By Michael Ashilevi, for Sankofaonline:July 11,2025
Ghana’s democracy has endured its share of storms, but the selective outrage surrounding electoral violence today threatens to turn principled discourse into hollow performance. We live in a time when those who once stood silent as citizens bled now seek applause for rediscovered morality. And nowhere is this contradiction more visible than in the conduct and current commentary of Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia.
He who stood beside presidential power during some of the bloodiest democratic chapters now decries violence with rehearsed indignation. But Ghanaians remember. We remember the lives lost, the journalists assaulted, and the unarmed civilians brutalized by forces deployed under a government in which Dr. Bawumia was second-in-command. Silence then is not absolution now.
Memory as Accountability
The beating of individuals like Honorable Sam George, though wholly condemnable, cannot overshadow the deeper cruelty of sanctioned violence. We must reckon with what truly unfolded:
- MP Hawa Koomson, whose actions resulted in bloodshed and death in the past.
- Military deployments that turned polling stations into war zones.
- The killing of innocent Ghanaians, whose families still mourn while political figures rewrite history.
When prominent leaders, including Kennedy Agyapong, publicly acknowledge the shift in electoral atmosphere caused by such violence — yet key members of that administration say nothing — Ghana must ask itself: how do we judge leadership that waits for applause before offering compassion?
A Crisis of Credibility
Dr. Bawumia’s recent condemnations of election violence might move audiences — but not those who were there. Not those who stood in line beneath the whir of drones and behind soldiers with rifles, hoping simply to vote. His absence from the conversation when lives were lost cannot be undone by political pivoting or calculated statements.
True leadership does not arrive late to the moral table. It stands firm in real time, even when silence might be easier. And yet, during the 2020 elections and beyond, Dr. Bawumia’s voice was conspicuously absent — not just from the headlines, but from the history that Ghanaians carry with them.
Double Standards and Dangerous Amnesia
It is disturbing to witness how some now rush to sanitize the past for political expediency. They speak with fury about recent incidents, yet forget — or deliberately ignore — the carnage that occurred under their own watch. When one set of abuses is treated as outrage and another as oversight, the insult is not only to public memory — it is to justice itself.
The hypocrisy is loud, and it is costly. Electoral violence is not a tool for political arithmetic. It is a human crisis, one that leaves deep scars across communities and weakens our democratic institutions. The credibility of leaders must be measured not only by their policies, but by their courage to speak consistently against violence — whether the perpetrators wear the colors of friend or foe.
Ghana Deserves Better
As we move toward future elections, let us demand more from those who seek to lead. Not reactive condemnation, but proactive protection. Not silence in power, then speech in ambition. Let us ask Dr. Bawumia — and all public figures — to account not just for their words, but for their silences.
For every Ghanaian who cast a ballot under threat, who watched a loved one fall or a journalist assaulted, the memory persists. And it should. Because memory, when fused with moral clarity, is democracy’s most powerful tool.
We do not forget. And we will not be misled by polished rhetoric that arrives too late.
