CONSTITUTION? WHAT CONSTITUTION? (PART 1)
1) THE DEFINING TUNE of a dance-able drumbeat should naturally rise from the deep vibrations that re-echo between the practiced palms and the taut tiger skin- cover; not whistled out of the flapping lips of a hollow-headed ‘Head Drummer’.
2) GENUINE LEADERSHIP never cuts its measure from the mad escapades of deluded looters stuffing up our hungry plates with mammoth volumes of copious “Constitutions” badly cooked with poisonous ingredients of highly plagiarized phraseology and shamelessly spiced up with silly sentences that are as shallow as the tail of a shadow.
3)TRUE LEADERSHIP should be seen glowingly reflected in the fulfilled life of the ruled; closely mirroring the ready availability and the easy affordability of the basic essentials that make life livable; coupled with the unfettered levels of Security, Freedom, and Justice, enjoyed by all, including the most vulnerable.

Anything below that mark is rabid rash on a dashing rat! Better to lose it (Rat and Rash), than to catch it!

SOMETIMES, (in spite of our gullible selves) if only we could somehow refuse to allow our servile souls to be swallowed up in the dank dragnet of insane layers of crappy clutter forever pouring out of our highest seat of state, SOMETHINGS will then definitely begin to stand out and make some sense.
Such a marvelous mind-set would then strengthen us to salvage our sanity and perhaps even help us to steer our downhill skid unto the kinder road of political decency and all round ascendancy.

Let me flip the coin here on its flat belly: the latest daft drumbeat thundering around a “national constitutional Review” antic has no dance-able tune!
And I am coming to this not as a lame Dancer (not in the least), but as a deeply-pained observer who has failed to be amused by the specter of pathetic political pantomimes that have taken center stage on our public stage for so very long. For I simply don’t believe there is any ‘entertainment’ side to this farce-dom of political pretenders wildly waltzing away to the non-productive drums of our discordant State House Choir, and want the world to believe that there is music in the madness- and it is called “a Mozart Classic”!

The lie is so frightening, it should terrify itself!

Here we go, again: “A National Constitutional Review to revisit the constitution with the aim of amending certain pertinent provisions…” (bla bla Black sheep)
What a phrase? So silky and shiny, yet so snaky and slimy!

In fact, the sheer volume of hot air needed to purr the entire body of this jaw-smasher to life should be enough to light our capital city for a year, without any need for propaganda SOLAR gimmicks that never spark.
But that is just what this CONSTITUTIONAL TALK is- empty hot air, from a stuffed High SEAT! This big buffoon of a balloon could easily burst, if one should stare at it long enough with a sufficiently scrutinizing eye!

Putting aside the massive contradictions and complex duplication that could carve their own Volumes, the prickly fact here is, though there may be EVERYTHING wrong with our Politicians, there is hardly anything wrong with our constitution, (or what we have left of it after years of grandiose mutilations)

Count the number of Constitutional Changes that we have been pushed to endure in our relatively short existence (as a ‘dictatorial democracy’ of a democracy) and tell me, with a straight face, whether it is our Politicians or our Constitution that needs to change, in a fundamental way!

Why our constitution is deemed to be in need of yet another incisive round of brutal butchering drags my understanding to the darkest dungeons.

But that’s not even the most baffling bit in this puzzling political game. What really mystifies me is the fact that there are so many people out there who actually believe that slicing rules here and there and gluing them up in different booklets is the solution(or any part of it thereof) we need to our problems.

To me, such a position is so laughable it makes me cry genuine tears at the sheer desperation and hopelessness of our situation. Isn’t it naively daring for anyone to begin to assume that those who are pretending to be groping for answers are actually interested in solutions that go beyond the depths of their pockets and the alignment of their bank fattening accounts?

Let us face it: in spite of what it says, notwithstanding how it is marketed, our Constitution is not (hardly ever has been) this grand sacred Scroll of wise-cogs streamed together to steer and guide our ship of state through an otherwise uncharted sea. How we all wish it was just that; but we all know that such hollow lines are a burnt toast of bland baloney: a tackler’s toothless hook, fit for the junkyard!

