Otumfuo Osei Tutu delivering the lecture
The Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, has observed with great concern that the overly and obsessive politicization of all national discourse which is fuelled by the media is too dangerous for the country’s fledgling democracy.
He said obsessive politicization and nepotism have taken the centre stage of the nation’s multi-party democracy and even affected all state institutions which are supposed to be independent as prescribed under the 1992 Constitution.
This, he said, was inimical to the cohesion and advancement of the nation.
He said the country is so much polarized that what is good for one group of people is scandalously bad for another group and vice versa, depending on which side of the political divide one finds himself and that is tearing the fibre of the society apart.
“We have allowed politics to dominate our lives and influence our thoughts that nothing else seems to matter to us but the good of the party we support,” he observed
He said from appointment of heads of institutions to awarding of government contract, there have been so much partisan politics that the national good is regrettably thrown overboard.
Speaking at this year’s democracy lectures organized by the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) on the theme “Advancing Together” at the National Theatre in Accra on Friday, the Asantehene said the restoration of multi-party democracy took the tough and brave leadership of former President Jerry John Rawlings who was himself a military government leader.
The function was chaired by the Metropolitan Archbishop of Accra, Archbishop Gabriel Charles Palmer-Buckle and attended by a cross-section of Ghanaians including former President Jerry John Rawlings; Frank Agyekum, special aide to former President John Agyekum Kufuor who came to represent him; the presidential candidate of the largest opposition party, New Patriotic Party(NPP) in the last general elections, Nana Akufo-Addo; Prosper Bani, Chief of Staff who represented President John Mahama; Dr Abu Sakara, presidential candidate of the Convention People’s Party(CPP) in the last general elections; Christian groups, the clergy, academicians, traditional leaders, ministers, parliamentarians, judges and students.
He explained that former President Rawlings’ tough leadership broke the chain of military rule to usher the country into another constitutional era after a long spell of military dictatorship stressing that our new found democracy should not be sacrificed on the altar of ‘do or die party politics’ and tribalism.
He said politicians have taken advantage of democracy and party politics to completely ‘undo’ their political opponents whether through fair or foul means just to win political power, without thinking about the overall development of the country.
“In the 20 years since the restoration of multi-party democracy, one unchanging feature of national politics has been scandal,” he said pointing out that every government has been affected by one scandal or the other, some true but others blatantly and maliciously contrived.
These scandals, he said, whether true or false, as propagated by the politicians, have affected how people vote in national elections.
Otumfuo Osei Tutu noted that every party in opposition has been benefitting from scandal-mongering only to find itself at the receiving end when the scale of electoral fortunes change, stressing further that such situations could not help the electorate to make independent assessment of the performance of the government.
“If you wean a people on a diet of scandal, you should not be surprised they grow up with no appetite for good news”.
Otumfuo Osei Tutu opined that while in advanced and established democracies, electoral fortunes are determined by the state of the economy, the cost of living and the number of people in gainful employments, the opposite is the case in Ghana, where politicians feed voters with what he described as ‘demonic’ propaganda, because the 1000 jobs created by a government, the roads it builds as well as the numerous infrastructural projects it inaugurates would not make any impression on the voter because of the “petty indiscretion of a petty party official”.
“The combination of scandal and the heat generated by ceaseless party propaganda has left us with no appetite to take in good news of national achievements.”
He made a particular reference to Cardinal Peter Appiah Turkson, a papal candidate, to support his arguments explaining that the Ghanaian cardinal serving at the Vatican was named as one of the possible candidates to succeed Pope Benedict when the pope announced his retirement in the course of the year but Ghanaians failed to rally behind him to get the position.
According to him, when Cardinal Appiah Turkson was selected as one of the qualified candidates, Ghanaians, including Christians and politicians, never showed any interest in such an important development because Cardinal Appiah Turkson was not a politician.
According to him, while Argentina and the whole of Latin American declared days of prayers for one of their own, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who was eventually selected as the next pope, Ghanaians completely relegated the possible selection of Appiah Turkson to the background.
“Cardinal Appiah Turkson’s elevation to that highest level could have brought glory and a lot of socio-economic benefits to the country but as a people we failed to rally behind him to get the position probably because he is not a politician or a member of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) or the New Patriotic Party (NPP).”
He indicated that another canker which was posing a serious threat to multi-party democracy in the country is the phenomenon of ‘serial callers’ who spew venoms and abuse at their political opponents.
“The leaders we choose to manage our affairs, in or out of government, are daily at the mercy of this new breed of howlers and their culture of insult and abuse,” he said, stressing that the phenomenon should not be allowed to continue and that leaders at all levels and from all sides of the political divide, needed to be protected from these abusers.
He blamed the politicians and media practitioners working especially with the electronic media for fuelling this negative development.
He noted that it is the same politicians who have been funding these serial callers to ‘destroy’ their political opponents on air while those working with the radio stations have been encouraging that by giving their platforms to these serial callers to abuse politicians and political leaders.
“We seem to have no room for sober independent thinking and no scope for the enquiring mind and intellectual discernment.”
He said the media was an important tool that galvanized the nation to win the struggle for independence and that the media had been a powerful force in the political transformation of the country and that it was time for the media to re-assess its importance to national development and lift itself from mediocrity and praise-singing.
“In today’s environment, public office holders are right to feel tainted by the brush of party politics and I see the danger that many high quality professionals may decline to serve their nation because they would not want, on principled grounds, to be unjustly tagged as party hacks.”
He said currently the nation is facing economic challenges and massive gap infrastructural needs, education and healthcare delivery issues, adding these critical challenges facing the economy required tough leadership decisions on one hand and national consensus on the other.
He called on the government to take a decisive action on illegal mining which is destroying the environment and frequent industrial strikes which are have negative impact on productivity.
The Asantehene also called on Parliament to look critically at the situation where new governments abandon projects started by previous governments with millions of taxpayers’ money going to waste, saying Parliament in a bi-partisan spirit should enact a law that would compel any new government to complete all projects started by the previous government to help save the nation a lot of money and also accelerate the country’s development.
Even before the Asantehene started his lecture, he had acknowledged that as a prominent and respected King, he was taking a huge risk to enter a “dangerous political minefield that one risks getting blown apart by the incendiary force of combined misinformation, misrepresentation and misconception”.
He said the framers of the Constitution, since independence, have always been careful not to yield to the notion that universal adult suffrage is the sole guarantor of democracy but rather fashioned a constitution which fuses the country’s traditional values into the new democratic concepts and ensure that the new constitution they create are anchored on the foundations of time and tested traditions of the country.
“I have always argued, and evidence is plain to see, the mayhem suffered by many African countries owes a great deal to the collapse of the traditional values and institutions in those societies. Wherever those values and institutions are allowed active role, they have added extra glue that helps to keep the nation bonded together,” he said adding that the time had come for people of the country to take a deep and sober reflection of their actions and deeds in relation to the forward march of the country’s democracy.
“What I bring to the table is for us to look critically at ourselves and what we have been up to and particularly listen to what we encourage our friends and supporters to say about our colleagues and our perceived political opponents and then we can ask ourselves is that what we want and where will it lead us to?”
In her welcome address, the chairperson of the commission, Charlotte Osei, said the democracy lecture was instituted in 2012 as part of the annual Constitution Week to educate citizens of the country who are the ultimate source of authority in the country’s democracy on their civic responsibilities.
She noted that this year’s theme, “Advancing Together” for the Constitution Week, was chosen because “we believe that providence has graciously brought us together as a nation and so there is the need for us to ensure the inclusiveness and participation of all historically marginalized groups in our society in our governance”.
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