By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
The Al-Hajj newspaper report that former First Lady Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings demanded a $5 million payola in exchange for dropping her presidential bid on the ticket of the newly-certified National Democratic Party (NDP) from the Mahama-Arthur posse, pathetically reflects the sick imagination of Alhaji Iddrisu Bature, publisher of the NDC-sponsored Al-hajj newspaper (See “Nana Konadu Laughs Off $5 Million Bribe Story” Ghanaweb.com 9/24/12).
Indeed, so desperate are NDC shills like Alhaji Bature to see their paymasters hang onto power by hook or crook, that they are willing to plant even the most improbably scandalous stories in the media in order to achieve their aim. From its track-record and my own personal experience with a few of its operatives, the National Democratic Congress is far more likely to have toyed with the idea of bribing Mrs. Rawlings out of her inexorable and vaulting presidential ambitions. You see, the Mahama-Arthur posse firmly believes that just about every formidable ideological rival or political opponent can be bought off at a price, and this is precisely what it has been strenuously attempting to do for some time now, using Mr. Bature, to no remarkable effect, unfortunately.
The fact of the matter is that President John “Paradigm-Shift” Dramani Mahama is far more likely to be bribed out of his ambition of retaining power on his own merit than have Mrs. Rawlings, who has been nursing the same for some three decades, do so. What is more, the woman who virulently inveighed against the selection of Mr. Mahama by the recently deceased President John Evans Atta-Mills as the latter’s running-mate for Election 2008, feels far better qualified for the country’s topmost job than her arch-nemesis.
Then also, those of us avid students and observers of Campaign 2012 cannot but be contemptuously amused by the pace and extent to which the transitional regime of Messrs. Mahama and Amissah-Arthur has been recklessly and indiscriminately throwing publicly-funded buses at Senior High Schools scattered across the country, in a desperate bid to getting eligible Ghanaian voters to reject Nana Akufo-Addo’s proposed free-education policy from Kindergarten through Senior High School.
The good news here is that whether Mr. Bature’s story has credibility or not, Ghanaians have become too politically sophisticated over time and too wisely self-interested in the affairs of their beloved nation to be so easily and lamely hoodwinked by ballot- and election-oriented politicians like Messrs. Mahama and Amissah-Arthur. Needless to say, when they are not busy parading Chinese artisans and civil engineers as development Santa Clauses, or Father Christmases, President Mahama and Vice-President Amissah-Arthur prefer to take the low and easy consumerist road of splurging, or wastefully spending the Ghanaian taxpayer’s own money in the form of “Sraha,” or gift-showering games mischievously dubbed as “presidential personal donations.” Undeniably, though, what most Ghanaians want from their government is a clearly defined and well-thought-out policy agenda for the sustainable and long-term development of their country.
You see, it reeks of nothing short of the downright insolent for a government that finds the provision of a fee-free Pre-K through (G)12 education too prohibitive to be recklessly throwing vehicular freebies at the very same Senior High Schools it claims to be fiscally out of bounds. In the part of Ghana where I come from, this is called hypocrisy with a capitalized “H.”
*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is Director of The Sintim-Aboagye Center for Politics and Culture and author of “Romantic Explorations” (Lulu.com, 2008). E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net. ###