Is our politics going Indian? I will explain that in a bit.

A few years back, I commented on the number of second and sometimes, even third generation names I was hearing and seeing on the BBC radio and television. 

Every time I hear such names, I invariably compare the young person to the older version of the name and I wonder if he/she is as good as, or better than the parent I used to know.

I have never thought it was unfair that the child of a celebrated BBC correspondent should go into a broadcasting job.

It is natural for children to follow in the footsteps of their parents in choosing the profession they enter.

Take fishing for example, it remains, by and large, passed on through parents to children, and has something definitely to do with the environment you are born and raised in and this is not peculiar to Ghana. 

It is most unlikely that you would find a child in Abutia that will express a desire to go into fishing when he grows up. Chances are he has never seen the sea and might lead his whole life without ever putting his toe in the ocean. 

Kente weaving in Ghana remains very much an art form that is passed on in the family. 

It is very rare that somebody comes from an entirely new environment to start learning how to weave Kente.

Noteworthy 

Nobody thinks it is even noteworthy when the child of a musician takes to a musical career; it is most likely such a child would often have had a head start; there would be a piano around the home as the child begins to crawl and can move his fingers.  

But when it comes to creative fields like music and art, it is probably more a matter of nature rather than nurture or atmosphere. 

I have to believe that those who turn out to become great musicians and painters invariably have parents with such creative talents.

At the moment, my interest is more in children who follow their parents into professions that have nothing to do with inheriting creative talents

Interesting

It is interesting how many children of policemen make it into the police service and how many children of soldiers end up as soldiers. 

I suppose if you grow up in a police or military barracks, it is not very surprising that you would end up as a police officer or as a soldier. 

And nobody bats an eyelid if daddy makes a phone call or two on behalf of Junior so he is able to enter the police or the army. 

This must be the reason why there is such resistance from the establishment that the recruitment base for the services is widened.

Indeed, we all take it as natural that a child would want to follow in the footsteps of one of his parents. 

Lawyers and medical doctors in particular manage to get their children to follow in their professions without raising any eyebrows. Often, it is the parent that wants a child to take over the family business. It works if the family business is tailoring or running restaurants, or import-export. 

In much the same way that it was considered unproblematic for a senior uniformed officer to put in a word to have a son recruited in the services, University lecturers in Ghana argue that their children should have some privileges when it comes to admissions; if the cut-off point for everybody else was aggregate 12 for example, their children would be taken with aggregate 14, 15 or even 16. 

I do not know how the computer placement regimen manages it, but teachers in secondary schools make the same arguments as the university teachers and expect to often receive similar treatment. Nobody begrudges them. As the saying goes in Ghana, “it is where you work that you get advantages”.    

Professions

There are some professions that no longer seem to have the inherent advantage that make them attractive to passing on  to the next generation. 

Top of the list would be cocoa farming and teaching. 

In times past, a cocoa farmer was a synonym for a rich man.

I knew we were in trouble when cocoa farmers started telling their children and everybody else that under no circumstance would they allow their children to become farmers. 

We were in even bigger trouble when teachers tried everything to ensure their children avoided becoming teachers. 

Nobody needed any telling our teachers and farmers no longer believe that there are any advantages to be had in their professions and therefore do not want their children to follow them.

Politics

Which leads me to the one profession that everybody seems to think is most attractive and which set me on this train of thought, politics. And I go to the question I asked at the beginning, is our politics going Indian? 

Rahul Gandhi, that scion of the legendary Gandhi family, who, until his recent problems in the courts, was a Member of Parliament and is leader of the Congress Party, captured the situation in reported remarks to a group of students. 

He told the students: “My father was in politics. (And his mother). My grandmother and great-grandfather were in politics. So, it was easy for me to enter politics. This is a problem. I am a symptom of this problem.” 

The British writer, Patrick French, who died recently, had spelt out the problem most vividly in his book “India: A Portrait,” with some startling statistics. According to him, one hundred per cent of the elected members in the lower house of the Indian Parliament, who are under the age of 30, are from families with a political background. 

Mr French calls them “hereditary MPs.” Sixty-five per cent of members in the 31- 40 age group are hereditary MPs. 

We have had a father and son as presidents, 45 years apart; a daughter of the first president has been in Parliament, some 38 years apart; a daughter of another president entered Parliament 17 years after her father left office; we had three brothers in government, we had two brothers, one as president and the other as a Minister in the government for eight years; there are about six to maybe a dozen people in Parliament with well-known political names and probably another dozen in positions outside Parliament. 

I can’t see the next generation of the known names.

It looks like we have some ways to go.

It alleges that the Trump Organization committed “numerous” acts of fraud between 2011 and 2021.

New York Attorney General Letitia James is asking a court to bar Mr Trump and his children from serving as officers or directors in any New York business.

The Trump Organization has denied any wrongdoing.

Mr Trump and the Trump Organization are accused of misstating the value of real estate to get banks to lend on more favourable terms.

“With the help of his children and senior executives at the Trump Organization, Donald Trump falsely inflated his net worth by billions of dollars to unjustly enrich himself and cheat the system,” Ms James said in a statement.

Ms James, who is New York’s most senior lawyer, is pushing for the Trump Organization to be barred from engaging in any future real estate transactions in the state.

She added that she is referring several criminal charges to federal prosecutors and to the Internal Revenue Service.

In addition to Donald Trump, Ms James named his three eldest children – Donald Trump Jr, Ivanka and Eric – as allegedly complicit in the fraud.

The announcement comes after Ms James rejected at last one offer to settle the long-running civil investigation into the company’s business practices.

The attorney general said she is aiming to recover an estimated $250m (£220m) that she said was the result of the fraud.

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According to her, incumbent governments shares the national cake for family friends and cronies.

Ms. Nelson made this assertion on Adom TV’s weekend entertainment show dubbed: Ahosepe Xtra with host Black I.

The actress who once led a demonstration against the erstwhile Mahama government over power crisis known in local parlance as ‘dumsor’ said she has lost hope.

“This country politics is family business. It’s a cycle and it will happen over and over again” she bemoaned.

Yvonne Nelson is currently promoting her latest movie, Fifty Fifty, which was produced by YN Productions.

Actors Majid Michel, Anthony Woode, and John Dumelo are A-list actors starring in the movie which is set to be premiered on May 21, 2022 at the Silverbird Cinemas in Accra.

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According to her, she learned the hard way after her previous marriage failed.

Speaking to Andy Dosty on Daybreak Hitz on Hitz FM, the gospel minister said keeping family members away from “your business will go a long way to improve your sanity to be creative and successful.”

Presently, the ‘I Swerve You’ hitmaker said she wants her personal life to be out of the news, thus “I want people to concentrate on my music than my personal issues

“It’s not good to involve your family in your career. I have the experience…I thought it was the best but now no way would I allow that.”

Giving her reason for adopting the “no family in my business” rule, Miss Blessing said “if something affects the relationship, it will affect your career.”

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Earlier, the gospel musician complained after her ex-husband, Dave Joy, allegedly changed passwords to her official accounts after they parted ways.

The gospel musician said even when she decided to let peace prevail by setting up new social media handles, her ex-hubby reported the accounts, thereby rendering them as spam.

According to her, she is currently operating new platforms to reach out and connect with her fans.

For the YouTube I opened a new one and with the Instagram I have opened a new one too… I don’t have a manager now but I have a team and we are doing what we can do and I think it’s working…, she said.