The price of democrazy: Why we must endure ‘dumsornomics’

It was the eve of the December 2012 general elections. Somewhere on the outskirts of town, a political party was busily distributing match-stick boxes and, rather strangely, people were scrambling over it. Match sticks. Has it come to that? I later got to know these pretty little boxes had been stuffed with cash of various denominations.

That our democracy has heavily been influenced by money is no longer a topic fit for study by students of political science. We have become accustomed to it. People, in general, see every election period as a cocoa-harvesting season -- at least to drown the misery of the preceding three years.

So the sharing of the match-stick boxes went down quite well and everybody was content -- at least there was no scuffle, which usually characterises such events. Everybody had a piece of the national “cake”. Nobody questioned the source of the money. How dare you?

The atmosphere at political rallies was charged. People screaming their heads off, immersed in ecstasy. Wow. What a fanfare it was? So we went to the polls and the John Mahama-led NDC emerged winner. The big deal? There was none.  Just a group of disgruntled losers licking their wounds.

Fast-forward to 2014. Now here is the big deal. Harsh economic conditions are biting real hard. Petroleum prices seem to be conforming to the Convention People’s Party motto, “Forward ever, backwards ever”. Value Added Tax (VAT) has been increased from 15 to 17.5 percent. Our national debt stock is hovering around US$25 billion, just to list a few of our pressing problems. To be charitable, I think the situation is a “chaotic mess”. Quote me on that.

The government has released many “patches” to block the loopholes in our fiscal and monetary regimes. In January alone, the cedi lost 8 percent against the dollar, putting it in the ranks of some of the worst-performing currencies in the world. The cedi depreciation really hit hard at businesses before the Central Bank announced its hurriedly-assembled measures to stem the decline.

Nothing really gouged our eyes like this present power crisis. It is a privilege to have electricity for a continuous 72 hours. Our leaders are best at explaining the problems. It is awful their explanations are always farcical -- a case in point being John Mahama’s infamous “Act of God” causing damage to the West Africa Gas Pipeline.

Forget about all the ostriches in government; let’s just admit we are in desperate times. They can decide not to “see evil nor hear evil” but trust me when they pass by the Odaw Drain around Kwame Nkrumah Circle, they will smell evil.

Our current power generation has zero reserves (backup) when we should be having about 300MW of that. That’s a very dangerous situation considering energy supply has been erratic in the past 20 or so years. Who doesn’t know this? Eh?

It is rather a shame that a presidential staffer will come out and tell the whole country the President could not have known about the imminent power crisis. Like seriously? With the “tot-tot” gas supply from Nigeria, Mr. Mahama didn’t know it was just a matter of time before the pipe dries out? I don’t want to believe he was inferring our President was sleeping on the job.

The President, we are told, receives security briefings every morning and no one found it worthy to tell him about the gas situation? And he is still keeping those staffers? The same guys that allowed the Independence Day showers to soak him wet? Interesting.

And for those calling for people to revolt and do a “Ukraine”, I think they may have to exercise a little patience. Let’s get real as a people. Much as the present administration may have disappointed in several aspects, that does not warrant us calling for a People’s Spring. Democracy is basically for better for worse till elections do us part. In between that there are no patches or temporary solutions.

For those of you who “genuinely” want to see an end to this government because of their incompetencies and shortcomings, December 2016 is just two years away. And oh, another way we could make the politicians sit upright is to show them the exit when they perform abysmally.

We must stop voting on tribal or ethnic lines. Let’s also stop exchanging our franchise for peanuts every election year. This is time for the middle-class to get involved in politics. They can’t continue to sit on the fence and allow the lower-class with short-term goals to determine our political destiny. They should put themselves up for election and let’s have enough competent people in power.

Nice weekend.

I’m out.

First published on 31 March 2014.