The lawyers should keep saying death penalty is an error until their own wakes to the death knell and becomes a victim of the killing fields.
I have grown to fear the Ghanaian in their audacious ability to kill fellow humans with knives. Very scary and a testament to the eclectic diversity of mankind. We are not the same. Some are cannibals.
God killed Cain when he killed his brother Abel. Even Jonathan, the extraordinary figure in the bible who played the virtuous role of a good, trustworthy friend to David, lost his life in an episode the bible said ” he died for the sins of his father” King Saul.
Weakened by the no-death penalty mantra, people continue to commit murder in Ghana. An opposite tide has escaped the cage in the form of mob injustices in which the people the law seeks to protect, have taken the law into their own hands. Lynching crime suspects to their instant deaths appears to be the message from the masses to the authorities that an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, are some of the best means to discourage a felony like murder.
Turning to other areas of national activity and maybe disinterest, my candid view is that everything seems to be going haywire in the post-Y2K period. Music is full of noise, sports we are not there, and most pastors don’t preach what we want to hear.
The other time I saw a burly-statured preacher in one-man evangelism along the Ashalley botwe road, adjoining aviation road to Adenta in Accra. This man with a Nigerian accent said something I thought was pleasant and I experienced some bliss. He preached reform of society.
I was happy when recently a US-based Ghanaian requested for an old television theatre clip on a performance by the defunct Stars Drama group of Tema which was led by Kojo Demanya. She didn’t ask for the récents that are loaded with predictable plots and things that are not edifying. Of course, the requests suited an unknown interest but indeed the nostalgic demand for more than a three-decade-old feature speaks directly to a choice made between different cultures of the same country.
My age was in single digits when I first heard Ghana was unprecedented four-time continental football championS. Then I saw the first-ever live match of Black Stars against The Gambia in which the team unstoppably pounded the opponents three-nil. The days when the Black Star symbol was designed on the back of Ghana’s jerseys. Still, Ghana remains on that appellation, Egypt and Cameroon are on seven and five respectively.
The Ivory Coast’s only military ruler Gen. Robert Guei was killed in the 2002 mayhem that engulfed his country. He is to be remembered for ordering the arrests of national team players on their arrival from a fiasco.
The only nuance of such resentment open to Ghana is to call off participation in international events to put our house in order. We cannot continue to waste money without returns, or in lieu of that reward past heroes who were sources of national pride. Failing to do the needful, the metaphysical leash on our football firmly remains in place.
I always watch young men spotting long beards standing at bus stops with bags hanging on their shoulders. May God help them to marry one day, as seemingly remote governmental policies continue to snowball and reveal themselves in their lives or on their doorsteps as nooses of strangulation.
Fortunately, people see when things are going wrong, only the outlet they don’t have. In February this year, I moved closer to a group of middle-aged men discussing the country. This was in Tamale, I was on my way from Garu, after time with visiting PLO Lumumba group.
I want a presidential candidate to reject the naming of Ghana in good place of global peace index. Peace is not the absence of war. Recently, another body, the UNDP said, almost half of the country’s people wallows in abject poverty. How can you have peace in poverty. You cannot afford the basic necessities of life and you have peace?
Two British sages said something thought-provoking. Ramsey McDonald said, democracy grumbles meaninglessly on empty stomachs. Henry David Thoreau said, the mass of men live in quiet desperation.
It is now time for politics to look into society beyond projects.
(Writer is a Past student, osei kyeretwie secondary school, kumasi)