Let us be Wary of Politicians Bearing Tales of Woe

You have to feel a certain sense of weariness about Ghana these days. It is not exactly pessimism or despair, but the mood is definitely neither light nor welcoming. Let me put it this way: it is becoming increasingly difficult to find nice things to say about our country, and this despite the government’s efforts to convince us that we have never had it so good. Perhaps, our money side is as good as they try to convince us it is – what with oil and high commodity prices and the lot. The near-despair is due to one word: politics. Our politics is in a dark place the like of which we have not witnessed since the dark bad era of coups, rebellions and countercoups. A nation that cannot conduct an honest registration of voters is knocking at the gates of trouble. 

Let us consider what has been happening in this country over the past two weeks: potential voters have been invited to register. In essence, this is as simple as writing down your details such as name, age address and so on, taking your voter’s card and getting on with the rest of your life. Could anything be simpler? And yet when you open any newspaper, or especially when you turn on your radio in any direction on the dial you would think that a registration exercise is a cross between trench warfare and rocket science. It appears that all over the country some invisible forces are operating undercover moving people to places they have never been to register them for the December elections.

According to these reports, the invisible forces are not only distorting the internal arrangements ahead of the vote, but there are allegations of whole truckloads of people crossing our borders under the sponsorship of political parties or individuals to come and register illegally so that they can vote for their sponsors in the coming elections. If what we are hearing is true, it means that the December election is already flawed and the people, whoever they are, that will be “elected” to rule over us will occupy their positions by fraud. Think about it and think about it again. A nation ruled by fraud is doomed. This is not a melodramatic statement. It is a historical fact.

However, one has to believe that there is nowhere near as much fraud as is being alleged. There are irregularities, and we will come to that presently, but not fraud on a massive scale. It is true that here and there some minors have tried to register, and for the record we have had the odd non-Ghanaian also making the attempt, and the fact that these have been detected should be a plus for our system. However, as with most things in Ghana, what should be a plus has turned negative, fuelling wild allegations of fraud and badness of all sorts. So, what is really happening?

What is happening is the mood of near despair in which mutual distrust is the prevailing temper of public discourse and communications. In the era of the NDC and NPP it appears that nothing is as it seems to the rest of us. An innocent cock-up by the electoral commission or even a minor mishap by a minor official is immediately turned into a case for national upheaval because every politician is looking for a sign, not of a good turn, but of evil intentions on the part of the opponent. This is the way in which politics is being conducted in Ghana today – demonise the opponent in order to look good in the eyes of the voter.

It is a bad strategy because it is creating a mood of pessimism in the country, and this is bad for morale and business. Worse, it is creating an impression of suspicion not only of our politicians but of the political process itself. This is the source and result of the familiar resorts to abuse and insults that have become part of the political process; the process is no longer respected. If a proper poll of attitudes is conducted I am sure that politics and politicians – and journalists – would rate rather low in public esteem. Another spillover from the political mood is that mistrust is becoming the accepted way of interacting among citizens who are becoming suspicious of one another, usually not for any good reason.

It is into our fragile political atmosphere that cock-ups by the Electoral Commission and its filed staff come like petrol onto fire. It is understandable that a new system such as this biometric registration, being tried for the first time, would have some technical and operational problems. Normally, we should accept that as a natural part of the experiment, and in a more tolerant mood, Ghanaians are not too demanding. But politics is different, it appears. Politicians have whipped their followers into a zero tolerance for mistakes and every blunder, however minute, is magnified a thousand times in content and presumed effect. Radio 24/7 means that each technical or operational gaffe is immediately transmitted to an audience already primed for cynicism and trouble.

At the beginning of the registration exercise, there were reports from Bolgatanga of some serious trouble which, depending on the radio station, was either being resolved or worsened by different players in the political drama.  On one radio station there were frantic calls for the police to intervene as the numbers of people waiting swelled at some registration centres and people became frustrated. This led to intricate conspiracy theories being spun like spider webs. When I spoke on the phone with a friend who was in thick of matters he explained that he thought the EC had not tested the machines in the Bolgatanga heat, which on that day was touching 45 degrees Celsius in the shade. In those harsh conditions most computer hardware, not to speak of the human brain, would need patience. In our politics, patience is in very short supply.

