says Alhaji Said Sinare
By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
A second National Vice-Chairman of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) is not exactly yours truly’s idea of a traditional big shot. And he takes his cue from the founding-proprietor of the P/NDC himself. During the heady days of the so-called Provisional National Democratic Congress, then-Flt.-Lt. Jeremiah John Rawlings had occasion to remark that there are only winners and losers in all competitive sporting activities, no second or third places; for you either win handsomely and honorably or lose miserably, and that is the only instructive (and constructive) lesson worth learning in our brave new world.
I don’t quite remember what the allusion was to, but at the time that he made the preceding remark, Ghana’s erstwhile “Junior Jesus” seemed quite witty. It may be that Jato Dzelukope saw that unforgivably nauseating temperament of the proverbial average Ghanaian that envisages the patently mediocre and outright pedestrian as something to cherish and prize, and which a slew of us have vehemently decried for quite awhile now, for what it indubitably is, luridly nauseating.
And so when yours truly observes that the resignation of Alhaji Said Sinare is absolutely of no moment to both the flagging fortunes of the so-called National Democratic Congress and, for that matter, the country at large, it is precisely with the preceding “Jatosophy” at the front and center of the purview of this author. For, let’s get to brass-tacks: A second Vice-Chair is really nobody’s ideal choice or candidate for the prime spot of Chairman itself; not even for the side-kick status of a Vice-Chairman. Couple the preceding with the fact that this is not the first time that a second Vice-Chairman has been forced out of the P/NDC, and the total insignificance of Alhaji Said Sinare’s latest move becomes even more pathetically poignant.
There was the far more hefty case of Mr. Kwaku Baah, former parliamentary minority leader when President Hilla Limann’s People National Party (PNP), literally, ruled the roost. The case of Mr. Kwaku Baah was of far greater moment, because the latter had also served as the lead attorney for the founding-proprietor of the P/NDC. It may also be recalled that while Mr. Baah, a former Popular Front Party (PFP) parliamentary representative for Okwawu-Nkawkaw was minority leader in Ghana’s National Assembly, the now-President John Agyekum-Kufuor was Mr. Baah’s deputy. How, indeed, art the mighty fallen, you may be tempted to sight. And here must also be added the enviable fact of Mr. Baah having served as a trusted research assistant to Dr. J. B. Danquah, the Doyen of Gold Coast and Ghanaian Politics.
Still, what makes Alhaji Sinare’s resignation from the NDC quite significant has to do with the little that he let on, by way of a parting shot, even while also referring interested party members and sympathizers to glean his major motive from Mr. Ato Ahwoi, who promptly denied being privy to Alhaji Said Sinare’s motive for ousting himself from the NDC. Talk of party unity! In any case, what is also quite edifying is what Alhaji Sinare told Ghana’s leading FM radio station Joy-FM.
“I am not going to join anybody’s campaign trail. I’m not [a] stomach politician” (Ghanaweb.com 7/29/08). It is also interesting to learn that the former NDC second National Chairman had also added that “the NDC will definitely win the December election” and so his very decision to quit the party that Mr. Rawlings built with the blood of unsuspecting and innocent Ghanaians, in the heat of a general electioneering campaign, “only buttresses the extent to which he is hurt.”
The preceding apparently contradictory remarks are, nonetheless, all the more instructive for such contradiction. First of all, in vowing not to join anybody else’s campaign trail because he, Alhaji Sinare, is “not a stomach politician,” presupposes the glaring fact of the former NDC party sub-chief having arrived at the painful conclusion that fiery and faux-missionary rhetoric and all, the NDC is incorrigibly composed of hardnosed cynics and pathological mercenaries. Ordinarily, the preceding should come as no news at all, for Ghanaians still frightfully remember the total economic bankruptcy bequeathed us by the so-called Provisional National Democratic Congress (P/NDC), and thus the party’s two crushing defeats at the polls over the last eight years. But Alhaji Sinare’s remark regarding the “stomach politicians” who run the NDC is news, because it comes from a party insider who knows exactly what he is talking about, which is the imperative need for the Ghanaian electorate to stay as far, far away from the NDC as humanly possible come December 7, 2008. Secondly, we also know that the NDC hacks are mere “stomach politicians,” rather than “Social Democrats,” simply by looking at the way and manner by which Messrs. Rawlings and Atta-Mills set about the wholesale privatization of the Ghana Industrial Holdings Corporation (GIHOC), among other hitherto state-owned enterprises.
