Jeremiah’s composition about the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians as contained in the Book of Lamentations in the Bible comes to mind hearing President John Mahama complaining about how insults have become rife in the country today.
The President is being given a piece of what he sowed when he was in opposition…hiring young men to insults his opponents as part of his campaign strategy as he himself led the way with his infamous ‘baloney’.
Today the chickens have come home to roost and he is feeling the pain harshly…too bad but we do not sympathise with him. Who caused it?
An African proverb has it that ‘when digging a hole for your enemy to fall in, make it wide because you could fall into it also.’
The divine goal of processing pain by presenting same to God which is one of the meanings of the Book of Lamentations is not what President Mahama is about when he addressed Assemblies of God members.
His is about the heat in the kitchen he is enduring… with no regrets about the disharmony which he planted through the engagement of insulters as it were, nowhere near seeking the intervention of God through his lamentations.
Divinely intervention will only come when there is remorse and marked promise of sinning no more.
That his remarks were recorded and released onto social media was an indication of how one of his church members found his lamentations about social media insults paradoxical because his labourers of insults mastered the obnoxious craft.
Having been handsomely rewarded with juicy appointments the art has become attractive drawing in many others.
Under the authority of President John Mahama when he was opposition leader the NDC adopted the insult strategy to fight the NPP.
President John Mahama was not left out of the verbal assassination spree with some of his hate speeches targeting specific ethnic groupings…Akyem Sakawa, Akyem Mafia and claims that some relations of Nana Akufo-Addo stealing from the state’s kitty for his future use were but a few of his vituperations.
Many expressed disgust and wondered how a former president as he was at the time would descend so low as to describe the Akyems as Sakawa.
The President should not be lamenting about hate speeches because he has benefited from the bountiful dividends thereof even as he is now suffering the fallouts.
Karma has been swift in contemporary times the cause of the retributions therein not lost on the victims.
Presidents or political leaders should not be heard using words such as ‘stupid’ in their public discourses because these encourage the youth to follow suit. They are doing so already and all of us especially the President are feeling the fallout and badly so.
The voice of a man, Kevin Taylor, who claims to have been engaged by the President to work for him was on social media recently to acknowledge the work he has been engaged by the President to do. This is none but hurling of insults at the political opponents of the President. He has done the job so expertly that his contempt case at the court has been expunged leaving society more polarized than President Mahama met it and turning insults into a lucrative industry especially on social media.