This kind of frantic fear of being cheated, which is the result of our dishonesty, cannot be good for us. Consider this: all parliamentary candidates, including most MPs, District Chief Executives and perhaps most ministers, have gone to their constituencies to police the registration. This means that a fair chunk of government business, and business in general, has come to a halt or slow down merely because voters are being registered. What will happen when the election itself is close?

The blame for the dark mood in the country must be placed at the door of the kind of politics we have chosen to play. At a recent public event, Alhaji Ahmed Ramadan, Chairman of the People’s National Convention, put his finger on the issue when he observed that the first past the post or winner takes all politics is the source of acrimony and tension in our politics. He is right. We need to have a serious rethink as a nation about how we select those who look after our affairs. The winner takes all may work for some people, it is not working for us. There are alternatives to consider and we must not lock ourselves into only one option because it is the one “we have always used”.

In the meantime, we must not fall for the politicians’ Ananse trick of exaggerating every mishap into a crisis; it is in their interest to create a picture of direness from which only they can rescue us. Probably, I am wrong and things are as bad as they say. But I hope not. Let us be wary of the stories the politicians and their media allies, some call them the “rented press” on both sides, are telling us. That way, we can make some sense of the reality around us.

 gapenteng@hotmail.com

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STAND UP IF YOU ARE REALLY AGAINST INSULTS

Ghana is an interesting country, or perhaps two interesting countries inhabiting one territorial body in the manner of a person with a split personality syndrome. Last weekend, the President of the Republic called on his party faithful to be gentle and respectful towards their opponents. He asked them not to engage in insults, lies and abuse. Two days later, his Minister designate for the Eastern Region admitted before a Parliamentary Committee that stories he published as an editor about former President Kufuor had no basis in fact. As I write, the President has not withdrawn the nomination of his errant minister designate, who has served for more than two years as an Ambassador.

Nana Addo Dankwa Akuffo Addo, the opposition Presidential candidate has stated on more occasions than you can count that he did not endorse the use of violent language in politics and has said emphatically that he would not want to see a “drop of blood spilled” in his quest to replace Professor Mills as President of this country. However, he was standing right there beside one of his most vocal MPs, Mr. Kennedy Agyapong, when the latter let off a blistering attack on President Mills, although he apologised later, the MP was not rebuked.

On the face of it, both leaders of the two main political reasons are against the use of insults and other forms of verbal violence against their opponents, and both will protest if one was to accuse them of being complicit in the excessive use of insulting and rude expression in what passes for political discussions in the media. And perhaps, we should be charitable enough to believe them because they are honourable men. But every day we hear their followers trading insults on the airwaves. How do we square this circle?

In my mind Campaign 2012 is actually two parallel campaigns running in opposite directions and passing each other like ships in a night fog. Let us call them High Campaign and Low Campaign. High Campaign is your friendly, gentle, non-threatening friend; the one that is pushed out into the open when politicians mount their stage, or find a microphone next to their mouths. High Campaign talks about peace, policy and patriotism. Low Campaign on the other hand is the one we see more often; indeed that is the one live with – the ruthless, rude, boorish master of insults and abuse. That is ugly lover the politicians disown in the daytime but embrace behind closed doors.

The question of political insults has moved to centre stage and dwarfed the issues that rightly ought to be discussed – the grinding poverty, youth unemployment and the like – precisely because the politicians have found that as an easy way to confront one another without doing the hard work of assembling REAL facts and figures with which to persuade voters. There is another, more fundamental reason: in our minds, we tend to separate everyday life from politics such that whereas no Ghanaian of sound mind would routinely insult people of the calibre of President Mills and Nana Akuffo Addo, in politics these distinguished elderly gentlemen are treated like riff-raff by their respective opponents, especially on radio. A third reason is that during political campaign seasons political parties tend to be controlled by their extremists while the more emollient characters are pushed to the margins.

Normally, after elections parties re-adjust their balance, especially in government, in order to accommodate a wider view. The problem is that in Ghana there is nothing like a campaign period because the campaign starts the day after election results are announced with no period for rest and reflection for politicians and public alike, and in that case the extremists rule the nest forever and ever. In this scenario, most people believe that not a lot can be done about the insults situation.

