By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Maybe Messrs. John K. Koduah, Alan Kyerematen, Frimpong-Boateng and Isaac Osei must be frontally and plainly told that the New Patriotic Party (NPP), like the proverbial phoenix, was inspired by the yeomanly spirit of illustrious Ghanaian pioneers the qualifications of whose butlers and couriers they would have had an extremely hard time in meeting, if ever at all.
In other words, who among these four rascals could comfortably presume to rub shoulders with the immortalized likes of Drs. J. B. Danquah and K. A. Busia; Messrs. Koi-Larbi, the Elder Obetsebi-Lamptey, Ofori-Atta, the Elder Akufo-Addo, Ako-Adjei and Dombo, to name just a handful? In sum, to better appreciate the significance of the epic cause for which the New Patriotic Party stands, one has to trace the tortuous and torturous journey that took Ghanaians from the seminal days of the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) to the Kwame Nkrumah Concentration Camp (KNCC) at Nsawam and the pseudo-revolutionary so-called Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC), now conveniently morphed into the so-called National Democratic Congress (NDC).
In brief, had the “Rascal Four” done their homework with due diligence, they would not be childishly attempting to stall the August 7, 2010 NPP congressional primaries. And as Fred Amankwah-Sarfo’s quite comprehensive and timely article more politely cast matters, the at once primitive, nihilistic, troglodytic and patently benighted attempt by the “Rascal Four,” a pathetic bunch of rabble-rousing narcissistic kamikazes about the devious business of subliminally, albeit crudely, fanning the flames of sub- and inter-ethnic disaffection would decidedly come to naught (See “Derailing the Election of a Credible Presidential Candidate for the New Patriotic Party (NPP) for the 2010 Election: The Case of the Four (4) Aspirants” (Modernghana.com 7/18/10). And with the Kyerematen Nuisance in full-frontal view, I would rather these cynical rascals were promptly expelled from the NPP than unnecessarily coddled with an undeserved forum with the party’s esteemed Council of Elders.
Actually, unlike the no-punch-pulling yours truly, author Fred Amankwah-Sarfo is more diplomatic, even if studiously poignant. Take a look at the following summary of the gambit allegedly deployed by the “Rascal Four,” variously called the Coalition of the Defeated Presidential Aspirants (CDPA) and Association of the Defeated Presidential Aspirants (ADPA): “There is a school of thought which suggests that [the] CDPA is [hell-]bent on making sure that Prof. Mills retains power in 2012 so that by 2016, when Ghanaians would have been fed up with the NDC, Nana Addo would most likely have retired from active politics so that whoever emerges as a presidential candidate from the NPP will [automatically] win the 2016 election. They argue that should Nana Addo win 2012, he [would] most likely win the 2016 election [thus giving] him a clean eight- (8) year rule. In that event, those who are using youthfulness as their trump card [would] have +8 added to their current age[s]. Their ghost[s] would then come to [haunt] them.”
The least said about these curiously interesting observations, the better. Suffice it, however, to tangentially point out that there is absolutely no guarantee that any one of these saber-rattling charlatans are going to be prime candidates come Election 2016. And here, of course, I am not just alluding to our collective existential chanciness or uncertainty, otherwise known as human mortality. In sum, such outrageous assumption as the “Rascal Four” appear to be betting on selfishly fails to take into formidable account the possibility and/or likelihood of Ghanaians like yours truly jumping into the NPP presidential crazy horse-race, even if it is primarily to ensure that none of these four rascals get within a hair’s breadth of being nominated as the party’s candidate for president. I am also quite certain of far more formidable challengers currently strategically cosseted in the wings of the NPP’s epic political theater.
What is also quite remarkable about Messrs. Koduah, Kyerematen (a man whom I had quite well respected until his latest gratuitous gimmickry), Frimpong-Boateng and Isaac Osei is the strikingly eerie fact of their seeming to be fanatically and rather pathetically playing by the Pianim-Kufuor’s Book of Tactical Self-Destruction. For the first NPP president of Ghana’s Fourth Republic, the endgame appears to be pretty much one of facile political self-acquittal, smugly and sophomorically forgetting that, indeed, his legacy as party chief is as significant as his administrative record as Ghana’s two-term president.
Of course, it goes without saying that those of us who have studiously kept abreast of Kufuorian politics since the last NPP delegates’ congress in 2007 and even well before that, couldn’t have been more amused when on a recent trip to South Africa as the honorary guest of a mega-media confab, the former president was reported to have lamented what he then termed as the apparent dearth of civility in official discourse between politicians of the ruling National Democratic Congress and the New Patriotic Party.
On the other hand, Mr. Kwame Pianim’s contribution to The Book of Tactical Self-Destruction is also the less subtle, albeit equally as insidious as that of co-author Kufuor. And it may be tersely cast as one of unpardonably crude pursuit of ethnic chauvinism – actually jingoism – defectively disguised as “Equal-Opportunity Tribalism” (See “Kwame Pianim: Kufuor and I are NDC Moles in the NPP” (Modernghana.com 6/27/10).
In the main, the complaint of the “Rascal Four” regards something dubiously called “irregularities in the voters’ register” for the NPP’s August 7, 2010 delegates’ congress. But here again and interestingly, as Fred Amankwah-Sarfo convincingly details in his afore-referenced article, there are absolutely no irregularities about the NPP’s electoral register, whatsoever. What the representatives of the “Four Rascals” appear to have impudently made an undue press conference capital out of are technical problems encountered by the NPP’s Electoral Committee during the process of making the party’s register widely available on the Internet, in the deliberative spirit of transparency. If, indeed, the devious calling of a press conference by these smart alecks amounted to a vacuous wolf-cry, then, of course, the “Rascal Four” ought to be severely sanctioned to serve as a deterrent to any such veritable “Suicide Bombers” who may be tempted to masquerade as party loyalists amidst us.
Assuming the preceding to be fairly accurate information though, of course, I stand to be corrected, aren’t party channels, including the high-powered NPP Council of Elders, the most appropriate procedure for seeking legitimate redress? What is interesting here is that aspirants hoping to be fully entrusted with our entire national security apparatus could not follow simple party procedural channels in order to resolve their perceived grievances against the party’s electoral register and/or protocol. For me, though, the foregoing is further compounded by the total lack of parliamentary experience by at least three of the “Rascal Four” hoping to be mandated to administer a parliamentary democracy. Talk of arrogance!
*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 also a Governing Board Member of the Accra-based Danquah Institute (DI) and a former poet of Anokyekrom of the Ghana National Cultural Center, Kumasi. E-mail: [email protected].