The 7th Edition of the Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary defines a foot soldier as ‘a person in an organization who does work that is important but boring, and who has no power or responsibility.’ I guess our so-called NDC foot soldiers will disagree with this definition of the revered Oxford Dictionary, because to them, they are the ‘king makers’ and the power behind the throne!
A foot soldier can also be defined as a political party grassroot activist or volunteer who works to ensure that his or her political party gets elected. In the election that brought Barack Obama to power, it is the young foot soldiers from the various campuses in the US that played major roles in terms of raising of funds and mobilisation of other resources to ensure that Obama was elected. I am not sure if our foot soldiers did same for President Mills.
In Ghana today, there is a growing concern among our foot soldiers, the NDC foot soldiers. Our foot soldiers are out of control! And they must be told in the face that they are not the only people who helped the NDC to come to power. In fact the foot soldiers alone couldn’t have brought the NDC to power. It took the support of what we call floating voters, and in the second round of the election the support of other smaller political parties to bring the NDC into power. We lost the first round of the election to the NPP although they couldn’t secure the very important 50% + 1 valid votes cast to beat us. And the second round was what did the magic for us. So our foot soldiers alone can’t claim to have brought the NDC into power.
Now for our foot soldiers to be maltreating everyone else with impunity is highly unacceptable and should not be tolerated. Why should they be allowed to attack people who oppose the government? or people they think are not serving their interests? Can’t we arrest them when they abuse people’s human rights or flouts the laws of the state? For me, it is very wrong to allow our foot soldiers to continue to be attacking our opponents and even our own party apparatchiks. Their actions are not in the interest of the party and the nation. If they have any concern, they should channel it to the appropriate quarters, and not to resort to violent acts.Those found to have violated our laws must be brought to book!
We are building a matured and civilised democracy that will be the envy of the world. We should be able to boldly state our political affiliations without any fear whatsoever. Opposing views should be respected. That is the only way we can build a BETTER GHANA.
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NDC Foot-soldiers Must Behave!