President Akufo-Addo
By Rockson Adofo
Fellow Ghanaians, please let us note that the electioneering campaign to elect a President for Ghana and parliamentarians to represent the various constituencies is now over. Therefore, we need to put behind us any political acrimony we may have based on our political affiliations or persuasions.
There should be no political vendetta. However, we should all come together as one people with a common expectation to seeing Ghana and Ghanaians prosper in an atmosphere of justice, peace and tranquillity by holding our past and present political leaders to account.
If the need arose to summon our past leaders, President, Members of Parliament, MMDCEs/DCEs, Chief Executive Officers of public corporations to render account of their stewardship to mother Ghana and Ghanaians, please, nobody should raise the alarm of political witch hunt or blackmailing. The people we elect to represent us or to lead us must at any given moment be ready to give an open and transparent account of their services for which they were elected or hired to deliver.
Going forward, we should have absolute trust and faith in the people that the President out of his in-depth knowledge and experience as an astute lawyer, a man of integrity and a renowned incorruptible politician, has selected to help him govern the nation to the expectation and admiration of all. They are all highly qualified and competent enough to be able to help the President realise or deliver almost all his manifesto promises to Ghanaians. They surely have the ability and capability to chalk successes in their various ministries to bring about the positive change we all yearn for.
Did the President in his inaugural address to Ghanaians on 7 January 2017 not ask us to be citizens but not slaves? Did he not say he will see us as citizens but not as ordinary persons without importance? Subsequently, we have to see ourselves as discerning citizens in line with the President’s view or expectation.
Who then is a citizen, a public reader may ask? A citizen by the dictionary
definition is a person who is a member of a particular country and who has rights because of being born there or because of being given rights, or a person who lives in a particular town or city.
His Excellency President Nana Addo Dankwah Akufo-Addo, who if I had my own way would prefer to call him as the biblical Joseph or Moses or David in our modern times, sees every Ghanaian as a citizen with equal rights and none as a second-class citizen (unimportant person).
Therefore, we need to behave as active but not passive or bad citizens if we really want to see the President and his team deliver to our expectations. How can that be done, one may ask? We have to police our politicians right from the President through his Ministers to the Presidential staffers to make sure they are not being corrupt and are not lording themselves over us.
We also have to police the Civil Servants right through to our security agents, especially, the police to make sure they are not taking bribes or abusing their powers. When we see them engaging themselves in any corrupt activities, we have to report them to the appropriate authorities or use
the social media, a very power tool, to name and shame them and also, press for their prosecution.
In so doing, we should not consider the fact that the culprit is my political rival or he belongs to the same party with me so I will have to drag him through the mud or brush their mistakes under the carpet, respectively. No, we have to be party and colour blind if indeed we desire to help ourselves by helping the President to succeed in delivering on his darling promises to all Ghanaians.
We all voted for a change. I flew to Ghana to campaign for a change. I stayed late into the night praying and writing to canvass for a change. Many a Ghanaian did the same hence the public euphoria that engulfed the entire nation when the change did actually come on 7 December 2016. The change we campaigned and voted for was not about only changing the faces and names of our political leaders but also, about changing our poor conditions of living for a better one.
The first phase of the change has come with the voting out of the despicably
unprecedentedly corrupt President John Dramani Mahama and his NDC-led government. We have to go for the second phase of the change which is to create more jobs for the masses, bring social justice to all, solve the near-chronic problem of power outages (dumsor), end the armed robberies and other acts of lawlessness in the country where the few rich seem
to enslave the poor and the needy through the culture of silence where any attempt to challenge them is met with the threats of I shall sue you.
We can only help the President to succeed if from today forward, we could see ourselves as citizens without any political or tribal colouration. I have in some of my previous publications vowed to take on any member of the present NPP government if I were to find them involving themselves in corrupt practices. They have been appointed to come to serve the people and the nation as best as they can but not to see politics as an arena for making quick buck.
We toiled for a change and it is by each citizen doing their bit as explained above that the positive change we campaigned and voted for could become a possibility.
I was glad to see the NDC foot soldiers refuse to rally behind some of their
perceived corrupt leaders who were being chased for expropriating public funds and government property (e.g. cars) but were calling on the foot soldiers to embark on demonstrations in their support. Some of these leaders have five cars and many houses but the foot soldier has not even GHC100. Will you not be a fool to lend your support to such a thief to continue to enjoy his/her stolen wealth while you wallow in abject penury?
To conclude, we should not see ourselves as NPP, NDC, PPP, PNC, and CPP but as active citizens of Ghana with a common destiny to succeed in bettering our collective standard of living. We should report any politician or civil servant found taking bribes or engaging themselves in corrupt practices. We should again support the present government if she starts to tackle all those who have stolen public funds through corrupt practices of sole-sourcing or other direct or indirect corrupt methods.
Hon. Kennedy Agyapong, Kwame Baffoe alias Aboronye DC, Rockson Adofo, DJ Sarkodie of Sources Radio UK online, Adomako Baafi, Kwame A-Plus, only but to mention a few, cannot do it alone without you. It is by our collective endeavour and purpose that we can uproot the institutional corruption, the bane of the country’s economic emancipation, to make any sense of the change we voted for and we anxiously expect to transform our lives for the better under the august leadership of His Excellency President Nana Addo Dankwah Akufo-Addo.