One Year Away…

We are exactly a year away for the 2012 Presidential and Parliamentary elections. I bet I am not the only one excited about the 2012 elections. I had a couple of retweets when I tweeted it this morning.  2012 presents a new dimension in Ghana’s elections. 

Apart from the much touted biometric voters’ register and ‘vote of confidence’ in the sitting John Evans Atta Mills, I am excited about how social media will be used in our elections. The use of social media was quite low in 2008. We saw only a few tweets and Facebook status updates from Ghana. Today, we have the major news outlets; Joy 997, Citi FM, Peace FM and the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation all have twitter accounts now. I believe the number of Ghanaians on twitter and Facebook since then has tripled.

I expect a revamped Electoral Commission of Ghana website to include social media just as the Independent Electoral Commission of Nigeria (INEC) did in 2010. Hopefully, the EC will have a Twitter and Facebook page in 2012.

The candidates are also gearing up for 2012. I have seen a couple of politicians on Twitter including Vice President, John Dramani Mahama and the Nana Akufo-Addo 2012 campaign team. I will verify and detail the social media accounts of politicians and key people to follow in 2012 in another post.

I am curious to see how my home region of Brong-Ahafo will vote in 2012. As they say in the USA, “As Maine goes, so goes the nation” but in Ghana, it is “As Brong-Ahafo goes, so goes the nation.” Christened the “Chameleon of Ghana Politics”, the Brong-Ahafo has gotten every election right since 1992 and I don’t expect that trend to end in 2012.

This is most likely to be Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, Electoral Commissioner of Ghana’s last elections and I expect him to do a fantastic farewell job. I trust the Ghanaian blogging and Twitter community to do a great job with telling the world, the real situation before and after December 7 2012.  

God bless our homeland Ghana!

WHO DO I WANT AS THE NEXT PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF GHANA?

I come across this question everyday. Kwabena, who do you want as the next president? Who are you voting for? Well, i have a lot of questions for myself and the presidential hopefuls before I decide. Right now, I just dont know who to believe or who to trust. I want a lot from the next president. I admit that I am social-democrat and have leanings toward CPP and NDC, but at this point I want to think freely and make a decision, a decision that I will feel proud of.

That brings me to what I want in the next president of the Republic of Ghana;

1. I want a president who will be selfless and put the nation above him, his family, his party and his friends. I want the nation to be supreme and not his personal dealings.

2. I want a president who will do a whole lot more to stamp out corruption and the perception running through Ghanaians especially the youth that corruption is everywhere and it is a way of life. I come across people who say corruption is the way and we should let the NPP administration take their share of the national cake like NDC did and every party will do the same. Everybody I have met who shares that perception admits he or she will do worse if in public office. I want a president who wont take selective justice to stamp out corruption or will come back after two years to tell me provide evidence or a president who will after four years tell the nation that corruption is everywhere and we should live with it.

3. I want a president who will address Ghana’s human resource problems. A president who will be much concerned with the quality and output of graduates and not the quantity. Some people will disagree, but we need to make sure the best students get university education and not everybody who qualifies. We should realise that quality is always better than quantity. In my years at the University of Ghana, I saw all sort of people walk in and out of the university ignorant. To me, it is shocking that university graduate do not know how to perform basic operations on a computer or do simple internet searches. With the exception of a few courses I studied in school, I somehow find the rest irrelevant and outmoded.

4. I want a president who will change the national service scheme. The current system is just funny to me. If we are serious we will be running a better system. I have a suggestion, though I havent written to parliament and the secretariat to tell them about my plan, I feel it can work and thats what we should have done eight years ago. Who wants to hear it? National service is a nine months programme and there is a lack of co-operation between industry, government and education. Why cant we build that relationship whilst students are in school? Long vacation or summer holidays is a 3 months break. For example, in your 4 years through the university, you will have 9 months of long vacation. I suggest, we use the long vacation for the freshman, sophomore and junior years for national service and this should be integrated into the your final GPA based on the report from your supervisor. I can hear some people booing my plan already but it is the best. By the time you graduate, you have a strong relationship with industry. If you’re thinking about summer holiday in Europe or elsewhere, you will have to wait till the christmas break. But the student also stand to gain from all this. Not every student is lucky to find a vacation internship. With this system, there is work for everybody and when you complete your studies, you wont have to wait to finish national service before you can think of graduate school or get a real employment. I am not saying the system is fool proof but we can all agree on this and seal the loop holes.

5. I want a president who will have ICT development at heart. Why can I pay $69 for my internet bill monthly and all I get is 128kb/s download and 64kb/s upload speed. Why cant I get the same service as people in the Europe, Asia, Oceania and the America? After all, some pay less than $69 for 1mb/s download or higher download speed. Why cant the Ministry of Communication and National Communication Authority stamp some authority? Why do we have to high tele-density and call drop rate is twice that? My next president should be ICT savvy. No more typewriter and snail mail president!

6. I want a president who will continue, expand and improve on the gains of this country. The next president should work to improve democracy and grass root participation. He should improve the state transport systems and find a way to reduce the number of trotros on the road. A president, who will put out a strong team for both the school feeding programme and national health insurance scheme. GDP and other economic indicators should be high priority on his list.

7. I want a president who will have the armed forces and veterans at heart. He should work on building a very strong army. He should also build a good image for Ghana on the international scene. He must continue to hold that neutral position we hold.

8. A president who can unite the country. North and South, East and West, Abudus and Andanis, Rawlings and Kuffour, NDC and NPP, me and everybody etc

So, who do you think I should vote for? Is it Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo or Dr. Edward Mahama or Prof John Evans Atta-Mills or Dr. Paa Kwasi Ndoum?

GOD BLESS OUR HOMELAND, GHANA!!!