Development and Election Year Politics

As part of my quest for a job, I met earlier today with a man named Pastor Offer who has had a lot of experience working in radio.  We got to talking about politics around the world, especially back home and here in Ghana, and he gave me some very interesting insights into the Ghanaian system.  As both of our countries have elections coming up this winter, we talked a lot about campaigns and election year politics.  One of his anecdotes was too good not to share.

There was a Ghanaian politician who wanted to please his constituency in the lead up to an election.  In one of his districts, the residents had electricity but no street lights, so he decided to install a series of lights up and down some major avenues to bathe the area in a beautiful, warm glow.  When the election rolled around, he was shocked to discover that he had been defeated.  When some reporters went out to investigate the reason for the apparent upset, one resident explained that the people in that area live in very small, cramped concrete units that get uncomfortably hot at night.  To remedy the situation, the residents had taken to sleeping along the avenues, and the darkness that had once graced those streets provided them privacy in their more intimate moments.  That particular man claimed to have been conceived on those very streets, and added that rather than losing privacy in their sex lives, the residents might have preferred increased access to safe drinking water.  Apparently the out of touch politician is a global trope.