Bollocks, that is politics and it hurts

One of the most difficult jobs I have done in Canada is political party fundraising.
You are given targets to collect money and sign up memberships for a particular political party.
The next day, the task is to campaign and pitch for donations for a different political entity–from the same office.
You need a shower immediately after work, to wash off insults from aggrieved voters.
Your honour is abused but you feel somewhat compensated.
The schedule didn’t allow us to monitor voting patterns, because we were more like factory hands tending sandwiches for different stores.

Win and lose together
As friends in the inner circle of a Ghanaian politician in Toronto, we are aware of his relationship with one of the leading candidates in Ghana’s 2024 elections.
He calls him frequently for updates and has donated substantially to his campaign.
He is godfather to the candidate’s second child. When election polls favoured his candidate, I called to congratulate him prematurely and also inquired if he had packed his luggage to return to Ghana, to enjoy the spoils of his electoral victory.
He laughed it off and cautioned that politics has too many surprises in its belly.

In politics, your opponents are in the other party but your enemies are within your party.
I am a Democrat but my favourite American presidents have all been Republicans.
I have followed Barack Obama from Harvard to Chicago to the White House and even as a former president.
My chief pick and absolute favourite, however, remains Ronald Reagan, who incidentally, was a former Democrat.
Signing up for a particular political party is not a cast iron case; on a good day, a fine NDC man could be NPP any day.
When he was president, Barack celebrated Republican Abraham Lincoln as his favourite and kept his photos in the Oval Office.
When I worked in Ghana, I was persuaded to hide behind these columns and pretend to be neutral.
I wonder what that creature called Mr Neutral looks like. News reporter and popular host of Metro TV’s Good Evening Ghana, Paul Adom-Otchere, is quick to punch through the hypocrisy of people who feign political neutrality and confuse objectivity for maturity or neutrality.
My UP politician friend in Toronto may be one of those ‘mature neutrals’–for good measure. He married into a dyed-in-the wool NDC family and has healthy links with CPP.
His daughter recently married the son of a silent NPP financier.
It looks like he stands to win and lose at the same time on December 7, no matter who wins the vote.

Ghana in a good place
That is the character of party politics. Ronald Reagan was spot on when he compared politics to the oldest profession and concluded that it bears a striking resemblance to the first.
Cynists say the pretty people in the oldest profession felt insulted when Reagan made the comparison, because politicians and voters have no honest claim to anything moral.
If you have observed, the people in the oldest profession hardly report rape after a client has paid up and discharged their duty. Unlike the flesh traders, our politicians collect our money and do not deliver the goods.
We are targeted, punished and sometimes killed when we speak up.
The nationals of many African countries, especially East Africans, think Ghana is in a very good place.
Colleague journalists have often queried why I am still in Canada when my country is on the cusp of development.
They admire Akuffo Addo’s rhetorical brilliance and thought President Atta Mills was incorruptible.
John Mahama’s biggest admirers are in Burundi. Strangely, however, they think Mahama is related to actor Van Vicker.
I worry when Africans read bad press about my country.
Fabian Kalala, a brilliant Congolese journalist, was surprised to see our leading candidates sign a peace pact. Was it all a facade, Fabian asks?
Sadly, it was Fabian who pointed me to the Ayawaso food vote involving Hon. Lydia Alhassan.
My position on ‘treating’ and ‘influencing’ is ambivalent. Our laws are clear: it is illegal.
I wonder whether the voters in our villages and peri-urban communities see any inducement value in a bottle of oil and rice when they know that our elections deliver everything to the politicians and their children, and nothing more than broken pieces of hope to the voter.
For people hoping against hope and finally settling for blind hope, a bag of rice is the only democratic dividend they attract.
They may not need rice or oil when they see progress in their lives.

Vote buying in America
These are the gaps our democratic practice must seek to address. Like Lydia, we have all been guilty of this fraud since 1992.
We would rather share food than deploy macho men and uniformed non-security personnel to intimidate and beat up voters for no just cause.
If land guards have ever beaten you to take your land, and macho men have seized you by the throat to take your vote away, you feel lucky when you are able to cast your ballot in peace and also take free food home.
In revenge, voters may take money from two big contenders and save their vote for the next bidder. They see it as their turn to even up and make up. Let’s change it.

Does ‘treating’ and vote buying happen in Canada and the USA? Only two days to the American elections, candidate Trump was seen distributing $100 bills to shoppers in a mall.
Like Ghana, it is a serious infraction in American electoral laws. CNN discussed the crime briefly, alongside the candidate’s many other crimes, and quickly switched to focus on polls in Pennsylvania.
So, it sits well with American civil behaviour that Billionaire Elon musk, who supported Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in the Republican primaries, is today President Trump’s pick for the Department of Government Efficiency. Let’s see who gets what in the next Jubilee House cabinet.

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