, the Honourable MP should know better than declaring her support for lawlessness. Being prevented from indulging in the practice does not warrant the indulgence in a crime. The egregious declaration that those stopped from galamsey should indulge in robbery is akin to asking a spinster to indulge in prostitution because she is unmarried.

Suffice it to observe that she does not care a fig about the development of the country. Galamsey robs us of our natural resources and plunges people into poverty. Therefore, she vehemently proves that she does not care whether or not people get water to drink. And she cannot be bothered about the astonishingly rapid rate at which people lose their livelihoods. And on that score, Honourable Zenator positions herself staunchly as a politician who delights in seeing people wallow in abject poverty. It is a shame that just as the most impeccably optimistic and idealistic elements among us were beginning to believe that the Honourable MP had the well-being of Ghanaians at heart, there emerges this bombshell. Indeed, such poor sense of nationalism and downright superciliousness must be aptly seen to squarely lie with the heretically high rate at which our politicians amass wealth and indulge in excessive luxury, while the rest of us endure abject poverty and filth.

Clearly, it is the most insufferably haughty statement a politician can make, making one wonder why some people contend the failed status of our country. If such a statement can come from an MP, then Ghana is indeed a failed state and those who repeatedly trumpet that should be given a thumbs-up, rather than the constant reprobation meted out to them.

Thus, it is rather quixotic that our leaders who pontifically yarn their valuable intention of helping us embrace development act in a profoundly obnoxious and starkly invidious manner. If we are indeed serious about moving Ghana’s economic development forward past vacuous rhetorical platitudes, we need to check our politicians’ rhetoric and how they painstakingly study the underlying causes of our economic woes and fashion the appropriate policies required to ameliorate them.

Kwabena Aboagye-Gyan

( [email protected] )