Moving Forward, Not Negative Change

Ghanaians do not surely want the improved road network straddling the country folded, the free primary education programme aborted or even have the culture of silence, abductions and outright murder return to the face of their Motherland.

The citizens of Ghana want to be free, savouring unfettered God-given freedoms of expressions and association, with the rule of law standing as the bedrock of the justice system.

They would rather the grounds covered since the Kufuor political administration took over the reins of governance are improved upon with new features added unto them.

That is what the “moving forward” refrain is about as we understand it. “Moving forward” is about extending the free primary education module to the high school level.

It is about enhancing the National Health Insurance Scheme, bridging the gap between the Northern regions and their Southern counterparts.

The list is a long one.

Sincere political groupings seek to move their countries forward and not return their citizens to stinking and abominable days, the thought of which sent fear down the spines of many who fell victims to the negative policies of those days.

It was for a positive purpose that the late Dr. Kwame Nkrumah settled for “forward ever, backward never” as the clarion slogan of his beloved Convention People's Party (CPP) of the formative years of modern Ghana.

He sought to have the country take great strides in the way of development and the betterment of the people of this country.

So many years after his life ended his legacies continue to stare us in the face across the country.

Before 2001 Ghana reeled under a pseudo-civilian administration of sorts, with massive traces of dictatorship.

Those were days when the country recorded its worst moments in contemporary political circumstances, traces of which remained an important feature of the so-called democratic administration to which the PNDC junta metamorphosed subsequently.

Ghanaians, eager for a positive change voted out the old order and replaced it with a government under whose auspices, landmark leaps have been recorded.

When former President Jerry John Rawlings, who is busy campaigning for his “anointed son” Prof. John Evans Atta Mills to be president, calls for “change” he must be doing so because he seeks to see a return to the old order- a negative change.

Ghanaians registered their abhorrence for that order and so used the ballot box to vote the NDC out.

If Rawlings and his party are calling for a change, they must undoubtedly be nostalgic for the period before 2001 when an identification haircut could be ordered by the president's spouse and a goofing driver getting his vehicle overturned on the orders of the former president.

A prosperous society is one in which structures on the ground are built upon and not one where there is a return to a nasty past-negative change.

Who says Ghana is not moving forward when a judge can give ruling in a case without fearing that she could be abducted and murdered.

Who says Ghana is not moving forward when today the country is on the verge of joining the league of oil producers?

Who says Ghana is not moving forward when finally the country is bestowed with a befitting edifice to house the Presidency?

Who says we are not moving forward when life-bettering goodies await the nation in the days to come?

Moving forward is not about superstitiously embossing the picture of Barack Obama on a party flag and erroneously thinking that brings good omen.