However, the Media Foundation for West Africa appears to have found a way to address the situation using an innovative monitoring tool which was launched in Accra last Tuesday. The instrument is for monitoring the use of language on radio and it has selected 31 radio stations for the exercise. Previously, the MFWA had carried out a Media Improvement Project which had (hopefully) improved journalistic practice at some of the stations involved. MFWA has trained monitors, usually graduate teachers who live in the radio stations catchment area and understand the language of the station.

MFWA will compile and present a weekly report of the findings of its monitors at a press conference so that the media will let the public know which of the stations involved and which politicians or journalists are using abusive language. While it is true that the MFWA has no power to sanction errant stations or people the hope is that the naming and shaming at the weekly press conferences will guide the politicians in their use of language.

The question is why should this work while other such devices, including myriad codes of conduct failed? The answer is in the detail. This is a practical process which relies on the actual monitoring of the selected stations and therefore goes beyond the voluntary observance of a code. In this instance someone is listening and reporting. Furthermore, the monitoring is not based on vague notions of insult and unacceptable language; the language has been broken down into categories and those categories have been defined with examples.

To give a flavour of those categories and their definitions, here we go with a few examples:

 Insults are any words, expressions or language meant to degrade or offend others. Insults attack the person using words such as thieves, fools, stupid, greedy bastards, unintelligent people, etc.

Hate speech is using insults against a group of people based on their ethnicity, religion, etc. to degrade and/or offend them and hold them out to public scorn and hatred.

Prejudice and bigotry consist of expressing instinctive views or biases against someone based on preconceived ideas and/or unreasonable dislike for a group of people such as:

“Akyems are arrogant”

“Ewes are inward-looking”

“Ashantis have inordinate pride”.

“What else do you expect from a Northerner?”

These are just a few of the categories but these clear definitions and examples mean that a standard has been set for the monitors and those being monitored to know exactly what is being tracked on the radio programmes involved. It has to be explained that the monitoring is not being done in some hazy way depending on the mood of the person monitoring. The Content Analysis Coding Schedule has 26 questionnaire-type parts with several subsectors which have to be filled in by the monitors, and the academic who devised the code has assured Ghanaians that there are trick questions in there to catch a monitor who tries to cheat.

There is no guarantee that this will work, but then there are no guarantees that the millions of words been spoken by Imams and bishops will have any effect either, but we all have to try and stop those who want to drive this country towards a fate that has befallen too many African countries from doing so. The good thing is that it appears that events next door in Cote D’Ivoire have woken this nation from its normal complacency and our belief that God is a Ghanaian appears to have been shaken somewhat!

Unfortunately, realising that we are vulnerable is not the same thing as resolving to prevent the vulnerability from becoming real, not to those who place power above everything else. Perhaps, these insults and their attendant risk of provoking violence are inherent in the political culture we have selected for ourselves. However, the consensus must be that we are smart enough to know the difference between an insult aimed at a person and criticism of a policy or an idea.

Furthermore, we cannot and should not aim to kill genuine rough and tumble of debate from our politics but we should know where and how to draw the line. It is in that exercise that the MFWA coding instrument, which was drawn up with the participation of the parliamentary political parties, has its virtue. It also enables to those who truly are against insults to stand up and be counted on the side of the angels.

gapenteng@hotmail.com

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Ghana’s Manhood TV Shame

I love TV3 for its sassiness and zip; in the 1990s, the station was the first to let in fresh air unto Ghana’s rather arid television arena which had been dominated by GTV, which had been the only television station in the country since the inception of television in 1965. There have been many TV stations since TV3 broke the mould but even then its reputation as the station of choice for Ghana’s youth is perhaps unchallenged. Other TV stations have carved out their own niches but across the expanse of news and entertainment TV3 does its best to hold the competition at bay thanks to programmes like Music Music, Mentor, Ghana’s Most Beautiful and other Live and “reality” shows.

However, the station has been in the news lately for absolutely the worst possible reasons and it will take a lot of remedial action to restore it to its previous position of affection and acclaim. The issue at stake is the deliberate and provocative exposure of the genitals of a guest on one of its programmes. Public shock and outrage have been lessened only slightly by the suspension of the programme by the station but in the main, the harm has already been done.

