In The Political Circus

The circus into which our local political turf has been turned, these past few months, has maintained a consistent downward spiral on the integrity scale. Perhaps attracted by the notoriety of jihad-obsessed Baba Jamal, Mahama Ayariga has also joined the circus, albeit on a slightly varied pitch from his Education Ministry desk. With some respect still attached to his bones, unlike his Eastern Region colleague who has none left, he slipped with his ill-fated disclosure about the non-availability of funds for the Volta University project and landed in a political mess. The backlash for speaking the truth was swift and painful, prompting a distressed Mahama Ayariga to seek a punching bag to relieve his stress. His decision to land on the Daily Guide newspaper as a vent, failed to fly, as it rather exposed his ignorance about the media plane today. A gentleman we used to respect, he appears to be losing those fine traits in him which set him apart from the hawkish and destructive elements of the NDC in the past. These are unusual times in the ruling party and we could overlook such shortcomings because he could be struggling to have his voice heard either at Ridge or Castle. Ayariga might just be keeping pace with the new order of seeking to be relevant to the ongoing FONKAR/GAME NDC politics. A spiritual cleansing would do him a lot of good as he re-focuses his sight on the Bawku Parliamentary seat, earlier attempts having drawn so much blood of innocent citizens. For his information, Daily Guide, with all humility, is a force to reckon with on the media plane, with correspondents strewn across the country, including Bawku. We would not conjecture stories and present them to readers as he sought to portray in a tendentious fashion. To think that our story was a conjecture was beyond imagination and smacks of mischief on the part of a man we expect more from in terms of knowledge about such a crucial subject as the workings of the fourth estate of the realm. The Daily Guide, by the kind courtesy of our esteemed and discerning readers who can differentiate between a predominantly government press release-laden newspaper and one which is not, and the support of the Omnipotent Creator, cannot be ignored regarding news coverage in the country. As for his colleague, Baba Jamal, who beat the drums of war so loudly during the by-election in the Akwatia constituency, using jihad to incite people, the little said about him the better. Suffice it to state however that such characters, excited about Manna from Heaven in the form of ministerial appointments, are robbing the exalted office of its deserved aura. Lying between his teeth has become his recent stock-in-trade, turning himself into a political buffoon. This is unfortunate indeed and we wish he could spare the nonsense he spews as defence for the seizure by National Security operatives of video recordings. In one stretch, it is about breaching a regulation and in another he points at the non-payment of taxes, which are inconsistent with logic and commonsense. The ethnocentric pranks of Inusah Fuseini, one of the new entrants in the political circus, have luckily been shot down even before they caused any collateral damage, as he and his party strategists sought to do. We can now appreciate why such elevated offices demand the fulfillment of certain requirements, conditions lacking, it seems, in the aforementioned gentlemen. In the run-up to the Sunyani congress of the party, we perhaps have not seen the end of the political pranks.