Okay, Britain didn’t set much of an example in democratic rule, when she ran the affairs of her colony, the “Gold Coast.”
For instancve, when riots broke out in the colony in 1948, due mainly to discontent against such economic injustices the British had imposed on it as allowing foreign companies (like UAC, UTC and PZ) to monopolise both the import and export trades; when traders (led by Nii Kwabena
Bonne, Osu Alata Mantse) organised a boycott of imported goods; and when the workers of the Gold Coast downed tools in a general strike in support of the boycott, what did the British do?
ANSWER: The British picked up the leaders of the political movement that had been highighting the grievances of the populace – the United Gold Coast Convention(UGCC) – and deported them to the remote “Northern Territories” of the Gold Coast (where they were incarcerated.)
That was the beginning of the end of Bitish rule in nthe Gold Coast. Within three years, the country, had won for itself, the right to elect its own legislature and form as Cabinet. In another six years, (1957) it had won full independence.
On Indeendence Day – 6 March 1957 – the Gold Coast’s political leaders were full of praise for the British, for listening to their demand and granting them independence or “self government.”
But the party that had won independence for Ghana, the Convention People’s Party (CPP), refused to listen, in its turn, to the voice of its own people, and within ONE YEAR of independence, had begun to rule by formal democracy, without observing the tenets and conventions that constitute the informal “spirit of democracy,” the absence of which makes formal “democratic constitutional rule” a “toothless bulldog.’’
Okay, so the British were bad “teachers” of democracy to their colonies.
But independence was supposed to recognise the political maturity of the people of the Gold Coast.
The British were, in fact, touting Ghana as an ex-colony whose leaders could be trusted to show the world that they knew what real democracy was about.
Why then, would the CPP Government introduce a Preventive Detention Act (PDA) to be used to throw their political opponents into prison without trial for five years WITHOUT TRIAL, only one year after independence?
To be sure, the PDA wasn’t the only bad law enacted by the new Government of Ghana, to suppress the Opposition.
Within three years of attaining independence, the CPP had formally declared Ghana itself a “one-party state.”
It was then that the CPP learnt a painful and terminal political lesson: six years after declaring Ghana a “one-party state,” the “supreme one-party” lost power – it was overthrown by the military it had itself created.
If the CPP had learnt to respect the idea that the “spirit of democracy” was as important as the formal elements of democracy (as enacted into laws on paper) would it have lost power in February 1966?
Moot question! The new question Ghanains who think deeply should ask themselves now is this: historically speaking, have the Governments that followed the CPP, learnt from the CPP’s mistakes, or have they treated the CPP’s mistakes as something to be quietly regretted but then – ignored?
It is my conviction that the practice of hypocritically ignoring the real needs of the people, or paying lip service to their wishes – until election time arrives – has seriously taken root in Ghanaian politics, and is sure to drive the country to the rocks of in the near future, unless Ghana’s poiticians learn the lessons taught by the country’s political history and mend their ways whilst holding the reins of power.
As I write, there is a political crisis in Britain: caused by the dramatisation, on television, of what has been described as “the greatest and most scandalous miscarriage of justice” in the country. The scandal relates to the introduction by the British Post Office, in 1999, of new software, called “Horizon,” used as the system of accountingfor sales at post office branches throughout the country.
The software turned out to be flawed, and consistently caused “false accounting” to occur at more than 3,000 branches.
The false accounts were used by ruthless and possibly criminal Post Office investigatrs to posecute some 1,000 sub-postmasters, some of whom were jailed.
Almost all of them were made to “repay” shortages allegedly detected by the “Horizon” software.
This led to some being ruined financially, losing their homes and jobs.
The incredible suffering caused quite a few suicides among those of the accused personnel who could not stand being disgraced in their social circles by the accusations of theft made against them.
The current British Government has been tremendously embarrassed by the “Horizon” scandal and is reported to be preparing to enact legislation that will overturn the convictions of the post office personnel who fell victim to the “Horizon” errors.
I ask: suppose the “Horizon” scandal had occurred in Ghana, would our Government have admitted it and sought to repair the damage done?
I dare say that our Government would have reacted as it has done to the existential threat that the people of Ghana have been facing, due to the wanton, devastating destruction of their water-bodies, farms and forest reserves, caused by malefactors of Ghanain and foreign origin, engaged in the evil practice called galamsey.
Although members of our Government and their officials; Paramount chiefs and their subordinates; church elders and other “leaders” of public opinion (including many brave journalists) have been routinely urging the Government to take decisive action against the galamseyers, the destruction goes on.
It’s as if members of the Government were completely deaf.
Please take a minute and view on Youtube, the latest report – filed at the beginning of January 2024, by the incomparable Joy News Correspondent, Erastus Asare Donkor, and ask yourself whether such a situation would be allowed to continue in Britain, if it were ever to occur in the country that taught us how modern Government works:
https://tpc.googlesyndication.com/ simgad/14286702465590133089
BY CAMERON DUODU
