I nursed the idea of writing this article for a while. Many times I started to think of what title I should give it or whether this heading is appropriate but always give-up.
I could not also organise my thoughts because it was going to be provocative, it would unnerve certain people. This brings me to my first point, I am not God. I therefore offer my sincere apologies to all those who believe in any deity, this is not an attempt to reduce your Object or concept of your faith to the level of human enterprise.
Nana Akufo-Addo, the presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and former President, John Agyekum Kufuor, with the greatest of respect have forced me into wishing I was God.
If there is anything as divine apology, I would not hesitate to apologise to the good people of this country for a political party called NPP..
Over the weekend the NPP organized a rally to climax Nana Addo’s listening tour campaign and introduce the greater Accra aspiring Members Of Parliament (MP’s). Various speakers upon various speakers took their turn to address the crowd, but my interest is on three personalities at the function, they are John Agyekum Kufuor, Nana Akufo-Addo and Kennedy Agyepong.
When Kennedy ‘buffoon’ Agyepong took his turn, he ignorantly and foolishly accused the President John Evans Atta Mills of corruption and actually called him a first class thief, who would be jailed should Nana Addo wins the election. I bet him God will not grant such a wish.
If Kennedy Agyepong is not ignorant of the law, how could he suggest that President Mills will be thrown into jail? Does he have the slightest idea about the Presidential Provision in our constitution, which provides immunity to a President either in office or out of office?
Had such a provision not existed, I bet my last pesewa that ex-President Kufuor would have packed out of the castle and be resettled into a prison cell.
Is it wrong for one to put his country first? I and millions of well-meaning Ghanaians don’t think so. President Mills, since he assumed office in 2009, has tried so hard to bring back sanity into our body politics; he reckons that politics of vindictiveness could only further deepen the polarization we have.
So instead of arbitrarily arresting people even in church and slapping them with all manner of charges and arraigning them before court, as we witnessed during the reign of John Kufuor, he rather is advocating for due process.
May be that is his Achilles heels, if not so Kennedy Agyepong, would not have been a free man today to call someone a thief.
If we were to live in a civilized society where institutions of state are functioning well and the wealth of each member of the society is scrutinized as to their sources, I will be surprised if Kennedy Agyepong would not have been stripped of his title as a Member of Parliament (MP).
But, I think Ghanaians know Ken for who and what he is, he is empty and hollow, he thinks winning arguments is how loud one can shout, or how many allegations you can make, or how much one has or whether one has a radio or TV station or not, because nobody really questions you for strict proof.
The (NPP) says they have the men, where are they, if only Ken’s voice is all we hear, then I am sorry NPP is bereft and bankrupt of the men, they tout about.
President John Agyekum Kufuor, at the rally said “the National Democratic Congress (NDC) Government led by President John Evans Atta Mills was lacking leaders who could take bold decisions to safeguard the interest of the State and protect life and property.
“The NDC keep on driving the citizens of this country backwards and asked the electorate to change their leaders for better economic management”.
He continued that “the erstwhile NPP Government lifted the Ghanaian economy from a third to a middle income status but “Now the NDC is taking credit for all what the NPP administration had done.”
The most sinister part of this Kufuor hype is that he was a hypocrite of the highest order-he supervised the primitive looting of the resources of this country for eight years.
The only bold decisions I remember President Kufuor taking was to supervise the incarceration of political opponents for no justifiable reasons.
Laws that have been on the statutory books for sometime were resurrected and used against people who have dedicated their lives to the service of this country.
When Kufuor assumed office, he claimed the country was broke and so had to subscribe to the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPPC) economic prescription by the World Bank for third world countries, yet when Kufuor was exiting in 2009, he took us back to indebtedness despite the goodwill and all the monies that the country had.
Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) was run down due to mismanagement and interference from the powers that be.
The credibility of the Judiciary was completely run down, it ceased to represent the voice of the voiceless, and where justice and equity were the hallmark. The poor had no place there, as justice became a preserve of the rich. The image of the Judiciary sunked so low that there were daily accusations of corruption, and nothing got done except the usual rhetoric’s which they are still bombarding us with.
Then entered the sex addict, Nana ‘naughty by nature’ Akufo-Addo. If I were God, as I mentioned at the beginning of this piece, I would first of all render him impotent, and make it public knowledge, because a cursory search of the soul of men identified shame and embarrassment as the greatest afflictions ravaging impotent men.
When he mounted the podium, he made mincemeat of credibility, of speaking the truth and sticking to principles. Last year when addressing party faithful, Nana Addo said, he was going to focus this year’s campaign his programmes of actions not promises, but alas as characteristics of him, he has fallen on his own words.
Let’s hear him and find out if Nana Addo puts forward even one programme. Even before the 2012 campaign heats up, Nana Akufo-Addo has thrown the first punch, running down his main contender and President of Ghana JEA Mills, implying that the president has been a total failure.
Nana Addo said the failure of the President to address issues confronting the nation such as unemployment, struggling businesses, high cost of education and widespread corruption in his Thursday’s State of the Nation Address is an indicative that “he is no longer in touch with the concerns of the ordinary Ghanaian”.
The New Patriotic Party, he boasted, “has got the men and women who are capable of giving this country first class governance and a first class administration. Our party has a programme for the rapid, economic and social transformation of our nation.”
“The President and his advisors have decided that they cannot campaign on his record; they cannot campaign on his performance; he cannot campaign on the programmes he has for the future of this country; [and] he cannot campaign against my public record.
“The only campaign weapon that they have is to attack me and blackened my name and reputation in this country. But I have news for the President; I have news for his so-called advisors: no amount of vilifications, no amount of insults, no amount of fabrications, no concoctions against me is going to stop me from doing my work for the people of our country and for the progress of our nation. Nothing is going to stop me. “But they are right. They are right to say they cannot campaign on his record and his performance: the record is poor and the performance is weak. That is why they cannot campaign on that record or that performance.” Nana Addo should come again. Has he any record, I will go into that in my subsequent article.
By Abdul Razak Bawa ([email protected])