By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
I could not stop myself from laughing when I read the report of an interview granted Radio Gold by Mr. Sam Pee Yalley, described as a public interest lawyer and a leading member of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) - (See "Why Is Bawumia on the Stand Instead of Akufo-Addo?" Peacefmonline.com/Ghanaweb.com 4/21/13).
I could not stop myself from laughing and literally falling off my chair, because Mr. Yalley clearly does not seem to appreciate the serious implications of the fraudulent and downright criminal manner in which Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, the Electoral Commissioner, colluded with Mr. John Dramani Mahama to railroad the legitimate mandate of the Ghanaian electorate by declaring the latter as the winner of Election 2012.
Consequently, in the aforementioned interview, Mr. Yalley seemed to be more worried about "some budgetary constraints on the economy and... the [negative] effect on the administration of the country," should the Atuguba-led panel of Supreme Court jurists return a verdict calling for "an electoral run-off."
Maybe Mr. Yalley ought to have been smart enough to have advised the criminally profligate Mahama presidential campaign operatives from wantonly, blindly and recklessly spending the Ghanaian taxpayer's money on cheap laptop computers and school buses, as well as expensive sedan automobiles for high school and college girls - and in the case of the laptops, without laying down any comprehensive and/or sustainable Internet connectivity system for the palpable enhancement and long-term development of the country's educational system.
In other words, Mr. Yalley insults the intelligence of the Supreme Court judges hearing the NPP/Akufo-Addo petition by pretending as if the case is primarily about the partisan interests and fortunes of the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress, than the inalienable right of Ghanaian voters to elect a leadership and government of their choice.
But what amused me even more than anything else, was Mr. Yalley's rather knuckleheaded presumption to instruct the New Patriotic Party petitioners on the best witness to put on the stand to lead the NPP in its presentation of its clearly forensically irrefutable evidence of NDC-EC electoral fraud before the Supreme Court. In the decidedly disingenuous opinion of Mr. Yalley, Nana Akufo-Addo, rather than Dr. Bawumia, the former Deputy-Governor of the Bank of Ghana and world-renowned economist and statistician, ought to have led Mr. Addison in the NPP's rather deft and impeccable evidentiary exposition before Ghana's Supreme Court.
Needless to say, Mr. Yalley would do himself and his party of pathological fraudsters and capital criminals a lot of good by keeping his rancid advice to himself; or better yet, he would do Ghanaian voters great good by prevailig on the rag-tag Mahama government to promptly and peacefully, and unreservedly, hand over the august reins of governance to an Akufo-Addo-led New Patriotic Party government, thereby gracefully preempting the certain judicial defeat of the National Democratic Congress in the ongoing Supreme Court petition hearing.
Finally, it is also flagrantly preposterous for anybody to talk about an electoral run-off, since that would clearly be tantamount to unfairly and ignobly rewarding a pathologically criminal regime with a second shot at democratic governance, a civilized political culture of which the key operatives of the NDC have yet to demonstrate both a natural inclination and a studious capacity.
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*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Department of English
Nassau Community College of SUNY
Garden City, New York
April 21, 2013
E-mail: [email protected]
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