My compatriots, today I submit that unless we exercise some more diligence in our practice of western democracy, we are likely to falter and confuse ourselves. Words mean something, otherwise they won?t be words. But we seem to use terms such as ?second term? in our presidential system of government without regard for meaning.
And so unlike other presidential systems where second term, four more years, continuity, has clear definitions, we tend to use those terms meaninglessly.
Our constitution has a four-year term for a president. A president wanting to continue after the four years is allowed to contest for an additional four years. That will be the second and last term for that president.
A president just about to complete a four-year term may thus ask for a second term. A second four-year term is all one person is permitted to contest for, for life. So our presidential system has a two-term limit, a maximum of eight years.
Nowhere is a political party voted for a first term. In our situation, even if one were to argue that because party symbols accompany candidate pictures on the ballot box we vote for parties, what would you say about the independent presidential candidate who has no party?
Indeed, by creating opportunity for independent presidential candidates, we underscore the fact that we elect presidents. The government of the day is a president?s government and not a political party government. Otherwise, an independently elected president will not have a government.
So if a group of democracy wreckers conspire to elect a president they all know is likely to die before the end of a four-year term and gets him elected but he dies in less than four years, where does a second term arise?
If you are confused, the congresspeople knew they were forcing on the motherland a terminally ill president. My own in-law MTN said it. Spio this, and Herbert that, said it. He, who born all the greedy bastard dogs, knew it and sought a last minute change without success.
My compatriots were tricked into swallowing propaganda hook, line and sinker and elected a president who did so little that he could not even finish his four-year term.
Having squandered the opportunity to plead for a second term by their unwise decision to take advantage of a sickly president, they now want to ask for a second term. My compatriots, as far as the December 7, 2012 election is concerned, there is nothing like second term.
The president elected in 2008 to serve four years did not complete his term. He disappeared. He is nowhere to ask for a second term. The incumbent president, meanwhile, has no term. In his own words, he is a spare driver. So which president is asking for a second term?
I imagine it is because the incumbent president has no first term basis to ask for a second term that a party should ask for a second term. Here too, it is not possible. The Constitution of the motherland has no provision to that effect. Otherwise, MPs will have term limits. MPs also have their party symbols appearing along with their pictures on the ballot paper but an MP?s term is limitless.
The second disqualifying point is that the incumbent president belongs to a congress. Congress is not a party. If it were a party like in India, it will be called a party. A ?yE nkyE nni? (let?s share and chop) congress which is not a party cannot ask for a second term because only parties may ask for that.
Ask them for their party ideology and they will tell you ?we are social democrats.? They will tell you that because they cannot tell you they practice social democracy. They know the term is meaningless. It cannot be reduced to any measurable observable. They could simply tell you their ideology is share and chop, because that is what they practice. Unfortunately, they will not because they are born to hide and lie.
If all presidential candidates are asking for a first term, then the rightful choice is the one who has a clear plan to transform the motherland. There is no way a president who has had the opportunity to help transform the economy but instead is complicit in dubious payments of the motherland?s money that earned her not a single development has already forfeited any consideration.
When the free education man is talking free high school education, they are talking who was at Oxbridge when. That is the social democracy agenda. Diversionary tactics, personal attack, lies, don?t know what to do so cannot do.
There is no second term for them to ask for. So let them talk and lie themselves out of the motherland?s ship of state.
By Kwasi Ansu-Kyeremeh
