It may be clear by now why Archbishop Peter Kwesi Sarpong declared that Ghana’s contemporary political system is a “caricature democracy.” He is reported to have said the following: “What we are practicing is a caricature democracy…democracy has rather brought about ‘bribery, corruption, vote rigging and stealing of ballot boxes…now with the introduction of party politics look at what is happening’…”

This blunt apocalyptic and prophetic indictment of the deeply troubling and flawed dispensation of Ghana’s duopolistic dictatorship is a difficult subject matter we have taken up in a number of essays from time to time. Archbishop Sarpong’s general observations point to a decadence of public morality, decreased respect for public authority and patriotism, blatant abuse of freedom of conscience and of press freedom, corruption, and indiscipline. These are all public knowledge.

Across Ghana there exists impunity and by-heart talk everywhere. Apparently, a duopolistic democracy of schadenfreude insults is the order of the day. Here we quote Archbishop Sarpong again for direct reasons of discursive emphasis: “Ghanaians have misconstrued democracy to mean an open system of insults against each other including those in authority…” Again, we have seen this scenario enacted over and over across the duopolistic aisle of Ghana’s sham democracy.

The more recent era of duopolistic trading of political insults and wisecracks between Sir John, perhaps one of Ghana’s famous social grotesque caricatures and political comics, and our own political transvestite and transsexual General Mosquito, of yesteryear, to say the least, come to mind. General Mosquito, a mature Machiavellian politician with a strong culicid character, hides his political wisecracks, intimidating insults, and arrogant wizardry behind a colorful wall of cross-dressing. Sir John, on the other hand, has found a way to dissemble his cartoonish political buffoonery behind a bespectacled scarecrow-umbrella, which we may also alternatively refer to as a cowboy hat.

But, unlike General Mosquito, Sir John does not have the steeled confidence of a racing heart that easily comes with the intellectual flair of equestrian politicism. This is hardly surprising, though. The manner of Sir John’s public projection is all about rhetorical feinting. For all we should care to know, though, Ghana’s sham democracy does not put a premium on competence, meritocracy, and thoughtful, critical, and analytic cognition.

Rather, what this sham democracy does is to celebrate mediocrity, loose and uncritical political communication and rhetoric, political patronage, nepotism and cronyism, and unhealthy dose of helpless sycophancy and aping, the latter exemplifying a relationship of unequal dichotomy connecting Sir John and Führer Akufo-Addo to an anamorphic ideological space of a far more deeply secularized political theology than meets the eye.

And as it is, these political menageries and taxidermies in Ghana’s body politic are the accidental creation of the country’s creeping sham democracy, for it may necessarily come as a big surprise to us why a political menagerie and taxidermy, like Sir John, for intents and purposes, refuses to apply himself in the underlying areas of his intellectual capacity and emotional intelligence whenever and wherever he asymptotically approaches the illusive mirage of Führer Akufo-Addo.

Sir John is reported to have said also that, “I will die if Akufo-Addo is not elected president.” Of course, we have no specific qualms about the disconcerting parallax of his grotesque intellect. After all, it is his preference for or choice of conscience to forgo the thoughtful or pragmatic rationalism when and as he chooses. As well, it should be his preference or choice to remain tied to Führer Akufo-Addo’s apron strings.

What is rather at stake here are those in the long-gone era of ethnocentric anachronism, otherwise called the New Patriotic Party (NDC), who are quick to lurch at those who sporadically revisit the exemplary leadership of Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah. Perhaps unbeknownst to some of these unctuous partisan useful idiots, Führer Akufo-Addo’s cult of personality is largely a self-made invention or manufacture, tactically and strategically cooked up in the political manufactory of ethno-partisan demagoguery, intolerance, elitism, and exceedingly bloated self-importance.

In other words, Führer Akufo-Addo’s cult of personality lacks a philosophical formality of rational authority. Yet again, we have all witnessed his shameful inability to nip the festering internecine warfare in his party, as it were under his sleeping leadership, in the bud. This is a person Sir John will die for if he fails to steal the presidency through the ballot box of the bullet.

We may want to ask: But who cares if Sir John dies if Führer Akufo-Addo does not steal the presidency? Are there no more cemeteries in Ghana? Assuming there are no cemeteries in Ghana however, are we saying on that account alone that there are also no cemeteries in Africa, Australia, the Americas, Europe, Antarctica, Asia, and the oceans? Or that his dead body cannot be cremated? Where was Osama bin Laden buried? And why did he not die on the two previous occasions when Führer Akufo-Addo lost the presidential elections?

