Giving Politics A Blemish

Politics has acquired a bad image in this country for reasons which are not far-fetched. When players on the political turf abuse the privileges bestowed upon them by dint of the appointments given to them, we begin to wonder whether that is why some of our compatriots fight tooth and nail to have their parties win elections. The humility with which they go knocking on doors for votes is soon replaced by invectives, some of them unprintable, when their parties come to power, with their lifestyles undergoing phenomenal transformation. Their uncouth conduct is veneered with long and windy sermons on political morality as if their words are cannons to be embraced by all of us. We have for long been bombarded with the pontifications of such persons in authority whose intention is ostensibly to have us alter our supposed fractured moral makeup. Their efforts in this regard suggest they are beyond the moral shortcomings about which they pontificate when they have graced public forums. It is with a sense of disappointment and despair when, in the course of time, their conduct shows them to be guilty of what they have pontificated about on rooftops, as they flaunt their titles of �honourables� and �ministers of state.� They insult and even come close to spitting on those whose positions are in contrast to theirs, amazingly in a political system which supports multiparty democracy. Yet these persons hold public offices and are expected, according to an unwritten social convention, to serve as role models in a country where such gems are an endangered species. We shudder to consider the effect of the wayward conduct of such persons President Mills has favoured with political appointments, on the youth of this country. Given their easy access to social media and radio, the youth of this country would witness, without inhibition, the garbage spewed by important office holders and painfully be endued with some of such garbage. Are these the kinds of persons our youth must emulate? Certainly not, we dare state. Having heard Kobby Acheampong�s submissions, as it were, on radio regarding his latest show of indecency, we are justified, as are others, to fret at why politicians do not learn from the mistakes of their forebears and conduct themselves accordingly. Today, the noble occupation of politics has attracted so much negativity that many would rather steer away from it lest they are subjected to insults from the ilk of the Kobby Acheampongs. The negative effects of the conduct of such miscreant politicians on our youth would be an interesting subject of academic research.