In our kind of politics, where promise-making and the initiation of politically motivated development projects predominate, there is very little for anybody to say in defence of the irresponsible behaviour of governments that fail (or refuse)—for partisan political reasons—to complete projects begun by their predecessors.
Or to maintain those projects, thus leaving them to deteriorate.
The primary objective of any government is the provision of goods, services, and social amenities to improve living conditions of the citizens whose mandate put it in power.
Exercising that mandate entails securing the state and managing its affairs properly so that resources can be created, distributed equitably, and used for the benefit of the people.
It is, therefore, absurd for any government to claim credit for providing amenities in the form of development projects.
We shouldn’t praise such a government.
That is what it is in office to do. It is for the same reason that we shouldn’t praise any man for impregnating his wife. That’s his call-to-duty—and it’s moot.
The government is expected to provide what the citizens need to live their lives in decency and shouldn’t seek credit for performing such a function.
But if anything happens to the contrary, the citizens must make their voices heard.
And many things to the contrary have been happening in the country since it gained independence from Britain some 66 years ago that we know but hardly work on to change the situation for the better.
One of them is the negative politics done by our governments to abandon development projects initiated by their predecessors.
The tendency to abandon projects has mostly been fed by political rivalry.
Successive governments fear that completing such projects might enhance the image of their political opponents and win credit for them.
The new government always perceives the outgone one as an anathema that must be discredited.
Thus, to eliminate any influence of that government, the new one adopts a politically intransigent stance against continuing those uncompleted projects even though much of our scarce resources would already have been sunk into them.
Somebody has to be punished for this wickedness in high circles.
The new government itself rushes into initiating development projects of its own choice only for them to be abandoned when the tide turns against it and its rival assumes power.
My claim, then, is that the numerous abandoned projects dotted across the length and breadth of the country would have been completed long ago to serve their purposes had successive governments not allowed their petulant political intolerance to take the better part of them.
There is evidence of such abandoned projects all over the country, which is deplorable.
The abandoning of projects (houses, roads, schools, electrification, bridges, utilities, etc.) by successive governments is not a new phenomenon; it is the norm.
This negative politics of abandoning projects initiated by previous governments indicates paralyzing political immaturity, pettiness, and treachery against tax payers and producers of the country’s revenue.
More pointedly, it confirms fears that our leaders lack the requisite vision and programmes of action to do what will improve living conditions of the people.
Like this abandoned major project, all others dotting the perimeter of the country speak volumes about our leaders’ lack of vision and their purposelessness in government.
There is nothing preventing anybody from completing these projects except political mischief and shortsightedness.
More importantly, the dissipation of public funds (much more the loans contracted from the donor community on which huge interests are charged) on such projects only for them to be abandoned suggests that our governments are atrociously careless.
Chipo Kwaku, Yagbon Radio.
