We are entranced by hypocrisy and dishonesty!

‘’The President wields so much constitutional power, and is responsible for key appointments to several public offices. When such appointees are cited for embezzlement and corruption and no machinery is set in motion for investigation, prosecution, or indictment, the President takes the final blame… Even within constitutional regimes, popular revolts, uprisings and civil insurrections have now become instruments by which corrupt governments have been publicly reprimanded and eventually unseated by the masses. The cases of Cote d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, the several Arab Spring movements triggered a few years ago in the Middle East, and recent insurrections in Brazil and several other countries, point up the implications of corruption for national and regional stability.’’ — Prof. Kwesi Yankah, April 28, 2015.

The above quotation eloquently describes how some of us saw our government at the time. As nothing more than an assemblage of individuals united in the pursuit and defence of corruption in public affairs. Completely false but passionately believed in and intoned at every turn by our intellectual and so-called civil society spokesmen and organisations on a daily basis not too long ago in this country. In addition to the plaintive and loud complaints that our Presidents wield too much power, was tagged the fanciful idea of the winner-takes-all syndrome, which was identified as the legal and constitutional basis for all that was wrong with our society in the time of the previous regime.

The professor being quoted, Prof. Kwesi Yankah, is now a minister of state in a new regime. He became famous in this country from the 1970s when he wrote the satirical “Abonsam Fireman’’ in the Catholic Standard, in opposition to the Union Government concept of the General Acheampong Supreme Military Council. The above is a quotation from the keynote address delivered by Prof. Yankah at a conference on corruption organised by the Institute of Economic Affairs in April 2015. Indeed, the media platform, Myjoyonline, headlined this speech as  “Presidency a safe haven for corruption.’’

What I have said so far can be excused as obvious problems that heavy responsibilities of state confer on public officers. Busy at the frontline trying to solve problems and fashioning better ways of doing things. Indeed, Prof. Yankah was widely reported in this paper two or so weeks ago, advancing the risible position that the government is thinking of merging all public bodies concerned with tertiary education in this country. The work of the two committees could be done with one. To solve this, yet a third committee was to be set up to advise on the relevance of a single committee.

I consider all the above to be ancient history in terms of the politics of our dear country.  What actually motivated me today was a news item published in this paper on Friday, July 7, 2017 on  page 9. It was a foreign news item, but with so much relevance to and resonance in events of this very year in our own country that I was moved to write.

Permit me, dear reader, to quote in full, parts of this news item which rather intentionally escaped our vociferous commentators and pundits: ‘Police fail murdered Iranian for years’, was the title of this horrific story. “A disabled Iranian refugee repeatedly reported death threats and racial abuse to the police for seven years before being brutally murdered, a report has found. Bijan Ebrahimi was beaten to death and set alight on a Bristol estate amid false claims he was a pedophile, the BBC has reported.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission[IPCC] said he had been treated ‘consistently differently from his neighbours’ in what could be ‘racial bias, conscious or unconscious.’ Avon and Somerset police chief said ‘we failed him in his hour of need.’ Mr Ebrahimi’s sisters, Mojgan Kahayatian and Manisha Moores, said the IPCC showed ‘how terrible a life he had during those last few years.’ Mr Ebrahimi was killed by his neighbour Lee James in Brislington in July 2013. Three days before his death, police arrested Mr Ebrahimi following complaints he had taken pictures of children near his home. However, nothing suspicious was found and he was released without charge. These false allegations led to what Mr Justice Simon called during James’ sentencing ‘a vigilante crime’ and ‘an act of murderous injustice.’’

This horrible crime happened several years ago in the United Kingdom, a so-called bastion of the rule of law, a fact which our amoral pundits never fail to remind us ad nauseam. There was not a hint of British savagery as a normal behavioural trait, no cultural defence of murder and certainly,  no claims of loss of faith in the justice system, no proliferation of so-called amateur psychologists, psychiatrists, and self-appointed evangelists loudly preaching the evil nature of the ordinary British citizen. No useless psychobabble as I myself said when the terrible death of Major Mahama was all the rage in the news.

Maybe, just maybe, it is inferiority complex which has seized some of us, gripped us trancelike in a deathly, vice-like embrace, and not allowing the plain truth to be spoken. We have become masters of hypocrisy and dishonesty, geniuses of blatant falsehoods for the sake of political advantage.

When we so spectacularly deceive ourselves, the upshot is the belief we tend to have in some other men and women to solve our problems for us. We become fixated on the abilities of those we have placed our faith in to solve our problems. In reality, however, our complexes and our inner inadequacies are overrating and overvaluing our leaders. It is that disappointment which comes from false overestimation, which can end in insurrectionary change, as Prof. Yankah pointed out years ago.

 aburaepistle@hotmail.com