By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
There is this patently absurd second-guessing streak about many a National Democratic Congress hack and/or propagandist that makes them imperiously presume to be able to facilely predict the internal political dynamics of the New Patriotic Party (NPP). Thus we have an article captioned "A Shift of Power in the NPP is Inevitable" (Vibeghana.com 2/23/13) by a Mr. Kofi Thompson, in which the author predicts that the mantle of leadership in the main opposition New Patriotic Party will shortly fall of the shoulders of Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo onto the broader and strapping shoulders of Monsieur Alan Kwadwo Kyeremateng.
The good news here, though, is that such leadership change will definitely not be shadily effected through the criminal liquidation of Nana Akufo-Addo in favor of Mr. Kyeremateng, as is widely believed to have been the case between the late President John Evans Atta-Mills and the now-President John Dramani Mahama.
And on the preceding score, we need to get one thing loud and clear - and it is incontrovertible fact that the National Democratic Congress is as historically murderous and bloody as the New Patriotic Party is historically constructive and diplomatic. Indeed, this was what Nana Akufo-Addo sought to clarify before the global community of civilized polities when, in the wake of the flagrant rigging of Election 2012 by Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan in favor of Mr. John Dramani Mahama, the presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party asserted that the NPP was not a "revolutionary" political machinery in the manner that the National Democratic Congress is infamous for.
We must also hasten to point out that whether Mr. Kyeremateng or Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, or any of the other key figures in the NPP succeeds the admittedy fast-aging, but hardly lethargic, Nana Akufo-Addo, such changing of the proverbial guard would not exactly approximate a "Paradigm-Shift," the way that Mr. Mahama euphorically characterized the demise of his predecessor and the handing over of the reins of governance to the former NDC-MP from Gonja-West constituency.
It will not constitute a radical shift of paradigm because fundamentally speaking, the New Patriotic Party has a well-established democratic liberal and capitalist-oriented welfarist tradition that operates comfortably independent of any individual personality or group of movers and shakers. The NDC, on the other hand, having been parochially founded almost exclusively on the purportedly charismatic icon of Chairman Jerry John Rawlings, has yet to flesh out any viable ideological modus operandi. This largely accounts for the fact that President Mahama had to almost exclusively campaign on the invidious platform of "Tribal Regionalism" and the largely vacuous infantile slogan of a "Better Ghana Agenda."
We also need to get it straight that Nana Akufo-Addo was defeated in the 2008 presidential election primarily because of unsavory political infighting among the top-echelons of his own party, rather than being vanquished by the hopelessly bumbling and twice-defeated President Atta-Mills. And so for anybody to peacockishly assert that Nana Akufo-Addo lost Election 2012, when all the publicly available forensic evidence clearly points to an epic and flagrant rigging of the ballot, as it were, is rather unfortunate, to understate matters.
Likewise, lamely arguing that the key operatives of the NPP touted vigilance as their watchword in the lead-up to Election 2012, does in no way exonerate Dr. Afari-Gyan and the Electoral Commission from taking full responsibility for any irregularities that can be objectively and forensically proven to have characterized the electoral process. You see, when it comes to the sort of judicial contestation that the leadership of the New Patriotic Party was provoked into launching by the shameful intransigence of Dr. Afari-Gyan, such anecdotal frivolities as the NPP's leadership having promised to vigilantly guard against the prime possibility of poll rigging in the lead-up to Eection 2012 is forensically unsustainable and simply absurd.
Then also, to claim that the recent arrest of three Electoral Commission officials caught tampering with electoral documents relevant to the NPP suit against Messrs. Afari-Gyan, Mahama and the NDC is inconsequential, eerily underscores the pathological cognitive incapacity of NDC hacks like Mr. Thompson. Needless to say, if, indeed, the shenanigans of "The Savelugu Three" were that inconsequential, then why would the police have bothered to arrest these criminal suspects and then force them to post bail rather than allowing them to go scot free, as it were?
As I adumbrated in a previous article, it is typical for certified career criminals caught with their pants down, to childishly cook up some facile subterfuge scenarios and grotesquely hope that, somehow, Ghanaians and the judiciary are too naive to see through such clinical delusion for what it veritably is.
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*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Department of English
Nassau Community College of SUNY
Garden City, New York
Feb. 23, 2013
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