Some call it silly season!
Three things captured my attention in the past week. All three are aspects of matters I have commented on before in this column. I must admit they are ongoing stories and events which may yet turn the other way and shame me.
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Notwithstanding, I am surprised at the refusal of some of us to bow to the force of reason, the majesty of the law that they proclaim to the rooftops and the democratic tenets in which both are supposed to thrive.
The three matters are first, the invitation to Dr Kofi Konadu Apraku by the Council of Elders of the New Patriotic Party to explain his recent comments on how the 2012 elections were conducted and the role of the party’s presidential candidate in the loss of the election.
The second matter is the absolutely nauseating comments and windy write-ups that some of us spew in defence of Winnie Mandela and in condemnation of Nelson Mandela for divorcing his own wife.
The last is, of course, a variant of a favourite interest in this column in the past, the emphatic decision by the trial judge in the SSNIT-Merchant Bank-Fortiz saga that Andrew Awuni had no capacity to bring an action to the courts in the first place, thus rendering his mighty but fruitless exertions pointless and irrelevant.
The combined effect of these matters, to paraphrase William Shakespeare, is all sound and fury, signifying nothing. It is as if the application of our minds to problems must be outlawed, because our politics have become religious and dogmatic, rather than rational, sweetly disputative and scientific.
Like kamikaze pilots in the Second World War, some of us have become bridge-bombers, consciously and deliberately destroying the very means by which we shall return to our sense of community. They refuse to accept or care that without the community, we are all nothing, but atomised aliens in our own land.
It has become the belief with some of us that we are always right even when we are patently wrong, and that our opponents are always wrong. I am not one of those who believe that this destructive politics stems from a misbegotten sense of entitlement to office and the privileges thereof.
This is because you cannot profess to be a ballot-believing democrat and then also believe that some are entitled to anything. It is the people who give and the people who ennoble. That is the system we all have chosen to practice.
Let me begin with the sickening, crazy fawning over the plight of Winnie Mandela by some of us. Is it the case that the late Nelson Mandela married to suit us, and not for himself that we feel compelled to react negatively to the divorce of his own wife?
Were we partners in the marriage? Did Mandela marry for our convenience or his? Or we have become marriage policemen and women who must force the rest of us to accept views on this marriage which are ultimately futile, unreasonable and deeply offensive.
I must add that the same level of reasoning colours the discussion on the divorce of Prince Charles of his late wife, Princess Diana. Why do we shamelessly peddle this offensive, snoopy, intrusive and presumptuous meddlesomeness and invite us to participate in the condemnation of an adult who took an adult decision to divorce his wife? Why?
Not surprisingly, some of those who champion this level of moral pushiness are the same people who condemned President Obama for taking a picture with the pretty Danish Prime Minister, leaving out Michele Obama seemingly pouting in a corner in a jealous rage.
The massive energy expended on a mere picture perhaps demonstrated the inner lack of seriousness of such people.
The second issue I want to say a bit about is the invitation to Dr Apraku to explain his comments about the 2012 elections to the NPP Council of Elders. It must be a source of unending worry to observers that the propensity of the NPP to seek to impose an unbending opinion on all matters affecting the party on its members is contemptible and undemocratic.
Dr Apraku did not sound offensive, but even if he did, so what? Free speech is not a license for nice words only, and the self-acclaimed champions of democracy do themselves a grave disservice when these invitations and the attendant disciplinary sanctions are invoked.
The intent in this invitation and related gagging orders is clear; to delegitimise the person, words and influence of Dr Apraku and others like him, as far as the party is concerned. This clannishness is reminiscent of cults, both ethnic and political on one hand, and mafias, both criminal and masonic, on the other.
A vibrant, national, democratic, egalitarian and people-centred political party should have no use for such heavy-handedness. Strong institutions do not collapse on account of criticism, but on the refusal to see the facts and to tell it as it is.
Lastly, I am very happy that the judge in the SSNIT-Merchant Bank-Fortiz saga has thrown out the obstreperous and vociferous Andrew Awuni in his jaundiced attempt to reverse the decision of SSNIT to offload its majority shares in Merban to Fortiz. I have championed in this column the rightness of the SSNIT decision.
To me, an investment decision by the trustees must basically preserve or enhance the fund or both, not drain it on unprofitable investments.
Those who are opposed to the sale to Fortiz have refused, declined or stonewalled on the major issue of what should be done by SSNIT in the current circumstance regarding their investment in the bank.
The idea that SSNIT must retain the bank in its portfolio, and use litigation to recover debts is contemptible because it assumes the debtors would keel over and pay up instantly, something that years of negotiations have not been able to achieve.
As litigation proceeds, the bank would then surely collapse but since this route is actuated by pure malice and not business sense, the proponents do not care about the fate of the bank at the end of the day. Never mind that the promoters of the sale to First Rand this year were busy opposing the sale to the same First Rand around this time last year.
This saga has only demonstrated that some of us lack the basic executive ability to deal with or contribute to the resolution of subsisting problems. The honourable judge has exposed them.