Adwoa Marine

Marion Anne Perrine “Marine” Le Pen is the mouthful of the name. I had to dig to discover that; because the writing media would often write Marine Le Pen. Don't be deceived into thinking the last word is about a tool for writing. That will be English which she is not. I was taught that tool will be 'le stylo' in her native French. Although being female it should rather be 'la pen' because female takes 'la' and male 'le.'

Over the last one year, two in Brazil and South Korea have been pushed out of office for corruption. So many corrupt men leaders are hanging on for corruption that probably surpasses that of the women. Except that the congresswomen among us don't help my case. What I believe to be the one single most corrupt act in the republic motherland was a woman attorney general creating, looting and sharing, over fifty one million motherland cedis through one male person.

Maybe inheriting the male 'le' (father is Jean-Marie with a female 'e' ending) for a female may seem coincidental with her perceived male beliefs, words and actions. Few will dispute that compassion and tolerance are female attributes. Therefore, a female power seeker is expected to show more of that vis-à-vis the male power seeker. But that's not true for Adwoa Marine (following a Yaa Grace or Akosua Georgina) two first names instead of a first name and a last name format.

She may not be the odd woman politician out. Some who have wielded actual power showed considerable levels of ruthlessness such as 'Thatcher the milk snatcher.' Peron and Bhutto and Indira were not known to be the softest of leaders. Scandinavia maybe has the compassionate tolerant ones.

In election contests, the victorious gets congratulated. So sister Akosua Clinton congratulated victor Emanuel Macron and not Adwoa Marine in sisterhood. (Monsieur Macron, a 39-year old man has his own eccentricity of being married to a 64-year-old woman). I would have thought even if sister Akosua was following convention, she could also have commiserated with sister Adwoa in the name of sisterhood. I haven't seen that yet.

It is possible sister Akosua deliberately or inadvertently forgot about a message of commiseration. Either way, it may serve a conventional purpose or because sister Adwoa is not of sister Akosua's sisterhood expectation of holding the beliefs and values at the core of which would be compassion and tolerance. Espousing and practising compassion and tolerance are challenges of fulfilling the woman agenda and so women of power who should uphold compassion and tolerance.

Day in, day out, I ponder over our collective plight as humans. I am more than convinced that our diversity is our strength. It charges us to work hard towards achieving harmony. The diversity of cultures enriches a culture. And so whenever diversity is seen negatively by a culture, that culture gets poorer because it deprives itself of the enriching input of different cultures.

We definitely aren't made to sit down hands folded. We are born to work and work hard. That hard work rewards is a value held by all cultures. Every culture would like to see a collective prosperity. Even where individuals selfishly seek their success and wellbeing, they still wish the collective was prosperous. It is the inability or unwillingness to accept that the individual's prosperity is more fulfilling within the collective prosperity, which breeds the ills of society such as selfishness, nepotism, cronyism and bootlicking in power relationships. It is the fundamental basis of thievery from the public purse which often deprives the most vulnerable in society of the little they may have.

That kind of anti-social behaviour may be acquired based on a false assumption that the individual can prosper and enjoy in the midst of a collective poverty. I want to believe such prosperity and its accompanying enjoyment come with a price of being short lived or crashing from social upheaval. A more modest individual prosperity within a more modest collective success has a greater chance of lasting than enhanced individual achievement within a poor suffering collective economy.

This seems to define the point of sisterhood departure in the mindsets of Akosua and Adwoa. Akosua would prefer to work for a comfortable individual within a prosperous collective. Adwoa seems to think working towards the success of the collective undermines the individual's prosperity. One can easily see a world split along that thinking. So far, the Akosua line seems to be enjoying reasonable support. The Adwoas are unrelenting. I hope that balance in favour of the Akosuas triumphs.

Could those who neither wanted Akosua nor Kofi (Babɔne) Trump be winning? Forces seem fast to unseat Kofi. It should be something if those who wanted neither would have their wishes granted.

By Kwasi Ansu-Kyeremeh