It is easy to see this incident as a single isolated silly occurrence but it highlights a situation that is threatening to become even more rampant in the future. The underlying issue is the importation of a celebrity culture from Europe and the US which most people believe sits badly alongside our own cultural mores and ethics.  Personally, I am loath to blame other cultures for our own waywardness when it occurs but on this occasion I also think that the celebration of celebrity for its own sake is a model that has no value except for those media houses that hope to profit from notoriety and nuisance.

Fame is not new in this country and we have always had famous people who are celebrated for their achievements in various fields, but in the West, a new phenomenon arose and intensified in the last 40 years due to the influence of telecommunications and therefore of ideas around the world. This is the celebration of the celebrity, which is defined as someone who is famous for being famous. People who do ordinary things such as broadcasting, acting, music or playing sport are elevated into stardom by the media for the purposes selling newspapers or advertising time on radio and television.

The glamorisation of such individuals began in Hollywood where film studios deliberately transformed their actors into public icons and encouraged them to behave rather badly to attract public attention. This was a way to get people into cinema halls. The public via the media were made to be interested in the private lives of these individuals especially in their sexual indiscretions.  With time the celebrity disease spread from Hollywood to all points East, West, South and North. It has arrived in Ghana with a vengeance, and our media and the entertainment industries have set about the task of creating and setting up our own celebrities.

The process I am describing is not the same as celebrating people of achievement and there are some programmes that are doing that admirably. What I am describing is simply setting people up by convincing them that the public is interested in the details of their private lives. The worst of the genre is the Delay Show on which a musician known as Wanluv da Kubolor showed what the media calls “his manhood”, which to be fair, was a piece of human flesh hanging rather sheepishly in his groin. I feel sorry for the man because he is the latest victim of the relentless egotism of Ms. Deloris Afia Frimpong Manso, who is the only “hero” of the show. I had never watched the Delay Show but following the incident I have watched a few episodes on youtube and I am yet to be convinced that it adds anything to our store of knowledge, information or happiness.

I have read a statement issued by Ms. Frimpong Manso’s office in which she blames the media for providing misleading information, to wit, that the outrageous part of the show was not aired on television. That misses the point. Why was it necessary to ask the musician to show whether or not he was wearing underpants, which the programme host calls “a supporter”. What on earth does Wanluv’s “supporter” mean to the television viewer apart from the sheer nuisance value?

However, the blame for this episode goes much deeper than Delay and Mr. Da Kubolor; it is a systemic failure to draw the lines and limits - what is allowed when and how - in our media landscape. To start with, it comes as a surprise even to some of us that there is no broadcasting law in this country. This means that there is no limitation on what any radio or television station might decide to broadcast at any time of day, week, month of the year. This is unusual in broadcasting environments because normally, there are strict guidelines on scheduling which take account of say, when children might be watching or listening.

There is a place for risqué and unusual content in broadcasting as well as satisfying niche and special interest audiences, but that should be done through scheduling that takes care of sensitivities and vulnerabilities. For example, the Delay Show which goes out on Saturday afternoon cannot be anything but mainstream and family-oriented content. Indeed, in Ghana’s specific cultural context, the audience for Saturday afternoon television may be mostly children who don’t have to attend funerals and other social commitments. 

The other problem is the apparent lack of control over programmes put on radio and television by individuals and organisations that have bought the airtime. It appears that anybody can buy the airtime and put on anything of their choice irrespective of whatever “code of conduct” they may have signed up to and must be expected to respect. If our broadcasting institutions want to live up to their vision and mission statements which are loftily declared they cannot simply leave their content to people who may not live up to the standard to which they are committed.

I would want to believe that all of us, including our broadcasting organisations have learnt lessons from what we should probably describe as an unfortunate mishap, although most people are justifiably convinced that the programme host and her guest staged the event, which was premeditated. More importantly, it is important that policy makers go beyond the expression of outrage and ensure that we have the right legal framework in place to regulate, without censoring, broadcasting content.

