2024 polls: Akwasi Opong-Fosu’s open letter to Ghanaian voters

AN OPEN LETTER TO GHANAIAN VOTERS
THE SOUL OF A NATION ON A VERGE: ELECTION 2024 AS A TURNING POINT
Today, we stand at a critical juncture in our nation’s history. We are on the verge of losing the soul of our dear nation which encompasses our values and principles, cultural heritage, moral compass and conscience, collective identity, emotional resonance, and our spiritual essence.

Today, we face a crisis of leadership and governance which has led to a deep sense of mistrust with the people’s confidence in leadership being at its lowest ebb. This has implications for the legitimacy of government.

Today, we face the dire consequences of self-serving leadership. As a nation we embraced self-serving transaction leadership over self-sacrificing transformational leadership and the result as we are all living witnesses to is a well-coordinated attack on our democratic institutions, a situation which has led to: a compromised judiciary and electoral commission, a polarized media, toothless anti-corruption agencies and a weakened parliament-unable to exercise oversight responsibility over the executive. Ghana’s public services once esteemed for its professionalism, political neutrality, and ethics, has now assumed a partisan orientation.

Today, a culture of impunity has taken root where accountability is a distant dream. Deeply troubling is the erosion of the foundation of democratic governance: voice, participation, representation, integrity and ethical standards, probity, transparency and accountability, empathy and responsiveness, inclusiveness, rule of law, and protection of human rights. Acting with impunity is not the preserve of the political class. It has become pervasive especially among the privileged. The recent needless and traumatic death of two innocent children in the East Legon road carnage and the wanton destruction of forest reserves and genocidal pollution water bodies are but the few examples. In almost a decade, self-serving leadership has plagued our institutions, leading to devastating consequences:

Today, we are burdened with leadership failure, governance dysfunction, and the erosion of democratic values and principles with dire consequences such as human rights abuses, indiscipline and lawlessness, normalization of corruption, plunder of national resources, and economic mismanagement.

Today, we face an exponential increase in inequality, high unemployment and poverty amidst political tensions and civil unrest.
It is time for a renewal mindset, embracing self-sacrificing leadership that prioritizes the nation’s interest over personal and sectional interests as against self-serving leadership prioritizing the plundering of national resources with impunity.

To reclaim lost grounds, the need for a radical shift in leadership mindset has become imperative so we realize the Ghana we all want. The Ghana We Want cannot be realized with the current leadership that has brought the country to the edge of the precipice.
IT IS TIME FOR CHANGE AND ELECTION 2024 IS A TURNING POINT!!!! VOTE JDM, VOTE NDC PARLIAMENTARY CANDIDATES!!!!
AKWASI OPONG-FOSU