FixTheCountry movement: The case of cacophony without euphony

While the "Fixthecountry" movement has a pretty cliché, it does not present any thought-out and well-defined problems and constructive ways of dealing with the continuing multi-faceted problems confronting the nation. While protest and activism are not new to Ghanaians, the recent wave of citizens fighting against government inefficiency, corruption, poverty, unemployment, and power outage has gained traction because of the power of social media. Many artists, journalists, and politicians have joined forces to declare they had had enough.

However, there is nothing new about the way the two political vampires are governing our country. We have all become accustomed to the value that quick and easy money brings. We have helped to create a culture of lawlessness. The political and the bureaucratic elites are not held accountable. Kids have a wise saying: "Why shouldn't I do it if I can do it and get away with it?" Why shouldn't politicians steal if they can steal and get away with it almost 100% of the time? Laws are made because people are sinful by nature.

We are selfish by nature, and unless restrained by law, only a few people will act right. If you do not believe my words, then consult the Bible if you are a Christian, or Thomas Hobbes and Machiavelli if you are a political science student. One philosopher said one Bible's claims that can be proven experientially or experimentally is that humans are sinful. Machiavelli believes that people are governed by two broad categories of motivation in politics: their loves and their fears, but mostly by fear. Fear of punishment is what drives people to act right.

There are massive corruption, bribery, and theft of public resources at every level of government. Party cronies and bureaucratic elites are growing brazenly rich while the ordinary people live in squalors, open sewers, and patients sleeping on hospital floors. There has been a waste and plunder on a breathtaking scale. A good portion of the money meant for the construction of roads and buildings are kickbacks to the officials awarding the contracts. No wonder many of these projects are abandoned immediately after the implementing party leaves office because money earmarked for such projects is shared among the political and bureaucratic elites. Successive governments have made vain promises to prosecute their successors but have failed to do so. When people saw the uncompleted and neglected housing projects, everyone was angry, but no one asked how much money was earmarked for the project and why they were not completed by the previous government.

All we know and could do over the years is to demonstrate and insult the politicians and rotate them, without having any well-thought-out plan to deal with the problems. Nevertheless, what these demonstrations had succeeded in doing over the years is to replace one corrupt party with another corrupt party. The fact that these governments have refused to prosecute their successors tells us that both parties have tacit agreement to look the other way while the other party is stealing, waiting for their turn. There is nothing new we do not know about these two parties. These demonstrations appear to be a knee-jerk reaction to perennial, intractable, pervasive, and systemic problems. So how do we fix the country? My question to my "fixthecountry" brothers and sisters is: What exactly do you want to fix? You can go on and insult and use these nice cliques, but at the end of the day you will come up with nothing if you don't know the fundamental problem or challenges you are dealing with.

What is going to happen after the demonstrations, insults, and name-calling to change the way the government works all the time? What fundamental problems in the country do you want to address? Whose problems are the identified problems? Why are they problems? Do the definers of these problems' interests align with the general interests of the nation? What makes these groups' interests different from the previous activists and demonstrators? Which of these problems are unique to this particular government? What are the immediate and long-term solutions to these problems?

What sacrifices are we willing as citizens to make to realize these goals? What behavioral and attitudinal changes do we want to see in the citizens to bring about the proposed changes? What new information do we have to help us deal with the identified problems? What dialogical discourse can we have to address the problems in meaningful and healthy ways? How do we conduct deliberative discourses among our competing interests group while mediating stresses based on religion, ethnicity, power, and inequities that engender consensus decision-making? How do we rank our problems?

I will deal with some of the issues I have raised in the future, but for now, I will say let's find a way to make every Ghanaian a law-abiding citizen. There is general lawlessness in the country, beginning from the ordinary person in the street to the president. No one is held accountable for anything. The constitution has created a president who is almost a monarch, so they are not accountable during or after their terms of office. So fix the constitution and fix all the laws emanating from it that create the general lawlessness in the country.

Second, we need to understand and accept that we need a change of mind-sets. We need to fix the Ghanaian mindsets that undermine development or progress. Many people talk about the unemployment problem, but the truth of the matter is that the unemployment problems stem from our poor work ethics. Our problem is not unemployment in itself, but rather our problem is lack of work ethic. There are many Ghanaians abroad and at home who want to invest to employ people, but they are afraid of losing their money because of the anti-social practices of many Ghanaian employees.

Let's call for fundamental principles of openness, accountability, and public debate. Citizens need to know what their government is doing to hold them accountable. Let's call for a government where checks and balances work- a good government relies on a system of checks and balances with the three co-equal branches operating independently. And more importantly, we need to fix the Ghanaian mindsets that undermine development or progress.

I have never heard anyone suggesting meeting a person like Professor Kwasi Prempeh who can guide us on some of the fundamental problems with the present Ghanaian constitution. He is a world-renowned expert in constitutional law. Those interested in the problems with the current constitution should consult Henry Kwasi Prempeh's work, "Presidential Power in Comparative Perspective: The Puzzling Persistence of Imperial Presidency in Post-Authoritarian Africa." Let us understand that insults and demonstrations alone cannot change the political and economic situation in Ghana. We need a well-thought-out plan.