PERISCOPE DEPTH
…With Our Publisher
It has often been suggested, that people who adopt political careers in Ghana, are often quickly elevated and propelled into a life of luxury and abundance, as against their colleagues who remain in other spheres of the professions.
To some extent, this statement seems to be true. I choose the word ‘seems’ deliberately, because in fact, generally, it is not true that all those who adopt careers in politics, profit as is being suggested.
If one were to take up two well-known characters, one of whom is a teacher and one of whom is a politician, and if one were to compare the standard of living of these two individuals, one would say that the popular, well-connected politician enjoys a greater degree of affluence, than the other. That is true.
The key words here, are popular and well-connected. For instance, if one compares Okudzeto Ablakwa with his peers at the university, one may readily (and wrongly) assume that Ablakwa is enjoying a greater life of affluence than a lot of people who were with him at university.
After all, how many people can afford to casually miss GHC25,000.00 in their car, even at the rates of today’s disgraced Ghana Cedi?
Not many, and it would be suicidal for any teacher to miss such a sum of money.
A generalization of this situation, however, would be very wrong. And it is the generalization of this that is fueling the call for the so-called Neutrality Allowance. Indeed, listening to the likes of Professor Ransford Gyampo, this is specious reason for the so-called Neutrality Alowance being demanded by civil and public sector workers.
The demand is based on specious reasoning indeed.
To begin with, Ghana today has hundreds of thousands of active politicians. By politician, we mean people who ‘live, breathe and eat’ politics. These are activists starting from the grassroots of the political parties to the very top of the echelon, the Presidency. In numbers, we (yes, I am one of them) supercede hundreds of thousands people, and may well reach millions.
Many of these active politicians are teachers, nurses, traders, architects, lawyers, doctors and many other professions. A disproportionately large number of these active politicians, like me, do not live star-crossed lives. Many, the significant majority, live the same standards of life that their colleagues in the professions live. They are not exposed to the cash, the Land Cruisers, and the mansions.
Those who are exposed to the cash, the Land Cruisers and the mansions, are the very few who manage to catch the eyes of the powers that be in the major political parties, and are able to secure some type of pulic appointment. And even then, unless they engage in rampant corruption, they are unlikely to be that rich.
To look at these few (compared to the actual number of politicians there are) and to arrive at the conclusion that their so-called wealth should be used as a basis to lump the taxpayer with additional expenditure, is specious indeed.
As I have written before, professionalism is at the very basis of employment. To say that one should be paid extra for being neutral, or to argue that one should be paid extra for not engaging in another trade or profession, is laughable.
If civil and local government workers believe that life in politics bring extra benefits, then they should resign and enter politics. Nobody is insisting that they remain local government workers or civil servants for life. They can cross over. After all, it is a voluntary decision, just as it is voluntary to remain in the civil and local government service.
(This article was first published in the column PERSICOPE DEPTH of the Daily Searchlight of 03/05/2022. The Daily Searchlight appears on the newsstands of Ghana every working day and for sale online twenty-four hours a day all day throughout the world on www.ghananewsstand.com).
