The stillness before the storm is often mistaken for peace, yet it is merely the deceptive calm before the historical reckoning.
History, that relentless pedagogue, whispers a different truth: this quietude is the grinding of gears, the crescendo before the crash. It is the fatal moment when a people, blinded by the flickering hope of one more ballot box, finally grasp that ‘business as usual’ is a grand larceny enacted upon their very soul.
The people may soon rise. This is not an incendiary call, but a cold, hard analysis chiseled from the rock face of four failed Republics.
The next uprising, bloodless or bloody, is never the desire of the citizen, but the tragic, necessary outcome of elite betrayal.
For over three decades, the democratic edifice has functioned as a revolving door for thieves. Each ‘new batch’ of plunderers, wearing the same mask of “hope”, has merely sought to outbid the last in a perverse auction of collective wealth.
The political baton is passed not in a race of service, but in a relay of ruin. Like a parasitic vine strangling the host tree, a few are looting at the expense of too many.
This grotesque imbalance, this crushing weight of injustice, is the kindling that ensures the next conflagration will be embraced not because the people love destruction, but because they yearn for release. Can this be prevented? Yes, but will it be? No.
The tragic paradox is that the very people who hold the keys to reform the beneficiaries of the status quo are the least equipped to believe its inevitable collapse.
John Dramani Mahama stands on a precipice, not just of leadership, but of history.
He may, or may not, be the last leader to complete a democratic term. His tenure represents the final, flickering flame the people have to stop the inevitable from becoming a reality.
The silent, terrifying truth is that if his “soft skills” fail to translate into the “transformative change” Ghana needs, the timeline collapses.
If, by 2027, the landscape remains a cruel caricature of progress, we may not see a successful 2028 election.
This is not divination; it is the Socratic logic of failed statecraft from the First to the Fourth Republic.
The people do not instigate the coup; the unconscionable elite who are given the privilege of national leadership necessitate it.
They are the midwives of their own demise.
On January 7th, a message was delivered with the clarity of a thunderclap: Toure’s bold walk, chest out, to greet the newly elected democratic president. This was not merely a courtesy; it was a loud, unambiguous signal a historical memento mori to our entire ruling class: the political, the religious, the traditional, and the business elites. While President
Mahama may have heard it, the question hangs heavy as an iron curtain: Did those around him hear it too? Or were they, like the gluttonous guests at a poisoned feast, absent mindedly counting the anticipated spoils of office?
”The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” as Dr. King taught. But here, the arc may snap. While the elites are engaged in their selfish division, a profound darkness may fall upon us.
Yet, paradoxically, it is from this very darkness that a new light a new beginning must emerge. Can’t you hear it? The sound is not of cheering crowds or debating parliamentarians. It is the nation groaning in pain.
Ghana is in the throes of a painful, self induced labour. She is about to reborn herself if nothing transformative, absolute, and immediate is given to her weary soul. The political class has been given the rope; the people are simply waiting to see if it will be used to mend the boat or to hang the republic.
May that new beginning lead us, at last, to the change Ghana needs.
By Raymond Ablorh
