By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
In the first of what clearly appears to be an official statement by a major National Democratic Congress (NDC) operative vindicating the New Patriotic Party (NPP) charge of a fraudulent Election 2012, and bluntly conceding defeat ahead of the NPP court hearing, NDC General-Secretary Johnson Asiedu-Nketia bitterly faults NPP polling agents for not being vigilant enough in ensuring that the ruling party did not get away with criminal poll rigging (See “Any Idiot Can Go to Court in a Democracy – General Mosquito” MyJoyOnline.com 12/21/12).
This is a bombshell revelation because all along, Mr. Asiedu-Nketia has vehemently maintained that Election 2012 was won fair and square. Joy-Fm Online reporter Ms. Adwoa Gyasiwaa writes as follows: “The NDC scribe [in an exclusive interview on Asempa Fm’s Ekosii Sen program] noted that the NPP has itself to blame for not being vigilant at the polling stations where, he said, the elections were won.”
Now two distinctive meanings can be gleaned from the foregoing quote, neither of which puts the NDC in good light. First of all, the NDC General-Secretary clearly seems to be implying that, indeed, the NPP charge of ballot rigging by the Mahama government indisputably occurred as has been insistently and vehemently maintained by the main opposition party, precisely because the NDC went into Election 2012 with the flagrant intention to steal the ballot. Secondly, is the implication that, indeed, the NDC won Election 2012 primarily because the NPP operatives were not smart and vigilant enough to ensure that the same did not occur.
Where Mr. Asiedu-Nketia begs to differ is that the blame for such vote rigging ought to be squarely placed on the doorstep of the victim rather than the culprit. Could this observation in any way at least partially explain why it took members and supporters of the National Democratic Congress an unprecedented two weeks before launching a public celebration of their victory? If the preceding interpretation has validity, then the NDC scribe may yet be the most credible witness that the NPP has in its favor in the dock or on the witness stand.
Then also, the Bui Dam Woyome, as General Mosquito has become popularly known in recent times, claims that it was the introduction of the biometric registration and verification system, forcefully championed by NPP key operatives, and equally fiercely opposed by NDC operatives, that directly resulted in the electoral fraud and defeat of the Akufo-Addo-led NPP.
The foregoing observation is quite interesting, because it clearly points to the fact that the Electoral Commission may well have deftly and deliberately colluded with the ruling party to cause a massive malfunction of the voter verification dimension of Election 2012. Couple the preceding observation with the nationwide call by President Mahama that those whose names could not be readily verified by the biometric verification machines ought to be allowed by the EC polling agents to nonetheless exercise their franchise, and Mr. Asiedu-Nketia’s implicit assertion that the NPP had been duly and vengefully punished at the polls for daring to cause the introduction of the biometric voting and verification process as a means of drastically reducing electoral fraud becomes inescapable.
It is also not clear whether Benin’s President Yayi Boni was heartily concurring with this NDC-EC fraudulent manipulation of the biometric voting system, when barely twenty-four hours after EC Chairman Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan declared President Mahama winner of Election 2012, the African Union Chairman arrived in Accra and heartily congratulated the EC and the Mahama government for employing the biometric system as a maiden appropriator in the West African sub-region. Very likely, Mr. Yayi Boni also came to take notes and lessons on biometric voter manipulation for his personal political success in Benin, a country that is not widely known for running free and fair elections, not even by the slapstick standards of Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo, the former Nigerian military strongman who led a team of rubber-stamping rascals, reprobates and demimondes to declare Election 2012 a fait accompli.
Needless to say, the latter eerily reminded me of Mr. Obasanjo’s immitigably wicked and rascally decision to railroad the presidential ambitions of former Vice-President Abubakar Atiku, primarily because the latter had dared to impugn Mr. Obasanjo’s rather lurid attempt to get Nigeria’s Federal Constitution revised in order to guarantee Gen. Murtala Muhammad’s arch-lieutenant an unprecedented third electoral term.
Now, I don’t know that any Ghanaian critic of sane mind and temperament could facilely and cavalierly characterize the preceding striking examples of forensic smoking guns as marginal legal technicalities. The taste of the pudding, it has been said, lies squarely in eating of the same. As long as we are endowed with life by Providence, we shall live to see.
*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Department of English
Nassau Community College of SUNY
Garden City, New York
Dec. 22, 2012
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