I have heard an argument put out that the musician’s groin was blurred during the broadcast, but we need to impress on everyone that the public outrage is not related to how Mr. Wanluv’s manhood looked or was presented but to the clear disrespect shown to viewers as well as the preparedness to court unnecessary nuisance just to make the programme and its makers more “popular”. Ghana’s media image is not a healthy one at the moment; a public showing of genitalia, whether clearly shown or not, cannot be good for anyone. Not even for Delay.

gapenteng@hotmail.com

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Tell Me the Old Old Story

One of my favourite hymns is Tell Me the Old Old Story which was on a much-thumbed page in my school Church Hymnary in my school days. To this day I feel a bit of a shiver when I hear its dying strains because it is one of a number of items in my personal auditory archive that recall my school time and the age of innocence. On Independence Day last Tuesday, Mr. Cameron Duodu, one of my mentors, wrote an article on his blog at www.cameronduodu.com, and for some reason I found myself humming the tune of the song Tell Me the Old Old Story after I read the piece.

The article is about what independence meant to the writer but in those two thousand words he managed to convey a sense of where this country was at its political birth and the ambitions and aspirations it thrust on its citizens and the reciprocal responsibility with which those citizens responded. The world in which Mr. Duodu, educated formally up to the Middle School Certificate, could study on his own to become one of the most educated men I have ever met, has almost disappeared. The institutions, characters and personal attitudes that made this possible are probably extinct. That is a tragedy.

This is what Cameron recalls of that time in his life: “I only possessed a Middle Form Four (Standard Seven) certificate from school. But I wanted to advance myself, and through an organisation called “The People's Educational Association” (PEA) I began to attend lectures on history and English Language. Through these lectures, I met a man called Mr E C E Asiamah, who came down to Asiakwa from Abuakwa State College, Kyebi, to lecture us once a week. He was sent to us by the University of Ghana's Extra-Mural Studies Department. He loved the English language, and he communicated that love to us. So we listened to him with rapt attention and devoted time to the essays he asked us to write. He had studied at the University of Ghana, Legon, and it was he who made me see, for the first time, the importance of reading a lot and absorbing a lot through reading. I loved the man and wanted to go to the University in order to be as knowledgeable as he was”.

With Mr. Asiamah’s encouragement and personal tuition Cameron Duodu passed his O’ Level in fifteen months but note that he adopted Mr. Asiamah as his role model for his knowledge and not his money. Today, the idea of a young man wanted to be as knowledgeable as anyone would be edited out as improbable if you included it in a novel. Today’s role model for young men don’t do knowledge; instead they do money, and it doesn’t matter how it is acquired; they do big flashy cars and mega big houses. This is the current narrative. Today’s role models don’t do discipline instead they push everyone aside in the effort to to bend the world to their will. That is the current template of personal success and it is this attitude that even young recruits exhibit at work because the myriad of motivational speakers tell them that they have to be assertive at everyone’s expense.

Contrast this with what pertained at work when Mr. Duodu joined the Ghana Broadcasting System, which was one of the most reputable broadcasting companies in the outpost of the crumbling British Empire. In his own on words: “I found that rigid standards existed at the GBS. When I got my appointment letter, I had to undergo a medical examination. They operated a voucher system for claiming allowances which you could never cheat. To ensure absolute subordination, ”queries” against you could be written by those above you, that were placed in your “personal file” and which would be taken into account if you were being considered for promotion. If you got a “case” outside, say in a court, a copy of the document concerned would be placed in your personal file”.

This world too has disappeared and in its place we have attitudes shaped by a complete misreading of democracy and over-enforced creed of personal advancement at the expense of communal well-being. Today, we are taught, especially by some of the new-fangled churches that communities do not matter and it is each one for himself and herself. The national ethos appears to revolve around the unspoken mantra: do as I do not as I say.

 It is this national schizoid tendency that is at the heart of our national disorientation and not anything to do primarily with the media per se. Let me explain. In this country we are all preachers of the good word but do not necessarily do the good deed. We characterise ourselves as God-fearing, hospitable, peaceful and honest people but that is not the picture of ourselves on the ground. I always cite examples from our traffic and driving behaviour because that is when you see us in our true colours. You can also see us for who and what we truly are when we are trying to get the best in a business deal. You might argue that this is the same all over the world, and I would agree with you completely, but in which case the exceptional Ghanaian attitudes that we claim are window dressing.

