By Tete Cobblah

As I made my way from the Kenyata International Airport to a hotel on a cold morning in Nairobi, I thought about the looming elections in my Motherland.No sooner had I arrived at the hotel than I walked into a cyber café to check my e-mail.The first article I had the fortune, or misfortune, of reading had a title that seemed to have been ''scooped'' from a ghetto classroom.It needed a heroic suspension of disbelief to think that I was reading an article written by someone who had been washed in the hyssop of Ghanaian education!

Before I continue, I would like to quote a few sentences from my article posted on the web,entitled ''What Lessons Can Ghanaians Learn From The Recent Kenyan Elections?'' ''During the run-up to the elections,'' I wrote, inter alia, ''..let us start sowing seeds of peace and let us do this pronto so that they will have time to germinate before election day.The foundations of a durable,sustainable peace are not built overnight.They are built gradually, with nurturing care over a period of time....To pontificate eloquently about the ease with which a Presidential candidate unzips his trousers before any well-shaped body in skirt is neither here nor there...I would like to ask my fellow Ghanaians to make a special effort during the run-up to the elections, to measure their words....before uttering them.Let us always bear in mind that it is much better to think without talking than to talk without thinking...''

Sad to say, my humble admonition has not been heeded and invectives,smears and phillipic have become the order of the day.Some Ghanaians seem to be engaged in a crusade to raise indecency to heights never witnessed on the Ghanaian political landscape within living memory.A case in point is an article purporting to reveal the ''mortal sins'' of some Ghanaian politicians.''...What is more of a curse,'' blurts a writer who gives the impression that he has been to the very entrails of the English language and is familiar with every twist and turn therein,'' than having a President who butchers the English language and talks a lot of sh*t?....What is more of a curse than having a President who constantly has his head in between the thighs of his slutty concubines?..What is more of a curse than having a President who has his lips constantly glued to a whisky glass?..What is more of a curse than having a President who loots the state coffers and turns the seat of government into a den of thieves?''

I have very little doubt in my mind that such invectives during the run-up to the elections are fuelled by our belief that elections are a matter of life and death, and that to ensure victory it is imperative to have recourse to character assassination by raising indecency to unattainable heights.I refuse to subscribe to the view that being on the opposite side of the political divide necessarily makes people enemies.We have to wake up to the reality,however unpleasant it may be,that in any civilised,democratic dispensation there are no political enemies, but political adversaries.We should wake up to the reality that in politics there are losers and winners and rancorous judgements of political issues should be eschewed.Some of us have established such a romantic relationship with megalomania that we have the erroneous idea that the seat of governance is meant solely and exclusively for us and for those we support.This explains why people can go to any length to denigrate political adversaries and,like inebriated elephants,trample on them,stamp on them and stomp on them.We pour tons and tons of gratuitous insults and invectives on our political adversaries so that they will look like devils incarnate in the eyes of the electorate.

A cursory reading of some articles on the web gives the impression that devils in human garbs are running the show in our Motherland.We read about Presidential candidates who unzip their trousers at the least opportunity before anyone generously endowed with feminine attributes;we read about a politician ''who gets drunk in New York,locks himself up in the hotel room of his lover,misses a scheduled VOA interview and gets his...spokesman to lie that he got caught up in traffic.'' This gives the impression that our leaders are so lecherous that they are in the terminal stages of priapism.Such unsubstantiated accusations bespeak extreme hatred of political adversaries.I am not in any way suggesting here that people holding high office in our Motherland are necessarily unexceptionable, but for Heaven's sake, let decency prevail.I have very little doubt in my mind that even the god or goddess of indecency would bow his or her head in utter shame on reading some of the articles on the web.

If these allegations are true,viz, that we have a leader who walks hand in glove with the god of wine,that we have a leader who dips his hand into the national till, that we have a leader who uses ''unorthodox places'' as his pillow, that we have a leader who treats his niece uxoriously etc, etc, why can't the accusers who are so solicitous of the socio-economic health of the country,initiate a court action against the leader and let him have his day in court?If the leader is found guilty, he should face the music.By the same token,if the accusers and the truth are found to be a world apart they,id est, the accusers, should face the music for character assassination.If the accusers have opened some politicians' cupboards and found some rotten skeletons that put the country into disrepute, what prevents them from taking legal action against them so as to save the country from socio-political putrefaction?

