By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
I knew something was definitely out of kilter when I read the caption of a news article by one of the NDC hirelings by the name of Margaret Jackson. Some readers think this Margaret Jackson woman is really a man; anyway, this aspect of the latter author will be taken up at a later date as might be deemed relevant. The caption exuberantly went something like this: "Akufo-Addo's Power Over NPP MPs Is Crumbling," or "Nana Addo's Grip on NPP Crumbles."
Whatever the exact wording of the caption was, it readily revealed more about the abject desperation of the NDC apparatchiks in having Ghana's main opposition leader quickly eased off the scene, so as to enable the Sogakope-Bamboi thugs and robber barons to revert to the mundane business of pillaging the conomy of the country with criminal and reckless abandon.
Anyway, I had originally decided to caption this article as follows: "NPP February Fools NDC," for that was exactly what happened. I could, of course, have also captioned this article as follows: "NPP Gives NDC the Black-Eye." For it goes without saying that this perfect blind-siding of the thuggish, and hawkish, National Democratic Congress by the New Patriotic Party parliamentarians was deftly executed with rarefied finesse.
But even more significantly, and I hope the shameless Mahama posse takes good note of this, it was the most poignant signal yet that the NPP intends, henceforth, never to let its guard down until the Mahama-Arthur predatory government has been completely swept off the national political landscape in the most legitimate manner that it knows how - that is, via radical judicial instrumentation.
It is also not clear to me why Mr. Fritz Baffour (I hope I have the spelling of his surname right), the former Minister of Information, expected the parliamentary minority walkout on President Mahama's State-of-the-Nation Address to have been accompanied by luxurious placards, or some such semaphores, reading: "CONGRATULATIONS, MR. PRESIDENT, THANKS FOR RIGGING ELECTION 2012!"
Indeed, Mr. Baffour and his corporate criminal accomplices had better thank their stars that they only had to face A-4 bond paper sheets that read "STEALERS." What rankles me, though, is to think that even thugs like Mr. Baffour and Ms. Hannah Tetteh expected the NPP parliamentarians who staged last Thursday's walkout to have accorded President Ali Baba Dramani Mahama "respect" for deviously and cynically instigating Dr. Afari-Gyan and his Abongo Boys to allow Ghanaian citizens whose voter registration particulars could not be electronically verified at the various polling stations around the country to, nonetheless, go right ahead and vote for, dear reader, you know who.
What is risibly interesting here, of course, is the fact that even political thugs like Mr. Baffour crave a modicum of respect from their victims. The preceding reminds me of an avoidable incident that happened to me some sixteen years ago, when a former Nigerian girlfriend soundly assaulted me and called in the police to arrest me for the rather curious crime of foolishly allowing myself to get severely trounced.
Anyway, the web news report that carried Mr. Baffour's rather lurid conniption also made the following observation: "The Minority insists [that] President Mahama stole the 2012 elections and thus [is] undeserving of the caucus['s] recognition of his legitimacy." You see, this is the kind of no-brainer Ghanaian journalism that I relish in ripping apart. The fact of the matter is that Dr. Afari-Gyan just informed the international community that of the 241,000 Ghanaians resident abroad whom the Electoral Commissioner claims to have voted in Election 2012, the record of only some 705 voters are available for forensic verification.
And so when Mr. Baffour rather lamely huffs that "I do not decry their boycott of [Mr. Mahama's State-of-the-Nation Address] proceedings or their [walkout] but to exhibit the word 'stealers' and show it to the rest of the world was disrespect [sic] to all of us," it is not clear precisely who the objective pronoun of "us" is alluding to.
Needless to say, in spite of all the provocative overtures executed by Messrs. Alassane Dramane Ouattara, Thomas Yayi Boni and Olusegun Obasanjo to force President John Dramani Mahama down the throats of Ghanaians, a la the farcical staging of a united ECOWAS front in Abidjan, proto-colonial fashion, to so facilely presume that the rest of the world has been oblivious to the latest democratic travesty is, of course, to unpardonably insult the intelligence of all democracy-loving humans around the globe.
Of course, you have every right to hope for the triumph of the veritable evil that is the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress. But get this irrefutable truth from that immortalized sage: "Truth Suppressed Shall Rise Up Again" to legitimately assume the reins of governance as it ought to.
By the way, is Akufo-Addo's grip on the dire need of Ghanaians for democratic justice and accountability crumbling? Dear Reader, you be the judge!
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*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Department of English
Nassau Community College of SUNY
Garden City, New York
Feb. 22, 2013
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