<<Print>>

Ghanaians are a particular group of people who take so much pride in the respect they accord to the elderly in society. It was very rare growing up to hear a young man denigrate the hard earned reputation of an elderly man who has excelled in his chosen field of endeavour in public but it seems this is not the case anymore. The advent of multi-party democracy from 1992, has brought with it the opportunity for people to express views on whatever is happening in the country provided, they exercise this right with the responsibility it goes with it. For sometimes now this canker of insult has silently crept into our political landscape, which has become a source of worry to every well-meaning Ghanaian. Ever since the nation went to the polls in 2008, the two main contestants of the elections namely Nana Addo Dankwa Akuffo Addo of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) and President John Evans Atta Mills of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), have come under barrage of �insults� ranging from Nana Addo being a �wee� smoker and drug peddler to the president being gay and a man who has a child born outside wedlock with another woman. Such statements or comments by individual who purport to be supporters and sympathizers of the two leading political parties in the country do not augur well for the very democracy we claim to practice. These two reputable individuals have somehow been keeping quiet for so long that the insults hurled at them have now become something �normal� in the Ghanaian political context. Had they hauled individuals who tarnish their reputation into the mud to the law courts, for them to really prove such distasteful and disparaging comments and invariably sentenced into prison or given hefty fines it would even discourage others who plan on towing such lines. This is because some Ghanaians tend to feed on rumours and hearsay not taking time to verify as to whether what is being in the public domain is true. I sometimes marvel as to why leading members of political parties are quick to give political meaning to any unsavoury comment made by a sympathizer or supporter of their party, forgetting that they will be at the receiving end someday. Instead, they should condemn such comments in no uncertain terms for society to acknowledge that they do not condone wrong doing. Sometimes we Ghanaians think as though the country is sacrosanct from experiencing what has taken place in countries like Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Rwanda who have witnessed bloody civil wars. Rwanda for instance slid into civil war primarily due to an unsavoury comment made by a journalist on a radio station describing a minority ethnic group as being �cockroaches�. We should at all times be guided such incidents that has become a scourge in the psyche of the nations, and are still reeling from it. We should therefore guard the prevailing peace that Ghana is enjoying with the utmost jealousy that it deserves, since the nation cannot afford to pay the painful price of as has been the case with the aforementioned countries. We should endeavour at all times to be circumspect with the comments we make concerning our fellow Ghanaian. Political talk show hosts across the country should bold and compel individuals who make distasteful comments about others to retract them and render an unqualified apology or be made not to speak on their networks again. We have only one nation that is Ghana and we should keep it as intact as it has been since independence.