Of course, the paradox inheres in Alhaji Sinare’s outright non-sequitur forecast of NDC victory at the December polls. Most likely such remark was issued in a bid to keeping the NDC attack dogs off his trail and then his back, as it were. For let no one lose critical sight of the fact that even though the NDC has been quite effectively shoved off the reins of democratic governance, the party that orchestrated the assassination of the Supreme Court judges has not lost its inordinately criminal penchant for mayhem. But even more amusing is the fact that Alhaji Sinare, for reasons best known to himself, thinks that, somehow, the former second Vice-Chairman of the NDC is capable of making the all-too-salutary decision of parting ways with the Rawlings Corporation (or R. C. Unlimited), while the rest of the Ghanaian electorate, literally, resigns itself to a bloody reprise of another pseudo-revolution. And here, perhaps, Alhaji Sinare must be told in no uncertain terms, going by polling results of the last two elections, that there are more politically discerning Ghanaians who are not members, supporters and sympathizers of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) than those who are.
On one score, however, Alhaji Sinare appears to agree with a majority of the Ghanaian electorate, and it is on the indisputable fact of the P/NDC being a patently undemocratic political machine. Alhaji Sinare eloquently corroborates this assertion by recalling the fact that even though “he won [electoral] primaries in 1999,” the former second Vice-Chairman of the P/NDC was denied the logical nod, or support, by the bloody “Ridge Couple.”
“I ought to have resigned from the party long ago,” Alhaji Sinare told Mr. Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, host of Joy-Fm’s “Super Morning Show.” Needless to say, most Ghanaian voters saw the proverbial light nearly a decade ago, and come December 7, 2008, the P/NDC “stomach politicians” will be sent packing for good, just like the “vision”-doped rump-Convention People’s Party (CPP). Then again, hasn’t anybody observed how the Ewe-dominated P/NDC has conveniently, and deviously, back-benched Ghanaian Muslims from the topmost positions in party, choosing instead to showcase either northern Christians or Akans of Islamic confession in the name of gender equity? Talk of deftly orchestrated prejudice!
*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 the author of 17 books, including “Dr. J. B. Danquah: Architect of Modern Ghana” (iUniverse.com, 2005). E-mail: [email protected].
says Alhaji Said Sinare
By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
A second National Vice-Chairman of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) is not exactly yours truly’s idea of a traditional big shot. And he takes his cue from the founding-proprietor of the P/NDC himself. During the heady days of the so-called Provisional National Democratic Congress, then-Flt.-Lt. Jeremiah John Rawlings had occasion to remark that there are only winners and losers in all competitive sporting activities, no second or third places; for you either win handsomely and honorably or lose miserably, and that is the only instructive (and constructive) lesson worth learning in our brave new world.
I don’t quite remember what the allusion was to, but at the time that he made the preceding remark, Ghana’s erstwhile “Junior Jesus” seemed quite witty. It may be that Jato Dzelukope saw that unforgivably nauseating temperament of the proverbial average Ghanaian that envisages the patently mediocre and outright pedestrian as something to cherish and prize, and which a slew of us have vehemently decried for quite awhile now, for what it indubitably is, luridly nauseating.
And so when yours truly observes that the resignation of Alhaji Said Sinare is absolutely of no moment to both the flagging fortunes of the so-called National Democratic Congress and, for that matter, the country at large, it is precisely with the preceding “Jatosophy” at the front and center of the purview of this author. For, let’s get to brass-tacks: A second Vice-Chair is really nobody’s ideal choice or candidate for the prime spot of Chairman itself; not even for the side-kick status of a Vice-Chairman. Couple the preceding with the fact that this is not the first time that a second Vice-Chairman has been forced out of the P/NDC, and the total insignificance of Alhaji Said Sinare’s latest move becomes even more pathetically poignant.
There was the far more hefty case of Mr. Kwaku Baah, former parliamentary minority leader when President Hilla Limann’s People National Party (PNP), literally, ruled the roost. The case of Mr. Kwaku Baah was of far greater moment, because the latter had also served as the lead attorney for the founding-proprietor of the P/NDC. It may also be recalled that while Mr. Baah, a former Popular Front Party (PFP) parliamentary representative for Okwawu-Nkawkaw was minority leader in Ghana’s National Assembly, the now-President John Agyekum-Kufuor was Mr. Baah’s deputy. How, indeed, art the mighty fallen, you may be tempted to sight. And here must also be added the enviable fact of Mr. Baah having served as a trusted research assistant to Dr. J. B. Danquah, the Doyen of Gold Coast and Ghanaian Politics.
