Power for sale
One voter, one set of cooking utensils with a candidate’s picture shamelessly embossed on it. One voter, one fat envelope containing ‘T & T’ of a whopping GHc1,000.One voter, one bicycle. One voter, one fridge. And… this is where our nation’s unending cycle of headaches begin. This is where the loot starts!
It is heart-wrenching to see our nation choked with the same problems from one generation to another. It is always the same bad roads. It is always the same high cost of living. It is always the same lies we are told day by day.
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The problems of our fathers are almost the same as we are battling with today. Even though times keep changing, our problems have remained the same because the causes of these problems haven’t changed much.
Greed has become a baton we pass on from one generation to the next. Interestingly, this greed keeps getting worse with time because every generation wants to outdo its predecessors.
In Ghana, our politicians chase us every four years with their campaign promises and we chase them for the next four years to fulfill those campaign promises. You chase me; I chase you. That is the kind of politics we are enduring here!
The root of all our problems is how we elect people who are supposed to solve all our problems. If we are not voting on tribal lines, we are voting because of familiarity. If we are not voting for the sake of ‘heaven-on-earth’ campaign promises, we are voting because we were bought off with a carton of milk or a bag of rice. How cheap we sell ourselves!
Until we vote the right people into office, things are not going to change much. We will still complain about these death traps called roads. People drinking from the same stream as their animals won’t be a thing of the past. Until we become discerning enough to vote for people who genuinely want to work, we will keep voting for those who genuinely want to loot. Discerning voters raise discerning leaders.
How can one even come to terms with the fact that someone who bribes their way into leadership has any good thoughts for those they want to lead? If a supposed leader pays their way into office, they only lend the voters money. Those voters will pay back a thousand-fold when such politicians get into office.
No sane being will pay another to serve them. Hence, if a politician pays you to vote for them, it goes without saying that they can pay themselves more (of course with your resources) when elected into office. Until a nation returns to a place where elections are not regarded as an investment, our resources will continue to be regarded as people’s return on investment.
Politics is not philanthropy. There is a bigger, selfish purpose for every cedi politician to part away with. When they are doling out loads of cash just so you vote for them, know that they will always find a way to recoup their investment when they get into office. Like the devil, whatever a politician gives with their right hand with a camera, they take back with their left in camera.
Leadership is service and service is sacrifice. So, when people are paying to serve you, it is obvious the only sacrifice they will be making is to avail themselves to loot your resources. If people will do anything to be voted into office, it should tell you where their interest lies— the nation’s coffers.
It’s an irony to have people wanting to buy their way through into serving us. If there were no benefits attached to such service, such people wouldn’t have sacrificed that much. If they will invest their lifetime savings into an election, how on earth do we expect them to have the nation at heart when in office!? It becomes a NEED to first recover what they lost!
When people pay to lead you, they will lead you to pay them back when they get nto office. If it is their business to pay you to vote for them, you become a partner in their business of looting. They pay you a pittance but loot in abundance. You give them the opportunity to dig further the grave of future generations.
If people’s money influences you to vote for them, you don’t only sell our power but our future, too. Our systems will continue to not work. The same corrupt people with different political colors reshuffle every four years to plunder the nation further.
Our future, as a people, is going to be steered by the caliber of leaders we opt for. How developed we may ever be largely depends on the people we vote for. It is a pity, thus, if we shortchange ourselves by going in for peanuts from a politician while we suffer for the rest of our lives.
When people treat elections as an investment, they treat their position as their profit. All funds that could have been channeled into investing into posterity are invested into their family. What is due the citizenry, they are denied. They make the rights of citizens look like privileges. The nation’s wealth is wasted and opportunities are abused. Doors are slammed in the faces of non-partisan Ghanaians and everything is politicized; from corona to voters register!
It is about time we all came to the realisation that we are as guilty as those who keep raping this sixty-six-year-old nation. After all, we put them there. We entertained them. In fact, we fall for their deception every election year.
What a nation becomes largely depends on their caliber of leaders and their caliber of leaders largely depends on their caliber of voters. Until voters sell their power, corrupt politicians can never get into power.
Kobina Ansah is a Ghanaian playwright and Chief Scribe of Scribe Communications (www.scribecommltd.com), an Accra-based writing firm. Order for copies of his animation book, Animuonyam The Bully Stopper, via 0243752793.