Of late, we have all expressed concern about the rise in the use of abusive and intemperate language especially in political discussions on radio, and many people see this as a problem of the media which can be cured when we sanction the media in some form or another. However, the media, as is often said, reflects society and not the other way round. Indeed, I would argue that our politics also reflect our values and therefore what we are seeing in our political media is the true reflection of who and what we are.

This is logical in the twisted consciousness of our time. We all want the media to discuss development issues and to trumpet our triumphs and positive attributes. And don’t get me wrong, there are many positives in this nation that need to be trumpeted, but the media cannot talk about them if that is not what our national priority is about. We all think that we are on the side of the angels while the other side, no matter how defined, is the devil, so when we demand accountability it means not us but the other side. This cannot be right.

What is even worse is that there appears to be no more Mr. Asiamahs to guide and inspire young people to advance themselves and their society and community. As for public institutions they serve the interests of those who work in them and not the public. If you doubt it, try this simple test: at every public institution for whom is the car park reserved? Of course, it is reserved for the top brass who work there and the Joe Public has to find some place three hundred meters away under a tree to park. Yes, the workers must have their parking lot but they must CREATE the space for the public for whom they are employed in the first place. What is worse, taxis are not allowed. Well, well!

We should have used our Independence anniversary to tell some old old stories because we have a lot to learn from the early years of independence. Ironically, when fewer people were educated and more people were technically poorer than now; when houses were small and cars very small and few; things seemed to work because leadership at all levels accepted its responsibilities. That is the key. Let those who can, tell us the old stories over and over again.

Doing the Right Things in the Wrong Way

Harry Houdini, the great illusionist and contortionist wrote a book called The Right Way to do Wrong, in which he exposed the many ways by which criminals took advantage of their victims. If that most famous magician were to visit Ghana today he would have to write a new book entitled Doing the Right Things the Wrong Way in celebration of our famous ability to turn our blessings into curses. Ghana sometimes looks like a person who has who has all the winning lotto numbers but comes away empty handed because of wrong permutations.

Look at our media scene: when I returned to Ghana after living abroad for several years I could not get enough of our media. I grew up during the lean media years when we had one television channel, two radio stations and about four newspapers and the whole lot belonged to the government which controlled them with excessive jealousy. The contrast between then and now could not be starker. Instead of a handful of media outlets the country is now littered with perhaps more than 20 daily, weekly and bi-weekly newspapers being published regularly, more than 100 FM radio stations and a score of television stations and the number is set to rise dramatically when the analogue platforms gives way to the new digital system.

Indeed, my returnee feeling was that to wake up and be able to switch channels and listen to different voices and viewpoints was like a dream from which you just didn’t want to wake up. I don’t think it is just my imagination, but I remember good arguments on radio and TV, especially on morning shows of various descriptions. Television was especially lively and provided different insights; especially the format of GTV’s Breakfast Show on Saturday was brilliant both in creative setting and content. Newspapers were more propaganda oriented and partisan but less bombastic.

But the problem with the media today is not the partisanship and propaganda. Regrettable as that may be it is to be expected in a multiparty plural system in which to win is everything but to lose is zero. Today, what we see in Ghana is a parody of a plural media. The media scene has all the noise of a marketplace without any quality offering to justify the sacrifice of reading, listening and watching. To put it bluntly, our media has regressed over the past few years, and what is worse, it appears that those who run them are unaware or do not care that this is the case. 

A key feature of the media scene in the last decade is the accessibility to every Kofi and Amma who wants to express himself and herself to the rest of the world. Twenty years ago only professional broadcasters, journalists, public officials and such like had guaranteed access to the media. Today, anyone who has a mobile phone or can borrow one can participate in the big media jamboree. This should be a good thing, except it is not. Indeed, that is a classic example of Ghanaians turning positives into their woeful opposites.

Indeed, to understand the full impact of this mass access to the media, especially radio, one has to explain that it is not the rapid spread of telephony that has created the access but the massive use of local languages on radio in the country. Ghanaian languages have been used on radio even before Independence but it was a deliberate policy of the Nkrumah government to upgrade local languages that saw six of them used regularly in the early 1960s and 70s. Unfortunately, as part of the general deterioration of the nation which took place under the Akyeampong regime, Ghana Broadcasting Corporation was starved of new investments into Ghanaian languages and the External Service.

