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By Kwadwo Afar
Voting in the 2024 General Election is right around the corner. While the political landscape is portrayed as deeply polarized, the increase of idiots in our politics and the rise of populist rhetoric by both major parties show similar economic policies. That is bad news for Ghanaians.
Sadly, the two major parties reject talks of fiscal discipline. No side is talking about reforming most entitlement programs that have become a drain on the taxpayer. All the parties are promising expensive, excessive, and politically popular redistribution policies to win in December. This is bad news for Ghanaians.
In Ghana, obtaining government power has become the ultimate goal. The presidential and parliamentary elections have turned into opportunities for job-seeking, with many even advocating affirmative action and zoning for positions. Ideology and policies do not matter. Ideas are blurred. Our idiots jockeying for political positions copy and share policy scripts virtually on all the issues now. The difference is in emphasis.
This copying and sharing of scripts bodes poorly for the economy, as the rhetoric has a track record of producing results opposite to what its proponents promise. No doubt, populism is causing our economy to slide.
Ghanaians are in a very angry mood, to put it lightly. Nearly three-quarters think the country is on the wrong track. The thinking that all our social and economic problems have political solutions is a tragedy. The majority of voters are furious and unhappy but, unfortunately, our politics has become 10% policy and 90% personality. This makes it easy for idiots to capture the political space.
It is ironic that in our country, we tend to have a strong attachment to political parties and individuals, regardless of their competence. Politicians take advantage of this by targeting young and vulnerable people whose emotions and loyalty are tied to a party for life. Unfortunately, unintelligent rants and emotional appeals often receive more support than well-considered policies.
Many Ghanaians are worried about the upcoming 2024 elections and the face-off between Mahama and Bawumia. They fear that there will be no significant policy changes and that the poor will continue to suffer, regardless of the election’s outcome. However, there is still hope that Ghanaian democracy will survive. The bigger question now is whether the country can recover from the corruption and chaos of past administrations. Partisans from both sides of the political divide want us to believe that each party’s candidate is a deeply flawed individual. They are both right and wrong.
While partisans on both sides talk about the incompetence and criminal behaviour of opponents, they forget that Ghana’s institutions, are flawed and, remain weak enough to keep our democracy insecure. This weakness represents the tip of an iceberg, as institutions from the courts to civil society to even the press have helped increase the more damaging instincts and behaviour of our leaders. Indeed, the 1992 Constitution designed our democratic system to encourage corruption, and so far, it has largely worked.
But a more important cause for alarm is the lack of ‘common sense”— in this case, the common sense of Ghanaian voters. Despite what most people say they want, voters still base their decisions on emotions and personal connections to parties and candidates. History shows us that the electorate eventually votes for their preferred parties despite the policy failures.
The criticism and economic hardships Ghanaians complain about are from intellectual fallacies, a loss of will, and the ideological contamination of the free market by populist ideas. Engaging in an NPP-NDC culture war has been a disaster for the NPP, and will be for future elections, and simultaneously drive more attached “core” voters to vote for others until the NPP returns and sticks to its core principles.
If incompetence is the only attribute of our politicians, Ghanaians could have counted themselves lucky. Since 1957, they have failed to create a dynamic new course direction. Ambiguities and refusal to accept basic economic and social facts have created an army of corrupt crony socialists, with socialists’ jargon in their mouths and public money in their pockets. So was the NDC born? Whatever John Mahama is promising has already been tried, unsuccessfully.
It is very painful that voters allow themselves to be lied to by ‘idiots’ (sorry elites), who cannot define ‘poverty’ and ‘wealth creation.’ They cannot fix the country as they claim. We should trust them, they say. However, more so than at any other time, truth is traded for lies, justice is elusive and unexpected, and accountability is abandoned. Politicians and their cheerleaders in the paid media do not even feign fairness anymore as they brazenly, obnoxiously, and relentlessly push big government policies.
As we have seen with the state of our economy, our politicians are committed to nothing but the perpetuation of their dirty power. They are not competent, they are not courageous, and they are not capable. They are weak, and they are idiots – unfortunately, current policies have sentenced generations of current and future citizens to live in abject poverty. Slowly and surely, those who seek our votes have refused to realise the need to reverse the free fall of the economy.
At least, on paper, the NPP believes in opportunity; and believes economic growth depends on the adherence to the rule of law and the protection of property rights and contractual rights by a country’s government.
Bawumia, who has been called an ‘idiot’ by his opponents, has never been on the ballot as a president. He was the vice president with no Constitutional powers but what the president assigned to him. His chairmanship of the Economic team is more advisory with no power to implement policy. So far Bawumia has shown he is more competent than Mahama when it comes to addressing the pocket book economic issues.
Bawumia, the NPP candidate, believes far and away that the most important issue facing Ghana is the economy and is prepared to initiate policies that will remove high trade barriers, create a low-cost government, strong property rights, and low level of activity in the informal economy. Pocketbook issues matter most to voters across the political spectrum, and with the possibility of a continuous rise in the cost of living, Ghanaian concerns about economic and financial matters should dominate the 2024 debates.
Mahama’s history tells a different story.
John Mahama of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), had a shambolic period as president. Mahama became president promising to unite the country and return our politics to a better, more stable and normal place. He did neither. The former president routinely demonised his political opponents, using words like ‘idiots to describe them. More importantly, he floated and implemented authouritarian-like entitlement schemes in an attempt to maintain political power.
During his first term as president of this country, Mahama favoured his cronies by limiting investments in certain sectors of the economy. He imposed higher regulations on local investors and foreign investments, as well as higher taxes. Despite these poor economic policies, he is now promising a 24-hour economy.
All functioning 24-hour economies heavily rely on contractual rights, which are established based on property rights. Indeed, his 24-hour economy is short on details, and therefore a joke. He fails to address how the 24-hour economy can be more productive and creative in an environment where there is no rule of law or property rights, and where politicians attack entrepreneurs with impunity. He denies that an economy could not be imposed from the top. This is fatal.
Voters should understand where we are and how we got here. John Mahama and his vicious cadres shriveled the imagination and aspirations of the poor in Ghana and, as the revolutionary project imploded from its contradictions, Ghana disintegrated as a coherent economic, social, and political whole. The NDC coalition of elites and the ‘lumpen proletariats’ is indeed more dangerous and corrupt than the NPP. We wish we could push aside the worst among us and bring the best forward to be the change we need in this crazy pluralistic country.
Predicting the future is generally a fool’s errand, it looks scary. We do not know who the next president will be. We do not have any confidence that the unreliability of our fundamental political and civil institutions will largely insulate us over the long term from what may be coming, neither would the common sense and intelligence of Ghanaians help produce a political course correction that will take us in a better direction.
But our idiot has got to win. Voters should ignore the misinformation and the hurt feelings. Bawumia should win in December or we lose more than just an election. Bawumia we believe would accomplish more of the right policy goals as president than would Mahama.
The NDC agrees, which is why their strategists are doing everything to blast voters with the most negative adverts — the sidekick is the main architect of the boss’s failures. When did that become the norm?
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By: Kwadwo Afari
