By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
It makes quite a bit of sense that the man who stole from Ghanaian taxpayers, by grossly over-charging the government for his cement blocks for the construction of the Bui Dam, should be calling for KPMG auditors to be given a bodily search before being allowed onto the premises of the Supreme Court to re-count pink sheets submitted by the main opposition New Partiotic Party (NPP), in vehement contestation of the declaration of President John Dramani Mahama as winner of Election 2012 (See "Search KPMG Officials Before Audit - General Mosquito Advocates" MyJoyOnline.com 5/10/13).
You see, I would be quite worried if the man had credibility. Indeed, what Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia ought to be doing presently is to be explaining to the Ghanaian public why the Mahama government attempted to strong-arm the Supreme Court Registrar into handing over keys to the vaults containing the pink sheets to agents of the National Security Agency for "safekeeping."
By the way, this is the same agency that sat duck while several biometric voting machines went missing in the wake of Election 2012 and the decision by the Akufo-Addo-led New Patriotic Party to legally contest the integrity and validity of both the election results and the declaration of Mr. Mahama as the clear winner of the same.
The Gbevlo-Lartey Gang has also sat duck while several pink sheets were squirreled into hiding and their particulars - or details - falsified by agents in the pay of both the Afari-Gyan-led Electoral Commission (EC) and the Mahama-led government of the so-called National Democratic Congress.
Maybe somebody far more enlightened and expert in the business of accounting and auditing, like Dr. Papa Kwesi Nduom, ought to open the "cataracted" eyes of Mr. Asiedu-Nketia to the sterling professional standards that are the hallmarks of KPMG. Indeed, the NDC general-secretary has absolutely every right to speak his mind; but he equally ought to be reminded of the fact that he has absolutely no right to pretend as if his clinically regressive mental state is either the national norm or more typical of the proverbial Ghanaian personality than not.
For instance, what does the Seikwa, Brong-Ahafo, native mean by his assertion that "a thorough search of the officials who will be assigned to do the counting is the only way [that] Ghanaians would accept the outcome of the audit"? And just exactly which group and what percentage of Ghanaians does Mr. Asiedu-Nketia presume to represent? And precisely what ground rules has he or the party that he represents established for the kind of "thorough search" of the KPMG auditors that he has in mind?
Of course, he is darn right to observe that the outcome of the Akufo-Addo-led petition "could affect the presidency," but such outcome will definitely not be dependent on whether Messrs. Akufo-Addo, Mahamudu Bawumia and Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey submitted 11,842 pink sheets or 8,000 pink sheets, as claimed by Mr. Tsatsu "The Thief" Tsikata, counsel for the National Democratic Congress.
Rather, the decision of the Atuguba-led panel of Supreme Court jurists is far more likely to be predicated on the extent to which the petitioners have been able to forensically and objectively establish the fact that, indeed, Messrs. Dramani Mahama and Afari-Gyan colluded to rig Election 2012 in favor of the former. And so far, televised evidence presented by the primary petitioners to the global community points directly to the fact of Election 2012 having been "thoroughy" rigged in favor of President Mahama.
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*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Department of English
Nassau Community College of SUNY
Garden City, New York
May 10, 2013
E-mail: [email protected]
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