GHANA| Our Deeply Polarized country and its effect on our DEVELOPMENT.

GHANA| Our Deeply Polarized country and its effect on our DEVELOPMENT.
First of all I don’t believe it for a minute when any politician swears he/she has the people’s interest at heart before his or his party’s.

Doesn’t mean all politicians are like this, but only a few genuinely put the country first.

That’s why I judge them based on what they’ve contributed to the country without power,even if small.

But for a majority of politicians they only want power because they’re narcissist and need to be the ones “hailed” for every achievement.

Which is why, they do everything to ensure their political opponents fail by demonizing them and encouraging their following to do same.

And this is one of the main causes of our deep political divide in this country and why our country and politics seems to be so polarized.

Political polarization refers to cases in which an individual’s stance on a given issue, policy, or person is more likely to be strictly defined by their identification with a particular political party (e.g., Democrat or Republican) or ideology (e.g., liberal or conservative).According to DiMaggio et al. (1996),

I’ve witnessed two of the major political parties rule since I was eligible to vote, and the one thing I can confidently say they have in common is, if they’re not in power, nothing is ever good enough.

Nearly everything these parties have accused each other of, they’ve done before; so why should one be more believable than the other?

Go through the archives and you will see that the very things each justified when they were in power, they condemned when they were not, and vice versa.

img_8630 The Flagstaff House reconstructed and inaugurated by Ex-President J.A Kuffour
And this manifest itself in how the people also react to who is in power.

So even when people have grudgingly admitted to something good from our leaders, have been very snide about it and regarded it as a responsibility to the people and not an achievement.

And because of this polarization it’s almost impossible to have an honest conversation about the state of affairs in this country.

For instance, the government recently commissioned the new Kwame Nkrumah circle, and depending on the person’s political affiliation, it was either looked at as a beautiful development or a complete waste of money.

img_8632 The new Kwame Nkrumah Circle, Commisioned by President John Mahama
Even those who “claimed” to be neutral had an underlying bias in their comments.

Making the few with an honest opinion silent for fear of being tagged for or against.

And because of this, the country is stuck in a constant tug of war, where people aren’t able to move past their sentiments to have any tangible conversations.

I know people who will NEVER see any positive development from the ruling party and I don’t mean just the present government.

Even when all evidence claims otherwise people will vehemently oppose everything and shut down attempts by others who try to applaud the government because of their inbuilt dislike for whose in power.

So It’s never about what’s right or wrong, good or bad; it’s always about who it’s coming from i.e. how people are aligned to who’s in power.

And it doesn’t matter if it runs the country down in the process, so long as it gets their opponents out of office, and gives voters the illusion that ONLY they can come and build it up it up again.

This is another reason why several good policies and developments are dropped and discarded when a new party comes into power, because they don’t want to be associated with something they might have opposed.

img_8634 This is only a sample picture.
So you will see several roads,structures etc left unfinished making our country look like an uncompleted building.

And I don’t know how we can stop this and try to move on as a country, but the first step to healing, has always been acceptance.

We need to look in the mirror and admit that we’ve let our bias dictate how we view the government and every decision they take.

And this is something only a few people will be bold enough to do and accept; but others will continue to hide behind political neutrality to justify their dislike for everything the government of the day does.

Hopefully we can recognize that we have a problem, and can move past our sentiments and really examine things with an open mind and not because of who we’re affiliated to.

But hey, what do I know right?