The Failure Of Political Leadership In Ghana

Ghana was a beacon of hope and a model for other African countries to emulate after independence until the emergence of successive military juntas which undemocratically threw out democratically elected leaders. These sordid adventures by the military juntas whittled away Ghana’s place and pride as a luminary in Africa’s democracy where Ghana was seen as a developed state by all standards of good governance. The cardinal features of good governance such as provision of social amenities, proper economic management practice, good infrastructural development, transparency and accountability and other good indicators are all gradually being sacrificed for other personal gains to satisfy a few selfish and egocentric politicians and their family. GLU believes much is desired to turn the economic fortunes of this country from its current state to a first world country. Certain measures must be taken towards the attainment of that status and it must be now.

Ghana Leadership Union (GLU) has observed with regrets how the pace of development has been in the country. Political leadership in Ghana has clearly failed to provide the basic needs for our country but continue to engage in mere political rhetoric over the time to divert attention from their managerial ineptitude. They continue to engage in politics of equalization and the blame game tactics and other political machinations to their advantage whiles doing little about their core mandate for which reason they have been elected or appointed. All we have to do is to eschew partisan politics and have a common quality control systems and procedures for public projects before contractors are paid, demand at least three bids before a contract is awarded, demand some monthly reports from every districts and towns, and quick scan before payroll is distributed, create a database by the Ministry of Education and know who we are paying, dead or alive, eventually let every town and district make their own budget and survive by empowering them to vote their own local leadership, licensing tradesmen and artisans to demand a higher quality output from them and they can make more money per hour, and finally learning to share cost of government by government being accountable and assessing proper tax for all homeowners and merchant and workers.

The aforementioned are applicable and standard measures that can make life comfortable for the entire citizenry. There has always been the constant search for perfection since no one person can claim infallibility and we as blacks should begin to learn from other countries that are excelling so well. Ghana can be a better place than we have now if we consider the following:

1. Building one beautiful airports at a time. This is achievable if we stick our minds to it. This has been done in many developed states and that can be replicated in Ghana
2. Building one underground sewage at a time, closing all our open gutters and cleaning all the filth in our society. Sanitation should be the priority of every good government and unfortunately successive governments have done little to reduce the filth in the cities
3. Making Ghana beautiful by growing grass and trees as other countries such as Rwanda is doing

As a leadership Union, these are what we have been proposing as basic tenets and fundamentals for developing a country and we will continue to engage stakeholders to consider these and implement them to make Ghana a good place for all. We cannot continuously move around in circles and not be able to solve little problems of our country whiles countries like Singapore and others have been able to move from a third world to a first world country. If we continue to do things the same way we have been doing over the years, we will get the same results. We are therefore calling on political leadership to be dynamic in their approach to solving national problems and have the political will to make our laws enforceable and also crack the whip on Public officers who are caught in the arms of the law.

Abraham Awuriki Yeboah- General secretary, Ghana Leadership Union ( GLU)

Source:GLU Lens.
www.ghleadershipunion.org