However, with liberalization came new ideas, and the revival of Akan use on radio is generally credited to the University of Ghana’s campus radio, Radio Universe, and Professor Kofi Agyekum of the Department of Linguistics at Legon. By the mid 2000s, Akan had been established as the main radio language in the country while the use of other languages had increasing listenership.

This should be a good thing except that once again, a good thing is being used in a wrong way. In the last few years, everyone and every group that can voice displeasure at the violence of language in political “discussions” has had their say. The President, Vice President, Members of Parliament, Chiefs, the Clergy of all persuasions, and us ordinary folks, have all said very loudly that we are not happy with the way and manner in which political “discussions” are carried on in the media especially radio.

Two things have to be addressed. The discerning reader would not have failed to notice that the word discussion in the previous paragraph is in commas because what passes for discussions, say on morning radio, is nothing of the sort. The studio participants or discussants are mostly propagandists from the NDC and NPP who vehemently espouse and defend prepared positions at the cost of their lives. They provide the setting for everything else that happens in the course of those broadcasts as their followers then rush in like soldier ants to defend their respective battlements. No one changes his or her mind ever in these encounters!

This is all normal fodder for democracy. What is not normal for either democracy is the second point, which is the open glamorisation of personal insults. In a spirited democracy, insults are to be expected but they are often crafted creatively to address positions adopted or stated by the opponent instead of the opponent as a person. However, when the President is described in highly unflattering personal terms as every President of Ghana has been subjected to, that cannot be part of democracy.

Sadly, many people are beginning to question the wisdom of our opting for democracy, and most of them do so believing that the insults on radio are a necessary development of democracy. Some, including many well-placed people in our society think that this insult thing is a problem of the media. It is not. It is a reflection of the general indiscipline that is gradually engulfing all of us. There are no standards in anything anymore in this country. Everything is relative and down to the individual’s personal choice and this includes the option to obey any rules at all.

We all know the dangers inherent in loose talk on radio; there are too many examples from around the world, including Rwanda in Africa, to remind us that we have a responsibility not to overstep the mark. However, some people believe that we are hell-bent on pressing the self-destruct button. I am inclined to a more optimistic view. We are going through a phase and it will pass, but there are so many flashpoints along the way that we may self-destruct before we get to the better destination.

Harry Houdini used to make large objects disappear in front of live audiences so if he was here I would ask him which pack he would cause to evaporate – politicians or the media. Let us explore the solutions together next week in this column. In the meantime, if you have any ideas send them to the email or blog address below.

gapenteng@hotmail.com

Welcome Mr. Baffour with an Unfamiliar Story

Kwasi Gyan-Apenteng

In George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the Ministry of Truth actually serves the opposite purpose of manufacturing falsehood and rewriting history to suit the purposes of the regime in power in Oceania, the fictional country of the novel. Mr. Orwell worked in the now defunct Ministry of Information in Britain and used his inside knowledge of the brand as a template. One is sometimes disposed similarly towards our own Ministry of Information, which has at times been a misnomer and its true purpose has been either to conceal information or provide a convenient communications cover for the government of the day. The temptation to turn truth on its head is ever present in perhaps the most overtly political of all government agencies, and it must be difficult to resist.  

Generally, the frequent tilting of its functions into the dark arts of propaganda and misinformation has been the reason why a substantial argument is frequently made for the abolishing of ministries of information as a principle. However, since there is no real prospect of our Ministry of Information disappearing in the foreseeable future the best we can hope for is a minister who will recognise its positive potential and guide it away from party political abuse. The moment appears to have arrived with the appointment of Mr. Fritz Baffour to that office.

The Minister-in-Waiting’s appearance before the Parliamentary Vetting Committee was a thing of beauty which we can only hope presages the coming joy.  I know Mr. Baffour from a distance as does everyone of mine, or our generation and I have met him only once and even then I was impressed by his equableness and even-handed approach to politics in the country.

There are two things that most impressed me about Mr. Baffour at his vetting. The first was his stated determination not to abuse his office for party propaganda. The second is his understanding of the need for the nation to construct a national narrative that will be the story no matter which political party is in power.

