He said this unacceptable behaviour was evident this week when an activist of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) John Kumah is alleged to have inferred on a radio discussion programme that President John Mills was a homosexual.
The NPP youth activist who was arrested and released upon instructions from the President said on another radio programme that he never called the President gay as has been widely reported.
Adding his voice to the calls for a stop to insults during political discourses, Mr Ablakwa stated that “…Our politics is increasingly becoming disgusting, the verbal pornography has reached an epoch that many decent people in this country are wondering whether they should ever join the foray of politics.”
He was speaking on Alhaji & Alhaji on Radio Gold Saturday. “In the name of politics, characters are being assassinated, people are being destroyed, reputations are being maligned, slander and libel are committed at will without any respect for truth, without any respect for the values that the decent society looks up to,” the deputy minister complained.
Mr Ablakwa said it seemed that people could no longer differentiate between right and wrong because they get elderly people to support them instead of condemning their actions when they commit offenses.
“…Looking at this disgusting, distasteful, absolutely scandalous statement that Mr Kumah made I have not heard a single member of the [NPP] condemning him” but rather referring to him as a hero.
“That is a worrying trend in our politics,” said Ablakwa who insisted that “that cannot be a politics that has conscience, the politics of decency.”
The minister also spoke against the attitudes of some members of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) who got incensed at President Mills’ intervention in the release of John Kumah from Police custody, saying, “I honestly think that the President’s stature has rather …endeared him to non-adherents of the NDC.”
He urged party members and supporters not to focus on the immediate emotional gratification and bragging rights they would derive from the prosecution of an opposition member but to appreciate the long-term vision and posture of the President.
“Rather than attacking and call him [Mills] the man who is weak, who cannot even deal with his opponents… the better way to deal with your opponent is to let the people deal with them [during elections].”
Many decent minded Ghanaians, according to Mr Ablakwa, are going to shun the NPP in the upcoming 2012 elections due to their posture on the issue of insults and the manner in which they hailed John Kumah after he had insulted the President.
“I honestly think that if we are against insults let us be against it across board … let us hang those who use insult” as a tool in discussing issues.
A co-panelist the show, Mr Yaw Boabeng-Asamoah who is a Deputy Communications Director of the NPP, also underscored the importance for the leadership of all political parties to rein-in their members and ensure insult-free discussions henceforth.
He however pleaded with commentators not to isolate John Kumah and ‘cut him to size’ because he is a symptom of a canker that has permeated the society.
Editor of the Insight newspaper Mr Kwesi Pratt said it was necessary for the nation to distinguish between insults and unverifiable attacks and to stop rewarding people for misbehaving.
Mr Raymond Archer, Editor of the Enquirer newspaper, pleaded with the President not to interfere with the work of the Police in issues of this nature, maintaining that “maybe that will send a better signal.”