Ivor Greenstreet
It is a great time to be living outside Ghana, especially if you believe in leadership integrity and the Democratic respect for law and order.
The foregoing statement pretty much explains the rather curious, albeit all-too-predictable, decision by the leadership of the rump-Convention People’s Party (r-CPP) to indefinitely suspend the party’s General-Secretary, Nii Armah Akomfrah, and its National Youth Organizer, Mr. Ernesto Yeboah
The details continue to pan out, though as of this writing, it was quite apparent that the suspensions were primarily predicated on the decision by Messrs.
Akomfrah and Yeboah to petition the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) to investigate the full details regarding the recent media exposé naming President John Dramani Mahama as the prime recipient of a Ford Expedition auto payola from a Burkinabe contractor with direct business dealings with the erstwhile Mills-Mahama regime.
That nobody has accused the late President John Evans Atta-Mills, the man under whose direct watch the alleged incident occurred, ought to send an unmistakable signal to all those incredulous Ghanaians who have been demanding hard evidence as proof of widespread allegations of Mahama’s thoroughgoing corruptness that, indeed, there is absolutely no hint of smoke without the presence of fire nearby.
What makes this titillating matter even juicier is the fact that both the payola giver and receiver have acknowledged on record that, indeed, such a transaction as has been widely reported took place between the two men.
About the only bone of contention here is the vehement insistence of the alleged recipient that the aforesaid Ford Expedition automobile, valued at $100,000, cannot be aptly characterized as a payola.
What thickens this plot in an even more interesting manner is the fact that the 2016 r-CPP presidential candidate, Mr. Ivor Kobina Greenstreet, has consistently insisted that he neither sees any conflict of interest in the Ford Expedition scandal nor any credible markings of bribery in the same.
This cynical stance is what has brought Mr. Greenstreet into virulent public confrontation with the two suspended front-bench r-CPP operatives.
Regular readers of my columns may, no doubt, have heard me say time and again that fundamentally speaking, there is absolutely no difference in mindset between the key operatives of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the rump-CPP.
In the wake of her epic loss to Mr. Greenstreet, Ms. Samia Yaba Nkrumah virulently accused her sometime staunch ally of having bought the votes of the overwhelming majority of party delegates who voted in the r-CPP’s most recent presidential primary. Now, it is increasingly becoming clear that not only might Ms. Nkrumah have had some modicum of truth to her statement, it may well shortly turn out that, indeed, the Mahama posse might have bought and fully paid Mr. Greenstreet and his associates to deftly and suavely hijack the rump-CPP for the benefit of the Woyome-SADA Mafia.
Unfortunately for the latter, similar overtures to the Edward Mahama-led People’s National Convention (PNC) woefully backfired in the NDC’s abortive coup attempt against the credibility of the Jean Mensa-led Institute of Economic Affairs-sponsored presidential debates.
What needs to be done, if the rump-CPP is serious about regaining a modicum of its lost credibility, is to promptly fire and expel the charlatanic Mr. Greenstreet from the party. This, however, ought not to be interpreted as an endorsement of Ms. Nkrumah. It is simply a call for a new leadership devoid of the corrupt cynicism of Mr. Greenstreet. This also means that dead woods like Prof. Edmund Delle must be promptly given the heave-ho.
I have absolutely no hope for the salutary resurrection of the rump-CPP in the offing, though I can envisage Dr. Foster Abu Sakara affording this otherwise decidedly moribund party a remarkable facelift for the nonce.
But I still believe Dr. Sakara would fare much better forming and leading his own party in the near future.
Reference
(See “Ford Controversy: CPP Suspends General-Secretary, Youth Organizer” Classfmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 6/30/16).