Shameless chiefs, prophets and pollsters - Enimil Ashon writes

For one reason and one reason only, I have been waiting for the final result of Election 2024. It may sound sadistic, but my pleasure is in watching the discomfiture of three classes of shameless political players in Ghana, namely chiefs, prophets and pollsters.

Nothing is going to give me more pleasure than a repeat of the aftermath of the March 8, 1978 UNIGOV referendum. In nearly every traditional area in Ghana, chiefs went into hiding. Of all sycophants in Ghana at the time, they had been the loudest. Week after week, between July 1977 and March 1978, these chiefs led retinues to the Castle to declare support for the Union Government concept, a personal proposal by our military Head of State, General Kutu Acheampong. 

They ran out of adjectives heaping praise upon Acheampong,  Ghana s fount of wisdom , Acheampong,  the God sent , and condemning professional bodies, students and other activists who had not kept quiet about their opposition to the concept.

In the run up to Election 2024, see what many of our chiefs turned out to be:  obsequious and toady bootlickers running their mouths for Bawumia and Mahama depending on who is visiting their palaces. From this Sunday, many of them will remain indoors, unable to look their own citizens in the eye. 

Three of the six  men of God  who prophesied the outcome of the presidential elections may not be able to go to church for some time, unless they have, as the Fantes say,  eaten the eye of a dog , totally lacking any sense of shame. How will their congregations feel receiving prophecies from them after Sunday? 

As for our pollsters, they have a ready-made explanation for failure:  It s the respondents. They were not truthful with answers to the questions.  

To the EC, I have an urgent message. If 2024 turns bloody, it will be over attempts by voters to take photos to produce digital images of their thumb-printed ballots inside the voting booth.

To a voter that has been bribed, that photo is worth more than gold. It is the evidence that the job has been done. 

Hypothesis

My hypothesis is that bribed voters will go to every length for the money, except go to jail. If I know Ghanaians, the fear of arrest and jail term will overcome the greed. 

That is why I am appealing to Jean Mensah, Bossman Asare & co to, in the course of today, put the fear of God in them. One way is to cause a news item to be broadcast on radio and TV announcing the arraignment before court, of voters who were arrested taking pictures of their thumb-printed ballots at last Monday s Special Voting Day. 

This news item will strike terror into people who have been approached by politicians to commit this crime. 

Intelligence I picked up is that there are elements within the two major political parties who will stop at nothing to buy tens of thousands of votes. This is in addition to other measures they put in place during the voter registration and voter transfer exercises earlier in the year.  

In our  Winner-Take-All  democracy, a win produces more than a President; it produces a god.  With unlimited access to the nation s resources and power to appoint anyone as he pleases, nothing is impossible to him, humanly.  

This election looks in many ways like all other elections since 1992, Yet, in more ways than one, signs on the wall promise an extraordinary election. 

Last week, I said that the advertising spend of the two major parties had not changed much from previous election years. I confess that I spoke too soon. 

As if my article was all the provocation they had been waiting for, NDC/NPP suddenly plunged into an unprecedented spending spree. If the mode of payment has changed from previous years, then I can imagine bundles of 200 cedi notes tumbling out of  Ghana Must Go sacks and electronic counting machines breaking down from the sheer effort! 

Between last Saturday, and Wednesday night when I was finishing this article, the two parties literally took over the airwaves. On air, there was time for very little else. Compared with yesteryear, even the advertising format has changed. The stand-alone 60 seconds jingles or LPMs gave way to uninterrupted 45 minutes playback of lies, unfulfilled promises and more promises. 

To be fair, I had witnessed the battle of the airwaves in previous elections when, in addition to what the party itself had paid to the media house, some individual money-bags in the party would walk to GBC directly and pay for more spots,  no matter the cost! 

In the early years of journalism, editors and newspaper managements, conscious of the need to preserve the media s image of editorial independence, sold advertising on every page, except the editorial page no compromise, no matter how big the money and no matter how broke the media house.

Whom will you vote for tomorrow?

The writer is Executive Director, Centre for Communication and Culture.

E-mail: ashonenimil@gmail.com