It was Thursday 22nd May 2003 after my Class 4 teacher had finished teaching us a topic titled “Types of Diseases”, the whole class burst into laughter after he had told us the features of a child suffering from Kwashiorkor. We all started pointing fingers on one another of suffering from the Kwashiorkor disease. It was fun and teasing galore till the day winded up.
Trust me, this year’s KNUST SRC Elections suffered from serious Kwashiorkor. It was full of carbohydrate; I mean the carbohydrate of hypocrisy, acrobatic propaganda, injustice, corruption, unnecessary constitutional flaws, and Machiavelli tactics. Our politics lacked protein, the protein of fairness, honesty, justice, transparency and the lack of intellectual conviction and that is what has brought us here today.
Students were put in anticipation; aspirants sacrificed their exam time to go on campaign with the hope of having the elections soon but yet the elections were postponed on several occasions. And finally we had to vote on 6th May at a time when some students have already gone home. This is what the leadership of Duke Sasu and his cohorts could do to the fate of students. And all this is as a result of a decision by a panel of a useless vetting.
Frankly speaking, I just can’t fathom why a five panel of vetting who was not elected by students and who no one knew the criteria for which they were selected to determine which candidate students of about 42,000 should vote for. Don’t misjudge me yet, I wasn’t a sympathizer of any of the disqualified candidates but you will agree with me that we couldn’t vote at the stipulated time because of the decision of the vetting panel. The fact that they were not my candidates doesn’t mean I should keep quiet. Of course, the cooking pot of the chameleon is a cooking pot of the lizard. And injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere. The five vetting panel had no right to disqualify a candidate on the behalf of over 42,000 students. The fact that one cannot speak English eloquently doesn’t mean he can’t be a leader. I believe that not every book can make it to the library but you can’t also judge a book by its cover.
We have had leaders who could rattle the Queen’s language but yet their administration had nothing to write home about. Even the vetting panel on several occasions struggled to frame their questions and most of their questions were emphatically useless. You can’t ask an SRC presidential aspirant the number of roundabouts on campus when students do not sleep in roundabouts. If the disqualification was meant to reduce the numbers because of cost then we shouldn’t practice democracy. Democracy is never cheap, it is expensive and the horns should never be too heavy for the bull that bears it. There were several rumors of the influence of one Ascorbic and Kofi Arkoh, I don’t really know how true it is, but if indeed it’s true then we should be bold to tell them to stay away from our students’ politics. This is an intellectual community and we must do things on the basis of intellectual conviction and not influence and conformity. They must stay away from our politics for the sake of posterity.
I always argue that we should take away our NDC and NPP interest from our students’ politics and many students turn to disagree with me. The fact is that it goes a long way to affect our students’ politics negatively. What we must know is that, no matter the height of your grandfather you always have to think about your own growth. NDC and NPP have done both great and bad things for this country but I think it is high time we put that aside and think about how we can collectively change the fortunes of this country.
On this note, I suggest that we have constitutional review and electoral reforms to elude such occurrences in our politics. I also suggest an intellectual debate among aspirants as done at the national level by the IEA for our presidential candidates. Our EC must always be scrutinized and should be kept on his/her toes. We the students must also learn to do our politics with integrity and honesty. My name is Ntenhene Felix, and I don’t write because I want to become famous but I write because it hurts me when I see our sisters at the Kejetia market carrying loads supposed to be carried by donkeys. It hurts me to see children begging for money around the ATM for food. You and I must work hard by doing the right things to change the fortunes of these people in future. Indeed, this year’s elections faced avalanche of setbacks and we must do everything possible to correct those setbacks. I congratulate Boakye Nyamekye Isaac (BNI) on his victory as the KNUST SRC President for 2015/2016. “We are not children of a lesser god.” All is well.
