YOU DO ME I DO YOU DEMOCRACY; WHERE IS IT TAKING U?

Sagito Musah Issakah
The general assertion and belief of all Ghanaians today is that our politics have come a long way since independence and maturing as the years, months and the morning rays cleaves through the darkness to give us days. Democratically also, the general assertion is that we are maturing and the hope is that we are very soon going to reach the matured stage. That we all hope for.

As the saying goes; 'if wishes (or hopes) were horses, beggars will ride'. Positively so.

Happenings in Ghana today does not tell or predict anything good for this country as far as development of our politics and the general development of our society are concerned. Politicians are toying with the conscience and intelligence of the electorates. Unfortunately, this politics of deceit gained weight in the 90s when as a nation we decided to abandon the authoritarian rule system and adopted democracy as system of government.

The kind of democracy we adopted came along with it the entrenchment of lies, deceit and impunity in the Ghanaian society. The Ghanaian politician today sees him or herself as the custodian of knowledge and wisdom, meaning then that the politician sees the voters (electorates) as an unintelligent and easy to manipulate and convinced.

Days are turning into months, months into years and years into decades and Ghana our beloved country (which was free 52 years ago) is still on its marks yet to take off. Governments have come and gone with 'take off' policies and yet we are still waiting for the 'take off' shot. You know the reason why? Well I will tell you.

One main reason why Ghana is yet to 'take off' from the 'transitional development stage' as 'Rostow' puts it in his “stages of economic development” theory, has to do with the way we are practicing DEMOCRACY. Ours is a special form of democracy that I call Blame-It-On-Them (Paint-Them-Black) Democracy. This blame-it-on-him game is played between the government in power and the opposition party. It becomes overly serious and “development retarding” when the opposition party is the party that power was wrestled from in an election. Another of the reasons is the You-Do-Me-I-Do-You game; and lastly is the democracy of LIES. All these reasons are intertwined.

Let us go%