Almost to the last person, it has been generally acknowledged that the political atmosphere of the country has been polluted with insults and other violent words that place our democracy under severe threat.
While there is a common agreement that most of our political commentators have become aggressive and reckless in their choice of words, there is a rift as to how to end the practice. Our President, Professor John Evans Atta Mills, has on many occasions condemned the culture of political insults, which has become pervasive in the last few years and is assuming alarming proportions each passing day.
Unfortunately, the President has fallen short of displaying his abhorrence for the practice by not making any public pronouncement on verbal excesses from his government officials and party activists.
This apparently might have emboldened those on the other side to put on full display their skills in abusive language, citing the President’s silence on similar infractions from his camp as the motivation for doing what they are being accused of doing.
As a nation, we cannot continue to allow people who claim to be fighting for our national interest to engage themselves in verbal assaults while the real issues are sidelined. The beauty of democracy is that it creates the platform for political parties to trade in alternative policies and programmes which will ultimately give good health to national development.
Unfortunately, in our case, the emphasis is shifting from this noble objective with political parties trying to undo each other in the exchange of insults. This trend does not only harbour the potential of triggering violence but also has the tendency to undermine the confidence people have in the democratic institutions enshrined in the 1992 Constitution.
Already some people are questioning the integrity of the media to play any meaningful and active role in fostering good democratic practice in the country because of the way media freedom and freedom of expression have been abused, particularly on radio and television.
Some people who foresee danger ahead are even suggesting the extreme that media freedoms should be curtailed if it means sanity can only prevail under restrictive laws such as the Criminal Libel Law which was repealed in 2001 by the Kufuor Administration.
Incidentally, all media institutions, including the National Media Commission (NMC), which has constitutional mandate to streamline media practice, do not have sanctioning powers. The others such as the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA), the Private Newspaper Publishers Association of Ghana (PRINPAG) and the Ghana Independent Broadcasters Association (GIBA) could at best only condemn while leaving the rest to the conscience of those involved.
Fortunately, it appears we are getting close to the realization that our democracy can only mature and advance our national aspirations if we play the game by the rules. Last week, some of the political leaders spoken to by the Daily Graphic admitted that the culture of insults was doing a lot of harm to our democracy and threatening to destabilise national cohesion, peace and security. They have all agreed that the best solution to the problem is to isolate and publicly denounce party activists who will breach protocol by using abusive words against political opponents during discussion programmes in the media, especially radio and television.
To cement this resolve, the parties have committed themselves to decent conduct and electioneering campaign in the run-up to the 2012 elections. Under the aegis of the Institute of Economic Affairs, the National Democratic Congress, (NDC), the New Patriotic Party (NPP), the People’s National Convention (PNC), the Convention People’s Party (CPP), the Democratic Freedom Party (DFP), the Great Consolidated Popular Party (GCPP), the EGLE Party and the United Renaissance Party (URP) have set out a code of conduct which will govern their conduct of political activities in the country.
In a communique issued at the end of a workshop organised by the IEA, the parties have asked their leadership to use responsible language and condemn those who use abusive language against political opponents.
The communique enjoined all the parties to demonstrate their commitment towards enforcing and implementing the code of conduct by educating their membership and supporters on its provisions.
One needs to commend the political parties and their leaders for the initiative and hope they will be able to stick to their own set rules in the coming days when the political atmosphere will be charged the more with the approach of the 2012 election. The communique also called on the media to play its role to ensure a decent atmosphere for political discourse and this is where the danger lies. So far, the media, whether deliberately or out of ignorance, have failed to play their role as independent and neutral moderators in public discussions and have offered the platform for invective and other uncivilised behaviour to manifest on the public stage.
We are missing a lot that could be gained from a good democratic practice as a nation because of the hostile atmosphere needlessly created through the abuse of media freedom and it is the expectation of every Ghanaian that the media, especially those who are privileged to be hosting programmes on radio and television, would support the determination of the political parties to distance themselves from insults by ceasing to be the conduits for bad news.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
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