Mental Deficiency That Gives Way To Unethical Behaviour

In any civilized clime, political and leadership decisions are arrived at through a systematic process of persuasion. Whoever that wants people to be aligned to his or her intents or goals, achieves it via a refined and reasonable system of reasoning and conviction. Once someone is convinced that the idea before him or her is in his or her interest and, probably, in the interest of the larger society, his or her commitment to the pursuit of such an idea becomes irrepressible. Persuasion or conviction is the exact antithesis of coercion or suppression.

It, therefore, follows that for a leader to have a large support-base, he or she must profess an ideology that is acceptable to the masses. For any idea or concept to be accepted by a people, the initiator(s) of such an idea or concept must take the responsibility of convincing those who ordinarily would not imbibe the idea.

Democracy, in consonance with the essentialism of dialogue, encourages leaders to engage themselves in debates, with the hope of convincing, in a dispassionate manner, their audience.

Political debates offer the debaters a unique opportunity of being independently and impartially assessed by persons who may not have come across them before but whose individual opinions could aggregate to bring about their victory or failure in a given contest.

Since the return of Ghana to the path of democracy in 1992, efforts have continuously been made to improve on the conduct and image of the New Patriotic Party. The New Patriotic Party, has been growing from strength to strength, learning from its mistakes and progressing on a gradual but steady and re-assuring basis. Initial pessimism that many Ghanaians had harbored against the New Patriotic Party over their dislike for Northeners is systematically giving way to cautious optimism with the election of Paul Afoko as the first Northener.

Kudos must be given to the Afoko led New Patriotic Party Group for coming up with the wonderful initiative of given back to the constituencies and thereby purging all the choked valves at the top to allow for free flow of funds to the grassroots; an initiative he’s been vilified for; reason for his purported coup by his immediate subordinate. If the spirit of the initiative could be imbibed and sustained by principal political actors, it would simply help the New Patriotic Party grow and become the envy of political parties in Ghana. How wrong was Afoko in resourcing the constituencies?

It is, however, worrisome that instead of the New Patriotic Party class to applaud him, with one voice, this well thought out idea, there has, rather, developed inexplicable discordant tunes. This situation has arisen from the stand of Akufo Addo not to cooperate and work, in any manner, with his party’s National Chairman and General Secretary.

For me, politics is best practiced using the jaw-jaw approach instead of resort to bickering, odium or violence. Ghana’s present political reality is that the National Democratic Congress is the Party in power while New Patriotic Party is the main opposition Party. At a time when the country’s economy is having some challenges, it would even have been advantageous for the opposition Party to latch on the opportunity provided by the debate to attract the support of Ghanaians by coming up with very convincing reasons why the electorate should give her an opportunity to serve. With the purported determination of the main opposition to have a slot at the Presidency, many well-meaning observers had thought that the New Patriotic Party should have jumped at the birth of Paul Afoko’s aim of reforming the party to boost its attractions.

Rather disappointingly, Akufo Addo has openly dissociated himself from this noble course of political enlightenment. He ‘decreed’ that none of his officials or assigns should listen to Afoko, that he had promised Afoko detraction after he humiliated his candidate to become the Chairman per Delegates decision. This is a very unhealthy development in New Patriotic Party’s march towards consolidation of her democracy.

This development is more disturbing when it is viewed from the backdrop of the insinuation already making the rounds that the Chairman of the New Patriotic Party; Paul A. Afoko, does not possess even a ‘secondary school certificate’ in politics which is the minimal constitutional requirement for the highest political office in Ghana though.

It must be stated that for any citizen to preside over the affairs of Ghana, such citizen must be above mental average and should be one that can hold his head very high his or her peers. New Patriotic Party and her citizens deserve a national chairman they can be proud of and can openly say; this is our Chairman and that he is upright and untainted!

In rounding off this piece, it is very necessary to remind the leadership of the New Patriotic Party that since there is the allegation that Afoko DOES NOT possess the required CORRUPTION CERTIFICATE for shielding his colleagues from participating in National Executive Committee loot could be interpreted by many Ghanaians to mean that he is intellectually deficient and should, therefore, not be exposed to intellectual ridicule and humiliation.