Politics, money and big English

I do not know how campus politics is like these days. When we were at Legon, it was quite turbulent. From the JCR to NUGS elections, it was often a do-or-die matter. Candidates took the elections so seriously that they would in the meantime pack their books somewhere, start chewing gorro and go hunting for loans to finance their campaign. Ghanaman student doesn’t joke with his post!

When a candidate manages to grab a loan using his sound system, faded jeans, lunch coupons and ancient shaving-stick as collateral, he uses the loan wisely. At least half the money instantly to his girlfriend at Volta Hall. Fact is that the girlfriend is his political adviser during elections and a comforter when he loses.

Normally, girlfriends give their boyfriends rage and urge them on, knowing they are going to lose anyway. And if they don’t urge them on, they won’t get part of the campaign money to “chop”. It is just like during national elections where wives urge their husbands on, knowing well that the man they are married to is a political non-starter and, therefore, presidentially bankrupt.

Woe unto you if you told your presidential can-husband the truth. “Daddy, the way I see you, the way you walk, the way you dance, the way you snore and the way your mother no born you fine, I advise you to call it quits because you can’t beat your opponent. In fact, there is no way you can beat him. He is more handsome, dazzling, and more stylish and can talk big English.”

Such a politico-marital advice is a sure recipe for bedtime hostilities and an end to the happy marriage. “Who dare you tell me nonsense?” the man would explode. “Don’t you know I am a born-again politician? Haven’t you seen that my forehead is of presidential quality and design? Bad-luck woman! I’m going to divorce you first if I win the elections and shame you and the devil; Kwasia like thatt!”

With campus politics in those days, what was clear was that some candidates actually spent big sums of money on the electorate to court votes. It took the form of buying endless jugs of bubra and sharing “jot” around and sometimes money among close friends and campaign pushers. It was quite amusing because the more bubra you gave out, the less votes you got.

Anyhow the acid test of a candidate’s suitability or otherwise was determined at a face-to-face forum where each candidate orally vomited his manifesto and answered hot and peppered questions from the audience.

A candidate wasn’t only expected to talk sense, but also to talk big English. The idea is that when half the Merari Alomele’s audience do not understand what you say, it means you’re a mystery man and only mystery men can perform wonders and deliver the goods.

It turned out that those candidates who genuinely promised to make campus a better place for all with better facilities, better food and mandatory student loans were not applauded much. It was those who virtually said nothing progressive but reverberated in highfalutin language and used phrases like “progresso-reactionary polarization” who won the elections. Tragically enough, the users of such magniloquent phrases least understood them but won hands down.

So successful campus politics at the time did not depend on appealing to the good sense of fellow students but on the amount and quality of kpokpomatic linguistic delivery in the Queen’s language, and if it was guaranteed that the candidate did not understand what he was saying, he was sure to win.

Luckily, it is not so in national politics. You really have to talk sense. And if you insult, you lose.

Questions time was another palaver altogether. One single question from an adversary could send you directly to the grave, no-curve-no-bend. “Mr Aspiring Candidate my question is not a lorgorligi one. It is direct to the point. We all know that that once a thief, always a thief. I was in the same secondary school with you and you were one of the prefects. I lie? When you were in office, you couldn’t account for certain monies paid to you and got sanctioned by the authorities.

Number two; it is no secret that you are a man of great appetite. It is on record that you once won a food-eating competition. We’ve also heard reports from the grapevine that after devouring your own gari and shito in record time, you unilaterally took over that of your room-mate and finished it also. Congratulations.

Now your room mate is facing acute hunger and needs foreign aid to survive. He has grown lean like a dog. What makes you think you can be our leader?”

Such questions have two poisonous ingredients. The first can induce instant hypertension and stroke enough to reduce your lifespan by half. The second is to inform you officially that it would be a miracle if you won the election, so you are so better off not responding to the questions.

Campus politics is sometimes very much like national politics except that it is quite opposite in some instances. The only real differences border on the fact that national politics is somewhat of a higher level when it comes to treachery, corruption, insults, whatever.

Politics in general, however, concerns all about big talk and money both of which can lead a candidate either to succeed or to gnash teeth. I have been following the happenings in the New and Patriotic Party (NPP) for interest and I personally see nothing dangerously wrong with politicians dishing out money so long as every other politician is either guilty doing same, or is capable of doing so at a future date.

I was a bit surprised some politicians said they were alarmed that delegates were being bribed, as if it had never happened at any time in the history of the parties.

What I know is that you can bribe and still lose just like it used to happen on campus, because voting is by secret ballot.

If you’re popular, nothing can influence your success, and it is only in few cases that money can easily influence the political direction of a voter. In fact, with secret balloting, bribery isn’t a big factor, because everybody has his (or her) favourite he wouldn’t sacrifice for 30 pieces of silver.

VENGEANCE

As it were in Sikaman general elections, it is not a matter of big English, overflowing knowledge or Big money. It is a matter of what the country’s priorities because Ghanaians are becoming sensitive to a fact that with some people, entrusting them with affairs of the state would be a national disaster not cause they are incompetent, but because their motives for becoming the country’s leaders are not in the interest of the nation. Theirs is vengeance!

Secondly, it is a matter of what a person is capable of doing, and not what he thinks he can do or dreams can do. With politics, dreams are only dreams what we need is the truth. And the truth is that Ghana is not going to make it unless we forget our differences, stop bearing grudges and act in concert towards continuous growth and development.

This article was first published on Saturday, April 13, 1995