Growing Hypocrisy and Senseless Demonstrations
By Kester Aburam Korankye
Some misguided youth are just about to protest on the streets of London. They claim the protest is to express their disappointments and disgust of the level of corruption in the name of judgment Debts, under the purview of President J.E.A. Mills and the NDC government.
The demonstrators will assemble at Archway Tube Station on Friday 29th June by 9.30am prompt, where they will all march up to the Ghana High Commission-Consular Section at High Gate Road where a formal petition will be presented to the High Commissioner, HE Prof. Kweku Danso-Boafo.
The opposition New Patriotic party, who funds the demonstration, is ecstatic. They are hoping the Mills regime will be indicted and the people of Ghana will support the senselessness they are parading in the name of protests. The whole of Ghana will watch them, rather in amazement. There is no place to hide from the watching eye of technology.
Is it not interesting how much support these so-called young patriots are getting from the NPP sponsored media and officials in the Akufo Addo campaign team? It’s worrying to know, the amount of money spent on such demonstrations that does not trigger any objectivity. Organizers bus in professional protestors, pay jobless youths to join and arm them with instructions on how to take over the streets, shout over any governmental policy and then put on television, videos of the resulting chaos created. Its mob rule, pure and simple.
After encouraging listeners to show up, sympathetic anchors on NPP sponsored radio stations then pretend these are “grassroots” protests springing up spontaneously across the country in opposition to governmental policies and in this case judgement debt. Nonsense! There’s nothing spontaneous about them. They’re not grassroots protests; they’re “Astroturf” protests. Just look at who’s paying them, who shows up and what orders they’re given.
Pressure groups do exist across the political spectrum, and have for a long time. But activities of these Young patriots have nothing to do with the expressions of frustration over taxes, gas shortages, judgement debt etc that we have heard being discussed on various political platforms. That frustration, felt by the Young patriots and for that matter the New Patriotic Party (NPP), is an entirely mainstream reaction to the sharply activist course the National Democratic Congress (NDC) has taken. While the level of frustration is indeed a threat, it is a political threat.
The NPP can go on with their frustration and senseless demonstrations to establish whatever they want to. They can stage another demonstration in New York and Rome. They can even decide to cut off their heads but the Mills administration will remain focused in addressing the issues that affects the livelihood of the people of Ghana. They will keep engaging in works aimed at making life better for Ghanaians.
If there is any frustration resulting from fear of defeat at the December Elections, the Akufo Addo boys can use the right channels to address them than endangering the lives of youths who recklessly join these so called “peaceful demonstrations”.
“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments constitutionally established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, and it is their duty, to throw off such Government and to provide new Guards for their future security”.
Ghanaians sacked the NPP because they wanted new Guards for their future security. They opposed to the governmental policies of the NPP administration and did the throwing off constitutionally. In the 2008, the dissolving of the political band came by way of the ballot box, not the firebox. One would think that NPP would note the difference. They won’t. “The NDC seem to be more embracing of the truth than the NPP, have you noticed that? I have.” NPP hypocrisy runs deep.
However, it’s not hard to explain what’s going on. NPP leaders see themselves as gods. They believe they have the near supernatural ability to know how to spend money and use power better than the NDC who make billions of power-related and economic decisions daily. This is why they have resulted to violence and senseless demonstration but the sad news is that the consequences of their actions have wide-ranging consequences that they care little about.
