Colin Essamuah: Why are they silent?
Am I missing something? Apart from the NDC, I am yet to read or hear from any of the think tanks and pressure groups such as the clergy condemn the violence in the NPP.
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Would they have been this quiet if it happened in the NDC? Or they don’t think what is happening goes beyond the NPP and poses a serious threat to national security and the development of our democracy?
Or are we being selective in the wrongs we condemn? I remember when Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo made the “all-die-be-die” utterances and Kojo Oppong Nkrumah formerly of Joy FM tried speaking to think tanks and influential persons and groups; he later announced that no one was willing to speak.
It took a long time before he got Franklin Cudjoe of IMANI to speak. “What is happening?’’ Manasseh Azure Awuni, on Facebook.
What indeed is happening to our so-called, self-appointed civil society, pressure and advocacy groups and influential persons in this country? Do they not care that something serious and tragically negative is happening right before our eyes in the full glare of both the media and citizens? Is it a failure of moral leadership or of rational people in leading positions in society?
Right Reverend Martey went as far as describing conditions at the Kotoka Airport as appalling and provincial in a sermon as if airports should be the stuff of religious sermons. He added his readiness to resolve the problem of Dumsor in three months if he were given the chance to do so.
My readers should note that he said all these before his peers in Protestant Christian orthodox churches elected him as the chairman of the Christian Council, thus giving him a wider audience to talk about the shortcomings of the government of President Mahama. Then silence, as the biggest opposition party, who were generally accepted as the direct beneficiaries of these jeremiads, imploded in wanton violence and plain murder.
The Reverend Owusu-Bempah has distinguished himself in his wanton anti-government diatribes by asserting in the midst of this crisis which has befallen the New Patriotic Party (NPP), that he would rather offer bad prayers to God against the government.
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What about the various professional and civic bodies and think tanks in the country who have given themselves the sole mandate to comment on everything in the polity? Everything to the disadvantage of this government.
Or Pastor Mensa Otabil. The other day I heard him preaching against old men dating young girls in society with such passion as if that were the cause of Dumsor. I could not see the religiosity imbedded in such a sermon, if we could, with ease of understanding, describe such scolding as having homiletic value.
The curious thing about these public men and women is that they lost their voices in the regime of other parties. Why? Why didn’t their considerable congregations and followers vote to make sure they continued to enjoy the mythical state of perfection created by other governments?
The answer is simple; the people did not believe their chosen spiritual leaders.
There is a basic political truth, not religious, that these people and other commentators overlook. The kind of change being wished for and the malicious vindictiveness being preached daily can only be possible in an undemocratic dispensation.
In our peculiar history, and generally following global trends anyway, such a change would not come through the ballot box, and is 100 per cent certain to be composed of men and women who are neither democratic nor respectful of human and civil rights.
We in this country have been there before. You just ask yourself in our politics, who were the beneficiaries of such regimes?
It is wrong and unethical to give the impression every day that this government is not the product of a mandate freely sought and freely given during elections. President Mahama and the National Democratic Congress (NDC) are the legitimate, constitutional government of Ghana.
By all means, in accordance with our democratic freedoms, civil society should criticise the government as they have been doing. What I find disgusting and contemptible is their loud silence as cataclysmic events unfold in the largest opposition party and mayhem and murder has become the preferred method of settling differences.
The whole crisis is rightly identified as a failure of leadership. Leadership by and of who in the NPP?
The very people from whom Ghanaians should expect leadership in their organisation have failed terribly to avert the gruesome murder of a party functionary.
In fact, it was the grim culmination of a bellicose and belligerent leadership on all sides of the several factions in the party as moral and civil society looked on with approval and contemptible silence.
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Whatever has happened and will happen along the same lines as we have witnessed in the recent past in the party should be ascribed to the deliberate refusal of the moral and civil society to make their voices and admonitions heard.
The blood of those who have lost their lives and those who have been wantonly injured should be laid squarely at the feet of those who criticise the government for everything under the sun, but cannot find the courage to condemn the bedlam in the NPP.
This country has had enough of a partisan moral society who see nothing wrong with mayhem and murder in opposition ranks, but see everything wrong with the government.
It is time for the wise men in moral society to stand up to be counted. This is the time that the admonition of Right Reverend Martey would be most welcome.
aburaepistle@hotmail.com
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