Vote Well Drop Status Quo

At long last December 7 has arrived and the people of Ghana are going to the polls to change their President or maintain the status quo.

One of the beauties of democracy is that the people have the constitutional right to change their President and legislators after every four years or more; it depends on the individual country and her constitutional provisions.

It is that period in our part of the world where tempers rise and those seeking to win the favour of the electorate engage in various activities, some of them acceptable and others outrageous.

It is an exercise which should ordinarily not lead to blood-letting; unfortunately here in Ghana, sometimes this occurs and skeptics are constrained to question the suitability or otherwise of democracy.

Be it as it may, democracy is the best method of governance – the cost and attendant inconveniences notwithstanding.

The run-up to today has been fraught with avoidable challenges. With an evolving electoral system, each election has come with reforms posing challenges for the managers of the polls. These challenges could have been managed without bad blood but for the intransigence of some officials who would not give in to such reforms without a fight.

The ordinary man in the street with little or no formal education has over the years been exploited by the political elites.

In their quest for votes, they dole out goodies to such persons who are not encouraged to consider issues.

Pastor Mensa Otabil put it rightly when he said people should not become autopilot voters.

Such persons are glued to political parties simply because their families have always voted for such groupings or other considerations.

At this time of our political development, we must depart from this archaic method of voting and get trendy. The decision we take today would determine the quality of our lives in the next four years. That is why it should be considered insulting when a politician baits voters with money, food and other stuff.

Such a gesture suggests nothing but that the recipient is restricted in his or her thoughts and can therefore not make independent choices.

We have listened to the various candidates against the man who is seeking a favour of another four years from his compatriots. Unfortunately, the past four years have been fraught with corruption, mismanagement of the economy and other acts of bad governance.

The New Patriotic Party (NPP) presidential candidate Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo stands taller than his colleague candidates in terms of the quality of policies he has up his sleeves – the credibility of these easily verifiable.

Asking for votes based on infrastructural development, especially when the cost of these have been quadrupled; a cornerstone of the incumbent administration, is arrant nonsense and should be disregarded more so when the President once remarked that using this criteria to solicit votes is an exercise in mediocrity.

The level of corruption in the country as perpetrated by government appointees and the seeming indifference of the President has robbed him of any moral right to seek re-election.

That is why we are sticking our necks for Nana Akufo-Addo.

Today's election is about the destiny of our country, her people and generations yet unborn. An electoral faux pas can spell doom for the country's economy which is reeling from the unprecedented corruption and bad governance to have hit it since independence.

Need we explain any further why Nana Akufo-Addo should be the next President of the Republic of Ghana?