Perhaps it could as well be that his impending and pending obituary is an epiphany revealed to him by Bishop Obinim. Regrettably, we do not think Führer Akufo-Addo holds the same height of respect for Sir John, a grotesque political caricature with a questionable knighthood hovering around his cranial-manifold! That is, Führer Akufo-Addo did not die when Sir John lost the General Secretaryship of the NPP, thus confirming our argument for a lack of a gesture of reciprocity in the former’s case.

Maybe, just maybe, Sir John is interested in the antique of political anthropology where his dead body accompanies Führer Akufo-Addo to the underworld. Perhaps also, Sir John’s opportunistically belated and precocious obituary is a scandalous exercise in metaphoric Orwellianism, an involute allusion to Sir John’s possible déjà-vu verbiage vis-à-vis Führer Akufo-Addo’s political demise as he pursues the meandering path to his third presidential bid. This is a complicated matter from out narrow viewpoint, certainly so from the larger viewpoint of Sir John himself. Sir John, nevertheless, lacks the haloed gift of charismatic authority to even speak in unambiguous language for public digestion and consumption.

For this reason and this reason alone, peradventure, Sir John may be mortally scared of the reactionary expenditure of the political hyenas on the other side of the political aisle, on him. The question itself, as we have advanced it in the penultimate paragraph, is largely a technical one based on the cranial contents of Sir John’s as-yet-unexplored emotional Pandora’s box and Trojan horse.

What is also not certainly clear at this point in time is whether Sir John has a Last Will and Testament in place should he eventfully pass on in the event of Führer Akufo-Addo’s political demise, whether the latter crosses carpet to the National Democratic Party (NDC) or the Convention People’s Party (CPP), say, the latter being his [Führer Akufo-Addo’s] autochthonous digs, and finally, whether his [Sir John’s] wife and children approve of his servile genuflection before the alter of assisted suicide (euthanasia) or suicide.

We surely will like to know if Sir John is apprehensive about Führer Akufo-Addo’s possible political demise will lead to the sudden end of his ant-sized emotional penile erection once his closet romantic relationship of political homosexualism with the latter becomes a scarlet-sinned page in the gossipy book of public knowledge. This should not be a problem for him at all, however. Bishop Obinim can enlarge the partisan ideological office of his emotional phallus to fit the outsized, overused, and overhyped hymnal butthole of Führer Akufo-Addo’s bloated ego.

This is why Afrocentric American rappers Chuck D and Flavor Flav, of Public Enemy, say “Don’t Believe the Hype.” Thus, we will also advise Sir John to stop singing that political requiem song if, in fact, he can learn from rappers Notorious B.I.G’s “Suicidal Thoughts” and Tupac’s “Niggas Done Change.” Others who reportedly had premonitions about their own deaths before death actually knocked on their doors are John Lennon, Jim Morrison, Michael Jackson, Jimi Hendrix…Where is Sir John on this list? Well, as we said before we will suggest to him again to take this list to heart.

Certainly death can come about in a number of ways including using one’s tongue. This has been part of the human experience, for the same tongue that contains taste buds and taste receptors can also be the source or cause of one’s or others’ death. It is this tongue Archbishop Sarpong strongly believes is slowly destroying Ghana. It is, however, not in question that the same unregulated and unchecked tongue, the bedrock of our sham democracy, largely also gave birth to the constitutional dictatorship of Ghana’s Fourth Republic in the form of executive dominance.

In the final analysis, then, there is no doubt in our minds that democracy has turned us into primitive, uncivilized talking animals. Ironically, the thinking, thoughtful, and forward-looking animals in George Orwell’s dystopian and allegorical novel “Animal Farms” created a better society than we can ever bring ourselves to our celebrated Fourth Republic. In other words, the animal characters of Orwell’s hugely successful novel will not be happy with us regarding our jungle democracy.

Thus, Sir John (and all our politicians, members of the clergy, journalists, civil society and think-tank leaders, and ordinary members of the public at large) should watch out for his acidic and flesh-eating-bacterial tongue.

FINAL THOUGHTS

And in the remarkable event that Sir John refuses to die if Führer Akufo-Addo does not succeed in stealing Archbishop Sarpong’s ballot boxes through Archbishop Sarpong’s vote rigging by any means necessary, NPP’s Yaw Adomako-Baafi can contract the spiritual services of the “arrogant wizard” Asiedu Nketia and his evil powers in a forced euthanasic death of Sir John, a means to force him to honor his promise to political god, Führer Akufo-Addo.

