The upstart is the one who tries to climb a tree from the top.
-Yaw Adjei Amoah
I have been pondering recent national events in Ghana in the last few weeks. The Woyome Affair leads the pack. The Daily Graphic the national daily we maintain by the very bloody sweat of our brows reported on the front page of its 14th January, 2012 edition (No. 18741) that “ only GHC17m ” had been paid out to one Mr. Woyome. The Attorney-General is literally singing about some “gargantuan crimes” committed against the Ghanaian Republic by politicos who remain untouchable because of their party affiliation. And then the cacophony of commentaries ring out with a din made all the more unbearable because partisanship seeks to win the argument against the national interest. I get angry but upon reflection I think laughter is the best way out. Our national affairs have become a grand circus writ large for any clear thinking Ghanaian to split his or her sides watching even furtively. Dispensing nitrous oxide en masse to us all would have been very useful to aid this laughing fest. That is surely a far useful way of using the purported savings on the removed subsidy on petroleum which will in all probability ultimately find its way into phantom accounts. If we wait for them for this nitrous gas it will never come even if we die and re-incarnate twenty-three times. I mean these dudes never deliver anything that will make our lives livable let alone comfortable. So here is my bit for the laughs as I caricature those who look in our face and simply lie and go home happy that they made a fool of us all.
You know that upstart. Open the papers. Turn on your TV. He is right there. In the university he joins the student movement breathing brimstone and fire against injustice and exploitation. He becomes a student leader aided by the political party which donates the highest financial resources to his cause. He begins to learn right there the dark art of mass deceit pretending to represent his fellow students when indeed he is an agent for his sponsors. His political sponsors win power. The student movement has given him a useful spring board composed of the bruising backs of his fellow students: he lands a top political job right out of school when he has barely learnt to pay neither rent advance nor wake up at dawn to the bawling cries of an infant he has fathered who needs milk. It is a measure of his pay master’s intelligence too that such a choice is made at all.
Our upstart is everywhere on radio and on TV where it is clear that his meal ticket rides on insults, invectives, innuendos and sheer con artistry. And what a meal he is enjoying!!! His cheeks now look like an over inflated jabulani ball while his compatriots seem to have just rediscovered their Rawlings’s chains and spot as a consequence gaunt, lean, very hungry looks as they amble about in a trance. That is fair representation right? Our upstart grows obese in direct proportion to the speed with which the majority of his compatriots lose weight ( and not because of a weight lose program it must be noted!). Now it is time get the Master’s degree while juggling the ministerial post and also to pursue the dream of becoming a member of parliament. One would have thought that in a saner Ghanaian world top appointees would have largely gone through the mill of politics and post-graduate education already. That the scale of our national challenges requires this is a no brainer. It is clearly a topsy-turvy world in which our upstart inhabits though: everything is upturned and distorted and he is making policy for you and I. You know that upstart. Open the papers. Turn on your TV. He is right there. Soon he will be your president!!!!
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