Still, what makes Alhaji Sinare’s resignation from the NDC quite significant has to do with the little that he let on, by way of a parting shot, even while also referring interested party members and sympathizers to glean his major motive from Mr. Ato Ahwoi, who promptly denied being privy to Alhaji Said Sinare’s motive for ousting himself from the NDC. Talk of party unity! In any case, what is also quite edifying is what Alhaji Sinare told Ghana’s leading FM radio station Joy-FM.
“I am not going to join anybody’s campaign trail. I’m not [a] stomach politician” (Ghanaweb.com 7/29/08). It is also interesting to learn that the former NDC second National Chairman had also added that “the NDC will definitely win the December election” and so his very decision to quit the party that Mr. Rawlings built with the blood of unsuspecting and innocent Ghanaians, in the heat of a general electioneering campaign, “only buttresses the extent to which he is hurt.”
The preceding apparently contradictory remarks are, nonetheless, all the more instructive for such contradiction. First of all, in vowing not to join anybody else’s campaign trail because he, Alhaji Sinare, is “not a stomach politician,” presupposes the glaring fact of the former NDC party sub-chief having arrived at the painful conclusion that fiery and faux-missionary rhetoric and all, the NDC is incorrigibly composed of hardnosed cynics and pathological mercenaries. Ordinarily, the preceding should come as no news at all, for Ghanaians still frightfully remember the total economic bankruptcy bequeathed us by the so-called Provisional National Democratic Congress (P/NDC), and thus the party’s two crushing defeats at the polls over the last eight years. But Alhaji Sinare’s remark regarding the “stomach politicians” who run the NDC is news, because it comes from a party insider who knows exactly what he is talking about, which is the imperative need for the Ghanaian electorate to stay as far, far away from the NDC as humanly possible come December 7, 2008. Secondly, we also know that the NDC hacks are mere “stomach politicians,” rather than “Social Democrats,” simply by looking at the way and manner by which Messrs. Rawlings and Atta-Mills set about the wholesale privatization of the Ghana Industrial Holdings Corporation (GIHOC), among other hitherto state-owned enterprises.
Of course, the paradox inheres in Alhaji Sinare’s outright non-sequitur forecast of NDC victory at the December polls. Most likely such remark was issued in a bid to keeping the NDC attack dogs off his trail and then his back, as it were. For let no one lose critical sight of the fact that even though the NDC has been quite effectively shoved off the reins of democratic governance, the party that orchestrated the assassination of the Supreme Court judges has not lost its inordinately criminal penchant for mayhem. But even more amusing is the fact that Alhaji Sinare, for reasons best known to himself, thinks that, somehow, the former second Vice-Chairman of the NDC is capable of making the all-too-salutary decision of parting ways with the Rawlings Corporation (or R. C. Unlimited), while the rest of the Ghanaian electorate, literally, resigns itself to a bloody reprise of another pseudo-revolution. And here, perhaps, Alhaji Sinare must be told in no uncertain terms, going by polling results of the last two elections, that there are more politically discerning Ghanaians who are not members, supporters and sympathizers of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) than those who are.
On one score, however, Alhaji Sinare appears to agree with a majority of the Ghanaian electorate, and it is on the indisputable fact of the P/NDC being a patently undemocratic political machine. Alhaji Sinare eloquently corroborates this assertion by recalling the fact that even though “he won [electoral] primaries in 1999,” the former second Vice-Chairman of the P/NDC was denied the logical nod, or support, by the bloody “Ridge Couple.”
“I ought to have resigned from the party long ago,” Alhaji Sinare told Mr. Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, host of Joy-Fm’s “Super Morning Show.” Needless to say, most Ghanaian voters saw the proverbial light nearly a decade ago, and come December 7, 2008, the P/NDC “stomach politicians” will be sent packing for good, just like the “vision”-doped rump-Convention People’s Party (CPP). Then again, hasn’t anybody observed how the Ewe-dominated P/NDC has conveniently, and deviously, back-benched Ghanaian Muslims from the topmost positions in party, choosing instead to showcase either northern Christians or Akans of Islamic confession in the name of gender equity? Talk of deftly orchestrated prejudice!
*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 the author of 17 books, including “Dr. J. B. Danquah: Architect of Modern Ghana” (iUniverse.com, 2005). E-mail: [email protected].