The other option is to contract the underworld services of the spiritual mercenary, an individual whom Atiko Afisa Djaba described as possessing “the face of an angel” but “the heart of a devil,” President Mahama whom Akua Donkor reportedly equated with “God,’ or those spiritual services of the amorphic, shapeshifting, and therianthropic Bishop Obinim to give Sir John a poisonous ophidian stinging-bite in the comfort of blanket nocturnal blissfulness and intellectual ignorance.

Sir John can, indeed, make a mountain out of a molehill whenever and wherever. But his agitprop politics and clinical death need not come about at the expense of passing on intestate. This is hugely important. It turns out that Sir John has lost his political mojo and moral superego to the uncritical emotionalism of partisan politics and cult-worshipping of Führer Akufo-Addo. Certainly Sir John is the “Charles Antwi” of Ghanaian duopolistic culture, for how else could Ghana’s political system have achieved the enviable status of a “caricature democracy”?

CONCLUDING REMARKS

But then again, exactly how else could one describe Ghana’s “caricature democracy” without mentioning Kennedy Agyapong, Akua Donkor, Asiedu Nketia, Sam George, Kweku Bonsam, Bishop Obinim, Sir John, Chairman Wontumi, and Afia Schwarzenegger…in the same breath? Sadly, and truthfully, Archbishop Sarpong’s “caricature democracy” is all about wine and roses and about the primrose path!

Can anyone ever imagine Bishop Obinim insulting Pastor Sam Korankye Ankrah in the same way Asiedu Nketia and Sir John used to trade banter, political insults and wisecracks? The veteran journalist turncoat Kweku Baako, says of Nketia: “There are some politicians out there who think people have short memories so they don’t give a damn; even when the truth has been put out, they still proceed with the fallacies, the distortions and the lies, hoping that people will buy into it…The final thing I will say about Asiedu Nketiah and I have described him as an unmitigated communications disaster…”

What is more, Kwesi Pratt, another veteran journalist turncoat, also has this to say about Ghana’s post-Nkrumah leadership: “Our leaders cannot think anymore because they are not doing what is expected of them but always thinking about their selfish interest. They have blocked their minds and blocked their ears and cannot do anything anymore…” No wonder the landscape of Ghanaian politics and the House of the Lord have both become Max Romeo’s “den of thieves.” David Hinds of roots-reggae band Steele Pulse has a word of caution for politicians and their bodyguards on his song, “Bodyguard.”

Readers listen up for it reads in part: “So-called leaders aide with deceitful faces; Corruption in a high place; Your hands full with bribes; Mouth pours out lies yea, ‘cause of all oppression, now running for protection;…Who's gonna lose their life…Bodyguard I wouldn't like your job; Snakes in the grass they know not God; Polytricksters drinking human blood; Concrete heart can hold no love; Bodyguard I wouldn't like your job;..Watch it all you presidents; Heads of government, who’s gonna lose their lives;…I just can't sorry for the bodyguard, who's gonna lose their lives…”

Where are Charles Antwi, Kwame Gyebi, and President Mahama in this song? Let us all come together to guard against Hinds’ apocalyptic augury from ever materializing as long as our politicians change their evil and corrupt ways. Else Bob Marley’s “Revolution” and “Ambush in the Night,” Fela Kuti’s “Coffin for Head of State,” and Mutabaruka’s “The People’s Court 1” will take the place of Bob Marley’s “One Love.” And the “coffin” on Fela’s track will be exclusively reserved for “head of state,” namely any Ghanaian politician who does not have the country and the people at heart, and not necessarily for President Mahama. We should take note!

REFERENCES

Ghanaweb. “Ghana Practicing ‘Caricature Democracy’—Archbishop.” Sourced from starrfmonline.com. March 4, 2016.

Ghanaweb. “I Will Die If Akufo-Addo Is Not Elected President—Sir John.” Sourced from adomonline.com. March 4, 2016.

Ghanaweb. “Video: Obinim Insults Korankye Ankrah.” Sourced from kasapafmonline.com. March 5, 2016.

Ghanaweb. “Asiedu Nketia Is An Unmitigated Communications Disaster—Kweku Baako.” Sourced from myjoyonline.com. March 5, 2016.

Ghanaweb. “Our Leaders Can’t Think Anymore—Pratt.” Sourced from adomonline.com. March 5, 2016.