Opinions of Sunday, 25 November 2007
Columnist: Okoampa-Ahoofe, Kwame
About All He Can Do - Trot from Axim to Paga
While on a campaign tour of the Central Regional town of Komenda recently, Professor John Evans Atta-Mills was reported to have boasted that he was more than healthy enough to jog – or trot, like a fox – from Axim to Paga, two of the farthermost reaches of the country's estimated 48,000 settlements. If the remark was purely in jest, then it was all well and good. For the health status of the perennial presidential candidate of the so-called Provisional National Democratic Congress (P/NDC) has been subjected to harsh media scrutiny of late. Even so, somebody among his Komenda campaign spectators ought to have pointed out to the former University of Ghana law and economics professor that the landmark race to either the Osu Castle or the Flagstaff House is about far more than jogging – or trotting, in Ghanaian parlance – from one town or village to another, however symbolic or metaphorical the candidate might have implied by the preceding remark.
And to be certain, it would have been far more meaningful for Professor Atta-Mills to have discussed the recent allegation regarding the leadership of his so-called National Democratic Congress having cozily accepted the whopping sum of $ 240,000 (American Dollars) from SCANCEM, the Norwegian cement company with ownership of GHACEM, a Ghanaian subsidiary. In sum, it would be quite intriguing come December 23, 2007, shortly after the ruling New Patriotic Party has elected its presidential candidate for Election 2008, to hear Professor Atta-Mills debate his counterpart on the critical national issues of corruption and economic hardship. One also anticipates quite a lot of fireworks on the health and educational fronts, as well as the cultural front, in the wake of the Anloga chieftaincy mayhem. On the latter score, it would also be quite instructive to hear the Rawlings second-bananas wax stultified on exactly what institutional structures his party established to mediate – or resolve – chieftaincy crises across the country. More so, because Professor Atta-Mills has been shamelessly loud in pontificating self-righteously about the purported failure of the Kufuor Administration to resolving chieftaincy problems in the country.
Indeed, while his house-to-house campaign may appear rather genial and even somewhat edifying, perhaps the more significant aspect of this strategy is for Professor Atta-Mills to explain to the Ghanaian electorate precisely why it took him two blistering defeats at the polls before arriving at his need to trawl house-to-house seeking its mandate. In other words, our firm contention here is that the retired Legon professor’s house-to-house campaign is the veritably desperate ploy of an effete – or emotionally and morally bankrupt – politician to take innocent and unsuspecting Ghanaian voters for a ride.
And knowing the insufferably and insuperably bloody record of the so-called Provisional National Democratic Congress (P/NDC), were yours truly among the uneasy and vulnerable prey of Professor Atta-Mills’ house-to-house campaign, I would definitely put a burglar-proof lock on my door. For who knows, such strategy may well be another sophisticated attempt at casing the houses of potential Ghanaian voters in order to “diplomatically” warn them about the consequences that await them, in default, down the line. In sum anybody whose home the cynical Professor Atta-Mills has occasion to “visit” in the run-up to Election 2008, has a bounden patriotic duty to resoundingly vote against the man. By all means, let Professor Atta-Mills keep jogging – or trotting – from Axim to Paga, Accra to Wa and beyond, till Kingdom Come.
It would also be quite interesting to hear Professor Atta-Mills and his Indemnity-Clause protected NDC jive about the New Patriotic Party being an Akan political assembly, almost as if the majority in a democratic dispensation has no right to, proverbially, carry the vote. And also just where in the civilized, democratic world an ethnic majority allowed itself to be blindly led by the nose by an ethnic minority devoid of any unifying and constructive agenda, short of the summary assassination of Akan Supreme Court judges, in a bid to guaranteeing that such piddling minority controlled the destiny of the civilized, conciliatory and diligent majority.
And, as is likely to occur, should the Ewe-minted and Ewe-dominated National Democratic Congress blunder by fatuously characterizing the New Patriotic Party as an Akan political machinery, let the NPP movers and shakers lose no time or breath by promptly, truthfully and honestly characterizing Professor Atta-Mills as the token Ewe Stooge that he veritably is. For, needless to say, envisaging their grim chances of ever returning to power anytime soon via the ballot, the Anlo (or Awuna) Mafia has elected to build a beachhead for the possibility of launching another neo-Nazi campaign of Akan massacre by using Professor John Evans Atta-Mills, just as the likes of Monsieur P. V. Obeng were used for the same purpose the first time around.
On the latter score, we are obligated to remind the Dzelukope Mafia that if ever the Anlo Human Guillotines make another deliberate mistake of testing their mettle by summarily mowing the heads of enviable Akan luminaries, as they successfully did in 1982 (or was it 1983?), the rest of us would be left with no other alternative but to inexorably drive the goon lot into the Gulf of Guinea.
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