Power, Politics, and the People Who Suffer

The same way most cars need drivers to move them from one place to another, almost all countries have their leaders whose role is to set rules , laws and what have you to make sure everyone is doing the right thing. As parents and individuals, we can all bear witness to the fact that it’s really not easy looking after kids and having them do the right thing all the time, but we do try our best most of the time.

Someway somehow, that’s the same way running a country is, maybe even worse. Imagine not knowing your way around only two kids, now imagine having to magazine over a million people or thousands of people who aren’t even your kids. Some younger than you, some older than you and some even your age mates. I mean you’re not God, but you’re expect to be good at it because you’re a leader. A lot is expected from you and you’re just required to make sure everything is on point.

I for one know that managing a country just an easy task at all and all of our governments and those in power are trying their best to make sure the citizens are happy and good. But over the years, we have seen the trend of leaders not really caring about their own people. All they care about now is themselves, their families and how they can steal money from us due to how corrupt they are. In my country, we have seen that first hand and I bet other countries too have. It isn’t all the case every leader but there’s always that bad but among the lot.

I love my country so much and I must say, we have come really far as a people. We have had so many good times with remembering and so have we had our bad times. Our government has been both good and bad and as obvious as it is, no government can be 100% perfect. But hey, we at least expect you to try. If there’s one thing that sent me into a shock, it’s what happened a few years ago in Ghana right before our most recent elections. So, the government in power then was doing really terrible and the country was a mess.

Inflation was killing us, petty issues here and there, infact everything was a mess in this country. And guess what? No one was allowed to speak about to because the government didn’t want us to. What happened to power of speech? Well, I guess that’s for only rich people. It got too bad the people decided to go out in their numbers to walk the streets and air their concerns. What started as a peaceful protest turned into a mess, thanks to our government.

Most of the people championing these protest were someway somehow arrested by the police who were supposed to be our friends. All this was aimed at shutting down every protest. But the people wouldn’t have it. They kept arresting and people also kept protesting. I thought I had seen it all because most of such arrests are just meant to put fear in people and those arrested get released by close of the working day. This time however, those arrested stayed in the cells for days and even went to court to do God knows what. And all this was kind curtesy of our then government.

If there’s something worse than this, I’m waiting to see it. Finally, Election Day came and Ghanaians finally voted that party out of power. This time around, it was no more about my party or this or that. We voted for change and not oppression.

all images belong to me.