This is important if the Ministry of Information is to do its proper job. It is often said by way of explanation that the job of the Ministry of Information is to provide information about government policy and its execution. This may be technically correct but government business is everything going on in the country, and therefore the business of the Ministry of Information MUST be the business of the country as a whole, and not the narrowly defined interests of the government party as has often been the case.

Not a few commentators have pointed accusing fingers at Kwame Nkrumah’s government for the subordination of the Ministry of Information to the will of the ruling party as obviously happened in the First Republic. However, in the Nkrumah doctrine, so to speak, the state and the Party were indistinguishable from one another, and if a hierarchical distinction had to be made, the state would be subordinate to the Party, which was described as supreme. In practice, the Ministry of Information while loudly selling the Party also did a lot of social work through the Information Services Department, ISD, especially with its ubiquitous cinema vans which toured the country extolling, among other things, the virtues of using toothpaste.

The Nkrumah government arguably used communication as a means to bring people together, and that function, writ large was the mandate and remit of the Ministry of Information. Even then,when this nation was much poorer, and without the benefit of third and fourth generation technology gizmos, the ISD used to mount regular exhibitions in all the regions on important aspects of our lives. It used to publish documents and even books about this country and coordinated its collaboration with other institutions, including the Bureau of Ghana Languages for publishing information in Ghanaian languages. Therefore, the irony is that during the period of formal one-party state the Ministry had a much wider role than people sometimes realize.

We have moved on from the one-party state; indeed, we have even moved on from military rule during which time the Ministry came into its own as a caricature of the Orwellian Ministry of Truth. The role played by the Ministry of Information during the ill-fated and farcical Acheampong UNIGOV referendum should be studied as a classic of the genre by all students of communication manipulation. During the PNDC era, the Ministry was a beehive of activity all aimed arresting the commanding heights of information and communication in what was largely regarded as psychological operation on behalf of the regime.

We have gone past that too, but some habits die hard, such as the penchant to control the media and the information (read political) agenda from behind the curtains at the Ministry of Information. The government has every right; some would argue even a duty, to be on top of the agenda but in our febrile political atmosphere it must be a saint who will always distinguish the government from the party where political advantage is on offer.

Mr. Fritz Baffour may not be a saint, but he has been around the information and communication block a few times and should know more about these matters than most of us. His desire to use information in an even-handed manner appeared real, and when he said on oath that he knew the difference between a goat and a cow (and presumably between a boat and a ship) many would be inclined to believe him.

That is the easy part. The more difficult assignment is the construction of the national story to which he made many references and spoke very passionately about. The last Minister in that office to show commitment to that such a cause was Mrs. Oboshie Sai-Cofie, who inherited the idea from Mr. Kwamena Bartels, her predecessor. She believed in the need for “national orientation”, which set out to inculcate basic patriotism and civic pride in citizens, especially children. The idea fizzled out when she was moved from the Ministry, and in any case the Castle did not appear to be mightily interested.

That we need such a story is not only obvious but important. We need to pull together in the same direction even in a democracy as loud with its trumpeted divisions. Let us cite the most obvious example: football. If the proverbial man or woman from Mars had landed in Ghana in the past three weeks that Mars-being would have struggled to believe that Ghana was taking part in the African Nations Cup competition. Where were the flags, the buntings, the support slogans or even young men wearing the replica shirts?

Other countries took full advantage of their participation to do a bit of branding and the host nations of Gabon and Equatorial Guinea went the whole hog of seeking to reinvent themselves with a successful staging of the games. The irony of the situation is that when you think about it, the real legacy of CAN 2008 which Ghana hosted is the Woyomi scandal which has so engulfed us that we were as a nation apparently unaware that we had sent out a team to seek honours on our behalf and they needed our support. Many Ghanaians were furious that Asamoah Gyan missed that penalty, but what had we done to deserve a win?

The Ministry of Information has a legitimate role to play in ensuring that the government party gets due credit but it has a bigger role in ensuring that all Ghanaians feel a part of the benefit of the credit, and even own the credit. In our famous “election year”, the management of the subtlety involved will make the difference between success and failure in the management of information for the common good. I have an unfamiliar feeling of success with this one.

gapenteng@gmail.com

This article first appeared in the Mirror Diary column in the Mirror newspaper