To be fair, our Constitution is not at fault here, and nor therefore, (it must be clarified) is it under any form of trial. At least the Constitution serves us one useful purpose: to trap our emasculated minds in the drunken stupor of useless debates. How satisfying it is that we could use this ‘DEBATE’ as a Punching Bag for our frustrations at a system that breeds nothing but failure!
The downside: while we are busy punching with our jaws, or Facebook Fingers, the Rats are quietly but quickly loading up their loot, undisturbed and unnoticed!

For most of the population, “Constitutional Review” exercises and the debates that they generate are just another set of deflective mischief- making mechanism that allows us to conveniently hide away from accepting the fact that these Rotating Rules are going to be as useless in addressing our growing malaise as are our fake ‘Designers’ who tailor every phrase to suit their set sick goals.

It is perfectly right to Dream, but to sleep and refuse to wake up is playing dead with your eyes widely open. And, as a nation, we have been dreaming so much and for so long that we may have just missed the last reality train!
HOPE itself becomes a burden when it is raised and dashed, year in and year out.

THE DONKEY doesn’t always have to be just a load carrier! Sometimes it must rest and let the RIDER learn to walk on his own two legs! And that will only ever happen when the Donkey succeeds in retrieving its thinking scalp!

Our backward moving story is unending. Year in and year out, prices of basic items are inflated beyond the average reach; essentials like Petrol, disappear like a serpent’s spittle. And yet, “OUR MEN” feed us the excuses while choking “on the fat of the land”

Another Christmases has just gone by and all we saw was a well-dressed SANTA in haunting Red but no Promised Presents. How many more cheerless Christmases is the nation expected to wade through before we grow up to the fact that these HUMMER-driving MANSION-growing SANTAS have nothing in their bulging bags except loot and lies?

The closest they can produce for us is a load of vacant smiles for those of us who would bear to stand and sweat in those crowded Lines long enough to deserve as much as a sideways glance and a regal wave.
But to dare to hope for a “Constitutional Review” that would fundamentally, or even superficially, change our soiled situation is a dream bothering on sacrilegious expectations.

Indeed, men are free to dream, and they have a perfect right to go on dreaming in COLOURS and shapes couched in floating PALM TREES waving at a simmering SUN. But to sleep and refuse to wake is more disgusting than playing dead lying under the sweltering weight of a contaminated cadaver.
The basic truth is, the Constitutional Review exercise is a mere ploy. Call it Politics of Public Patronization!

Come to think of it, strictly from a governance point of view, we could adopt the humblest lessons in ruler ship from Pa Kpaka, a late chief of my village in Bombohun, where we had Limbas, Mandingoes and Temnes living side by side in perfect harmony (till our society was so dastardly destroyed by lunatics who preferred to call themselves “Freedom Fighters”)
In Bombohun, no Palmwine thief (or any thief) was ever allowed to be a Chief.

Little wonder then that our people still struggle to understand, (much less to accept), that characters who would never qualify to rule a section of their village are now being catapulted into key NATIONAL positions via some “DEMOCRATIC CONSTITUTIONAL arrangement” (Elections??)

It’s like a joke with a yoke, ready to choke; because it smells so foully!

Visit the most remote settlement in any part of the country, unburdened by the presences of our ‘modern’ complexities, and see how the people there rule themselves, seamlessly, without the need of volumes of nonsensical write-ups that few will ever read and which no one is expected to obey.

Or, if we are so desperately in need of totemic theorems to toss us out of this sad depth, we could turn to the TEN MOSAIC COMMANDMENTS and be perfectly fine as a country, if only we had a single Savior Moses as our leader prepared to enforce the simple law of “thou shall not trousers that which does not belong to thy pocket!”

But since we don’t still have anyone whose bearded brow has anything remotely resembling a wand waving Moses; we remain intricately tied up to the condemned crosses of the many flaming Judases that continue to stain the sacred stage of our State with their porous constitutional parchments that
take much wind but sails no sane ship!

And that brings us to the real seed in the nut! (See Part 2, soon!)