Due to the fact the outbreak of Covid-19, we have come to take that our life have been turned upside down.
We have been learning to cope with factors nobody had at any time dreamt about – like not hugging or shaking arms. Social distancing, self-isolation and quarantine have all turn into phrases of day to day use.
Schools have been closed, and dad and mom are exploring anew just how substantially foodstuff growing kids try to eat.
There are factors we studiously stay away from conversing about the mortuaries are comprehensive, not from coronavirus fatalities (so much in Ghana, there have been 16 from the ailment) but the ban on public gatherings, which signifies we can not have regular funerals.
Non-public burials are permitted but with no much more than 25 men and women and that seriously is an unbearable knowledge for most Ghanaians.
So, we are trying to keep the bodies in the morgues in the hope that this dreadful nightmare will shortly be over and the dead can be provided befitting Ghanaian burials.
Funeral solutions are going hi-tech to abide by the new limits. The service has the recommended 25 or fewer individuals and the proceedings are streamed on-line. A lot of persons now sit at house by their laptops and log on to be part of the support.
If this pattern continues, it will absolutely subvert our funeral culture. I joined an on the net funeral very last week dressed in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. Nobody attends a funeral dressed like that.
Now that we have absent by 7 Sundays, such as Easter Sunday, with out church expert services, it is dawning on all of us that coronavirus is instead spectacular.
We are into the holy thirty day period of Ramadan. Muslims have started off their fasting, with out the congregational prayers in the mosque that mark the breaking of the speedy. Extra and far more of us now take that we are in unsettling periods.
The funds Accra and its environs, and the second city Kumasi, had been put underneath lockdown for three months and we have emerged from that way too with the restriction on the movement of people now lifted.
Frantic pursuits
At the centre of the entire Covid-19 practical experience has been President Nana Akufo-Addo. He addressed the nation on the evening of 12 March to tell us of the 1st two scenarios of coronavirus in the country.
He announced the ban on social gatherings, the closure of borders, the lockdown in the two metropolitan places, and he enumerates the tally of verified scenarios of bacterial infections.
There is an unspoken but uncomfortable reality that runs underneath all the frantic coronavirus things to do in the nation. We are owing to hold presidential and parliamentary elections on 7 December.
Elections are keenly contested listed here and campaigns are typically loud, chaotic and, of training course, group-centred. Preparations were being on a restricted timetable and did not go away a lot area for anything to go incorrect.
Poll strategies derailed
Then the virus struck and the 1st casualty was the National Identification Authority. It has not nevertheless been ready to end offering identification cards to all people above the age of 16. With out it, men and women can not register to vote.
The electoral fee wishes to compile a refreshing voters sign-up, but the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) is owning none of that and has sworn loudly that it will do all the things it can to make guaranteed it does not transpire.
The commission had, in simple fact, prepared to get started the registration course of action extra than a 7 days ago, but considering the fact that all gatherings are banned, it seems to be trapped.
In addition, the two primary functions are gauging every single other as the mother nature of politicking has improved with the arrival of coronavirus.
No-just one appreciates if the people’s judgement is going to be based mainly on how the parties and their candidates fare during this crisis.
The prospect of the ruling New Patriotic Celebration (NPP), President Nana Akufo-Addo, and the NDC applicant, former President John Mahama, know each individual other quite well. This is likely to be the 3rd time they will be going through every single other.
The NPP should have carried out primaries in about 150 constituencies in which it has sitting down MPs past December but postponed them to April – only for them to be derailed by lockdown steps. The candidates can’t campaign, at minimum not in the fashion we know.
Bash officials are in a bind, will they be equipped to keep primaries and how will they handle the tensions that come with interior elections if there is no time to mend wounds?
The NDC has most of its parliamentary candidates but its presidential candidate would have preferred to announce his decision of running mate at a large rowdy event – not at an function dominated by social distancing.
And how do you campaign when a malignant virus free in the land and there does not appear to be to be any hunger for partisan arguments?
The president has resolved the country eight periods considering that the outbreak and the entire country listens to him.
He can make a speech and portion of it goes viral: “We know how to convey the financial state back again to lifetime. What we do not know is how to deliver individuals back again to daily life.”
The president states the virus does not have a political color, this is not the time for politicking, and right now we have to defeat our frequent enemy. He is acquiring a fantastic pandemic.
The NDC started off its Covid-19 politicking on a dodgy take note when its common secretary, Asiedu Nketia, expressed uncertainties about the existence of the virus in the region.
When the President declared the initially two cases of Covid-19 and placed a ban on social gatherings and political activities, he claimed the virus was a major hoax, and element of a grand design and style by the president to rig the elections.
But the NDC quickly regained its poise and the bash set up its personal Covid-19 committee and Mr Mahama started out issuing his own day-to-day bulletins on the development of the virus.
He experienced a digital conversation the other day, which sounded suspiciously like an deal with to the country.
John Mahama in a Electronic Conversation https://t.co/ggyBnyR77H
— John Dramani Mahama (@JDMahama) April 23, 2020
A single week into the lockdown, tempers commenced to fray, smaller companies have been experience the pinch, the daily wage earners have been in distress and the verified cases of Covid-19 had been climbing.
An NDC MP accused federal government officers of inquiring the susceptible for NPP party membership cards right before being supplied food items.
‘Father Christmas’
A movie was produced of Mr Mahama distributing food stuff parcels in a weak suburb. He was appropriately clad in his deal with mask and advised the recipients he knew they were struggling and could feel their agony.
The president announced a raft of interventions to simplicity the financial issues introduced on by the pandemic the federal government would choose up 50% of everybody’s electrical energy bill for the future three months, water would be free of charge during that period, and wellness workers would not pay back taxes.
Last Sunday, Mr Akufo-Addo declared the authorities was about to begin a substantial hospital creating programme. He claimed the pandemic had uncovered just how terribly underserved we have been with hospitals and he would establish and equip 94 new kinds within just the subsequent calendar year.
We experienced not noticed the president as a Father Xmas right before but there he was dishing out goodies. For the NDC, it is tough when it wants to defeat him in elections.
Because no one has any idea when we will get rid of this virus and there are no provisions in the constitution to postpone presidential elections, we are possessing to work close to the possibility of holding the polls with Covid-19 around us.
South Korea did it and we may well have to do it as effectively, socially distanced and with our masks.