It must be said loud and clear that nobody, in present-day Ghana, should feel that they have the nihil obstat,the imprimatur,so to speak,to publish whatever they like about a fellow Ghanaian and go scot-free.We should set up a mechanism whereby our law courts can deal with such cases.This may sound quixotic, but it will,indubitably, help to minimise the gratuitous character assassination on the web.It is absolutely nauseating to read some of the articles on the web because they are nothing more, nothing less, than a textbook example of how indecency can be raised to a very high level.Let us do away with this steady drumbeat of indecent attacks on political adversaries.Let us not confuse lavatorial remarks with robust debate.Ghanaians are politically wide awake and it is only bootleg politicians who feel they can win elections hands down by using innuendos,quarter-baked truths and unproven accusations.

According to a writer ''K4 Twi Brofo is at best Primary School Level'' ''...who also is tongue-tied and cannot speak one sentence of English correctly.Some Lawyer indeed,''blurs another writer.''What is more of a curse than having a President whose nose is bulky than all African Presidents?'' writes another critic who seems to be a specialist in African Presidential Noses.To portray any Ghanaian politician as unexceptionable is far from my intention,but,please, let us have respect for our Presidents,both current and former.If a President is found to have done something untoward the law courts should deal with the case.Presidents in and out of office should not be subjected to such gratuitous insults.What do people gain from pouring insults on the current president and describing the former president as "certificateless"?Should a President's conduct during his tenure be found to be less than pristine,he or she should be given a fair trial.Let us get out of this political jungle and learn from other countries.

At this juncture it would not be out of place to give a piece of advice to both serving and former presidents.They should comport themselves in such a manner that citizens will be proud of them.Former Presidents should not spend their time in the political wilderness plotting against serving Presidents and making incendiary speeches that bespeak their belief in grapes being sour.The point about having a President ''whose nose is bulky than all African Presidents'' (these are the exact words used by the learned writer), begets risibility.Could we have done anything about the size of our noses in our mothers' womb?Does the writer expect the President to have plastic surgery to make his nose look ''more presidential''?This, to put it charitably,is utter bunkum.On the question of the President's ''Twi Brofo'', I would like to implore my fellow Ghanaians to stop saying such things as they touch a sensitive ethnic nerve.Let us stop thinking in terms of ''Twi Brofo'', ''Nkrai Brofo'',''Ewe Brofo'',''Dagomba Brofo'',''Fanti Brofo'',''Dagomba Brofo'' etc,etc and start thinking about things that unite us.We are all Ghanaians ,we are all branches of the same tree, from Bawku to Wa,from Axim to Afao.

Ghanaians are an interesting lot.Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah,of blessed memory,was made fun of by some Ghanaians because they claimed he spoke ''Liberia Brofo'' ;whenever professor Busia spoke, some Ghanaians would say ''Oxford Brofo ye dee wo de beko yen'';General Acheampong's English was described as ''Swedru Technical School Brofo'' and Rawling's English was described as '' Scotland Brofo''.Ao Ghanafo mo ye bue.

It is my ardent hope that those who have embarked on this crusade to divulge the ''mortal sins'' of certain Ghanaian politicians and have had the temerity to describe other people´s English as nothing more, nothing less, than Primary School English have got all their moral and English ducks in a perfectly straight line.I would take the proponents of ''Twi Brofo'' seriously if the gap between them and the grandeur and majesty of the English language,as far as syntax is concerned,were not so wide.To my fellow countrymen who write about fellow citizens in such toiletry and lavatorial terms, I say I will be going beyond the borders of reasonable dishonesty if I do not say that people who find it an uphill task to distinguish decency from indecency have no claim on an iota of the affection of a large majority of Ghanaians.

Tete Cobblah. (ctetecobblah@yahoo.com.br)