Edwinology’s Lab: The people angry at the man who is angry at the MP who can’t sit under a tree

Social media is a voice. Protest is a noise. All progress in democracies are chalked by noises not voices. If you want a truce, let’s call it noisy voices.

E-Lab read some people call Ernesto’s scream in Parliament cheap popularity, they could not see that what was much more obvious was, the cheap criticisms.

All the problems we face in this country is because, we love to Facebook. We have reduced that great contributions of democrats to angry emojis on Facebook.

Of course, we pay our taxes, a feat that puts us in the same bracket as Woyome. 

Of course, we vote by soiling our thumbs on a white sheet, a feat that puts us in the same bracket as an illiterate who has no choice but to thumbprint at the bank because he has no signature.

Any other demand on us is too expensive.

Of course, Ernesto and co shout in Parliament was lawless. Of course, the 1948 riots which fast-tracked our independence was lawless. Of course, the yellow vest movement in Paris has been lawless.

So what? If we can spend time in telling off three protesters for telling off MPs in Parliament, we reveal not a great sudden love for the law but a deeply embedded gene of cowardice.

Is E-Lab endorsing impunity? Let me be clear, impunity, in this case, is the luxury vocabulary of cowards. For even the law invites us to civil disobedience.

And if the nature of our civil disobedience is just three protesters screaming three times in Parliament, what a great coward we must all be. And the most potent evidence of our cowardice is that K.T Hammond’s comment that MPs can’t sit under trees did not make us angrier.

The Asokwa MP’s arrogance is as strong as our cowardice.

When peasants, during the French revolution, complained of no bread, Joseph-François Foullon de Doué, a French politician and MP under Louis XVI, retorted so angrily "If those rascals have no bread, then let them eat grass".

Well, you know who finally ate grass? The politician. His mouth was filled with grass while they put his head on a spike.

But some people within the #Dropthatchamber movement are too afraid of one politician, it is ready to hang three protesters. Not even a statement to condemn the MP.

We must thank God for giving us non-conformists. They are in every field – in science like Galileo Galilei, in religion like Protestant Martin Luther.

We clap for them and when we find them also in politics like Ernesto, we don’t clobber them. We manage them. They remain our sharpest weapons when the time is right.

Ask J.B Danquah. We are here because of his sharpest non-conformist, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, the man he more or less accused of cheap popularity in the 1948 riots.

We know today in Ghana, the politicians that now want to enjoy some cheap popularity from Africa’s man of the century, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah.

E-Lab knows Ernesto Yeboah. He has not always understood him and he has serious philosophical differences on several matters – faith and Ghana’s fate. 

But one thing is certain. He has sacrificed in his generation more than those who call him cheap. His effort is expensive, it is the criticism that is cheap.

These are those who use social media as their walking stick because they are afraid of the truth that their legs can actually walk to Parliament and scream.

Until we make our leaders uncomfortable with our noise, they will be glad to just hear your voice.  For a good voice is for choristers. A good noise is for democrats.

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