I’m not someone that likes politics or the people that engage in it. When I say this, I’m talking about governmental politics of the sort that concerns country matters, not the normal student politics and the likes we find on our university campuses. In fact, I think that has been the closest I’ve gotten to politics - student politics. That is besides the point though.
There are several reasons why I don’t like politics. It mostly boils down to how it influences people, basically in relation to two things: money, and power. These two corrupt people. Turns the best of us into the worst of the worst. So whiles I’m concerned about the state of affairs in the country and want to help, I don’t believe getting into politics will do Ghana any more good than it will myself.
When I talk about “politicians” in this post, I’m referring to parliamentary candidates or people in equal or greater power like ministers. They’re the real scumbags of the scumbags.
Money and power corrupts
Money and power go hand in hand, and for the majority of people who don’t go into politics for money, do for power.
I believe these are the motive most people in my country who go into politics have. Most politicians I know (not on a personal level or anything) are in it purely to loot as much money as they can, fattening their bank accounts at the expense of the middle and low class. As if the pay they receive is already not enough.
Let’s not even mention the fact that on top of the unrealistically high salaries they’re paid, they still do everything for free. Free fuel, electricity, education for their kids,....Makes you wonder what they do with the big salaries if they’re getting almost everything for free, especially when the people they’re serving or elected to serve suffer in abject poverty.
The sad thing is, even some of the good people that go into politics to make some real good become corrupted by the taste of money and power and get sucked into the politician life. Gotta “Play the game to stay in the game”. Sometimes, I don’t blame them. The change is so minuscule that you don’t even notice it until over time you can’t recognize what you’ve turned into anymore. And at this point, many politicians would choose to die corrupt than redeem themselves because they’ve gotten to a point it doesn’t seem like they can come back from.
Violence
If there’s one thing I hate about politics, it’s the violence it breeds. I read a post by justfavour on this subject and I sympathized with his reasoning for not participating in elections - the violence at voting grounds.
In a conversation I had with a colleague staff at my workplace a few days ago, an interesting topic about a lecturer that was shot and killed in his house came up. The reason? It was believed that he supplied members of a certain ethnic group guns to attack another ethnic group, and as you’d imagine, the attacked group was not pleased. The interesting thing is where the people that killed the said lecturer got their guns from. You guessed it - a politician. The current member of parliament of the region.
I was what benefit that would even be of to the politician until I was educated. Apparently, one of the tribes in the area have formed a sort of a resistance that plan to vote another candidate for the parliamentary seat, and it was in the best interest of the current candidate to take as many of them out as possible, to influence his chance of winning the coming election. of course whiles keeping his hands clean. And what better way to do that than to use the people to do the dirty work. This reminded me of a movie, Snowfall where the American government is sells cocaine to its own citizens.
Imagine the shock when I found out politicians supplying people guns these days is not a shock. They bury them in guises of heaps of donations of normal things.
On the case of politicians doing interesting things.
There’s this case of a member of parliament in Ghana right now whose people taught her a very good lesson in their primaries election. She vacated her seat in parliament to go chill in the US, installing a “double”, a women looking very identical to her in parliament to sit in her stead in her absence. Somewhere last year when it was discovered what she had done, she flew back to Ghana, did a press release apologizing to her PARTY. Listen to what I said. After pulling this stunt and getting caught, she apologized to her party, not HER PEOPLE she was elected to serve.
To make matters worse, she went ahead to call for a sorry ass of a gathering in her constituency and shared Yoghurt. I don’t know about the people in her constituency, but personally I would’ve felt like she spit in our faces or something of the sort. Considering she lost the primaries elections, I’m sure they shared in my anger and her utter insult.
But let’s say despite all the reasons I still gave in to getting involved with politics. What would I change? Of course, the corruption. But this will be a serious war because it is something most corrupt politicians are going to fight. But as is evident in the case of Ghanain-famous journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas, I don't need to be in politics to fight corruption, so I wouldn't even consider the option.
All images are mine