Comment
Who Is Afraid Of Politics?
Having transformed the word 'politician' into a dirty word as in 'disgruntled politician' or 'corrupt politician' they can hardly be expected to use it in its normally understood form.
Every time there is a military coup, political parties are outlawed and all the country's problems are blamed on politics and politicians. At one time in Ghana, a military government actually BANNED politics!
Maj-Gen. Buhari has offered as one of the reasons for the mass retrenchment of public officers, that his victims had been 'political appointees'.
The soldiers then try hard to cultivate the myth that they are or can rule a country through a sanitised system untouched by politics.
For Fit-Lt. Rawlings, who is currently engaged in trying to divest his regime of the 'military' label, he would have Ghanaians believe that his friends and relations who now rule the country are all nationalists engaged in a crusade of a sort. After almost three years in power, Ghana is still being ruled by permanent 'part-timers'. Not one of them would admit to the reality that they are politicians.
Almost all the appointees still perpetuate the myth that they are on secondment from their original jobs (including those among them who had no identifiable occupations prior to the call of Flt-Lt. Rawlings).
This gigantic hoax allows the members of the Provisional National Defence Council and all the function- aries to keep up the public stance that they are not on any salaries commensurate with their official positions and only accept 'allowances'.
If after almost three years Ghana still has a government of 'part timers' when are they going to have the courage to admit that ruling a country is a full time undertaking? When will they tell the nation what their salaries are and stop the charade of still being on their former salaries and accepting only 'allowances'?
It might not be politics of a particularly glorified kind but there is no other word to describe what Maj-Gen Buhari has been trying to do in Nigeria for the past almost ten months. The major difference between his brand and the one he overthrew and has condemned is that the overwhelming majority of Nigerians are banned from participating. He has the dubious advantage also of insisting that his every word and edict be "with immediate effect".
The higher and refined forms of politics, however, recognise that human beings do not operate on the basis of "with immediate effect" and strive for consensus on the part of the governed. To justify their intervention in the political process the soldiers really have no choice but to condemn politics and politicians and then try to find new words to describe their own actions.
The next stage then is to throw the label of "disgruntled politician" at anybody who disagrees with them, the argument being that everybody who is not on their side must be evil and thus 'a politician'. There is, of course, the reality that the general public can see of the overthrown politicians spending various periods in jail for no stated reasons.
It is no wonder, therefore, that there is the growing tendency among the much abused politician to assert as though it were a badge of honour that one is not interested in politics. This assertion of disinterest politics is supposed to assure the powers that be that no criticisms will be forthcoming from a particular person and hopefully gain assurance of non-harrassment from officialdom.
There is the growing popularity of the misconception that a citizen in any of the countries in the sub-region can go about his daily tasks of food, shelter and the pursuit of happiness without paying any interest or notice to the politics of his country.
The majority of the people appear to have allowed themselves to be frightened off the subject of politics in the delusion that they can somehow survive and eke out a living without getting involved. The fallacy in such thinking only becomes apparent when the effects of the decisions taken by the Buharis and Rawlingses of this world hit the 'not-interested-in-politics' majority.
The decision to break into warehouses and sell goods to the public at vastly reduced prices in the first few weeks after a coup is a political decision, the decision to form Peoples Defence Committees to protect the ruling government is a political decision. The effects of such decisions and many more affect everybody, including the most studiously apolitical - if there are any such human beings.
The only winners in the situation where increasing numbers of people are opting out of politics are the adventurers and those who lust after naked power without the capability to use such power for the good of the greater majority of the people.
Without any challengers people like Fit-Lt. Rawling and his friends, Maj-Gen. Buhari and his colleagues and others like them have free rein to toy with the destinies of our countries.
There is no need to shy away from politics simply because a Rawlings or a Buhari seeks to clothe the word with attributes it does not possess and thus leave the field to themselves without any competition.
They are playing at politics, pathetic though the attempts might be and every citizen has the responsibility to be interested in politics and not allow the bully boys # win by default.
If politics were the dishonourable undertaking the soldiers would have everybody believe it is, what are they doing trying to rule a country?
