No Mr. Electoral Commissioner, I Will (might) Not Vote

As I wrote this, I had spent close to a month in my beloved country working on a project. I had thoroughly forgotten what it felt like to be cold and alone in a foreign land; I did miss my girlfriend. I wrote from the village in which I was born and the room in which I had slept many a night. The nostalgia may have made me put the “might” in the title. A month prior, it was, a strong “Will”.

Ghana, has changed and not only for the worse. Things got more expensive once the four zeros were dropped from our cedi, yes, but there is a certain sense of stability and dignified standing that I have not seen in a while, nay in my lifetime. And this is in the sphere of politics.

My readers know well I do not believe in the political system and the lack of alternatives in Ghana with a revolving door shuffling in the same thieves and looters (see The Politics of Recycling) every eight years. I had come to decide then, that even though I had recently registered as a voter in my country, actually voting was a waste of my time. Having never voted, I imagined it gave one a warm and fuzzy feeling to vote another into or out of power and maybe even turn the derelict on the corner into a wealthy baron overnight but I could not quite see the difference it made.

All most governments need do in Ghana is loot enough to sustain them the eight years of opposition before they get back on the horse. But two recent things have made me waver a bit. In the recent Ivorian crisis, President Mills came out against military intervention, a threat made by the Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS, of which Ghana is a signatory. Then he turned around and raised oil prices 30% to GH₵7 or about $5 per gallon thus removing most of the government subsidy. And he is up for re-election in a year.

Mills has his critics, chief among them me. He has been ineffectual on other fronts, has arguably been slow in prosecuting malfeasance in the past administration, allowed hooligans in his party to run loose and loaded his administration with old dogs. However, he has been very comfortable making unpopular decisions which he perceives, rightly or wrongly, to be necessary for the country’s progress and has stood calmly resolute in the face of an onslaught from his party and the opposition. Others have come close to doing similar things but Rawlings mostly did them in a dictatorship with no specter of electoral defeat and Kufuor went HIPC but spared more suicidal decisions till his second term when no further votes stared him in the face.

Mills may yet lose the next elections for a variety of reasons. The likely alternative, Akufo-Addo, I do not rate highly and has said some rather stupid, if overblown, things lately. But I may yet vote in those elections…for someone. Whoever it turns out to be, it will be someone, like Mills, who is convicted in their vision for the country and are willing to stake their political careers on it.

After all, the countless voting may be futile for many years but once in a blue moon, one comes along who is worth the struggle.

Prime

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This is the way I choose, the destiny I pursue
To help the unfit and the fit
To treat each according to his need
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