Let’s defer this Christmas

Four days from today, it will be Christmas, the day appropriated by the Romans for the birth of Jesus Christ.

In how many homes across Ghana will there really be the joy of Christmas? This question keeps hounding me, without end, without reprieve.

Although, I am in no way responsible or connected to any of the ills that distress the the soul of the country.

It’s trite knowledge that Kenneth Kuntukununku Ofori Atta and his kinsmen have ensured that in so many homes, there will be no aroma of Christmas cooking. Either there is no food or there is no money to buy it, or recovering from the pains inflicted by their dreadful haircuts.

For days, I have been labouring in the precincts of reminiscences, a constant recall of the luxuriant but beautiful way of life in my days in Krachi. Kwabena and Jacob stoked the fire, even more, days ago as we reflected on Christmas, and what life used to be like around the country side. How those in the city of Accra would return to the village at this time of the year when there would be jams all through the night when men would gather around a bonfire and roast yams as they tell tales of good life. All that have faded into history as life gets increasingly difficult and very desperate.

Joy has parted ways from most parts of the country and those who longed to return to the village for the annual celebrations perish the thought on the grounds of hardship, high and unstable cost of transportation.

This 2022, a chunk of us, Ghanaians will not experience the smell of Christmas because of the economic disaster visited on us by Ken Ofori-Atta and his kinsmen.

To this piteous end, I humbly suggest we defer this year’s Christmas and use the period to assess the character, nature and posture of the various political agents wishing for our support and mandate.

For those that are wishing for our mandate to teach us where the power lies, the times we are in call for ideas from them, of what they will do to stir the country from a debilitating stupor occasioned by large scale incompetence.

We must develop an overwhelming consensus this season that political leadership cannot remain the only job for which no qualification appears necessary, except to have sweet tongue, a lot of money, usually stolen money.

It is clear that for as long as the current pattern of leadership recruitment continues, our troubles will remain. It is for this reason that we must find a way to bring relevant criteria to bear on the selection of leadership. We have got to find a way of making character, competence and capacity determine who leads.

Our quest for liberation should not be rested on those who can provide the biggest bribes for the biggest number of people to emerge as our leaders.

By Charles McCarthy

@TheHawkNewspaper

Source: GhanaPlus.com