Akufo-Addo should steer clear of the treacherous “Biden Complex”

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
Jan. 31, 2016
E-mail: [email protected]

His congratulatory message to Mr. Ivor Kobina Greenstreet, the newly elected rump-Convention People’s Party (CPP) Presidential Candidate for Election 2016, was smack in order and timely to boot. However, his decision to admonish – it actually sounded more like an avuncular patronage – the former rump-CPP General-Secretary on how to train the crosshairs of his campaign rhetoric and agenda came off as rather a bit condescending and downright presumptuous (See “Resist Personality Attacks – Nana Tells Greenstreet” Starrfmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 1/31/16).

It also uncomfortably reminded me of then-Candidate Joseph Biden’s equally presumptuous patronizing of then-Candidate Barack Obama for having supposedly done so well as an academically and professionally accomplished African-American community organizer, state assemblyman, state senator and then presidential candidate of the Democratic Party. What then-Senator Biden actually meant was that Mr. Obama was delectably different in cognitive depth and rhetorical poise from the likes of Messrs. Jesse Jackson and Alford Sharpton who had preceded the Hawaiian-born and half-Kenyan on the national political campaign trail.

To be certain, though, Mr. Biden had not totally misfired. For back then, most eligible American voters, including this writer, at best, considered Mr. Obama to be a long-long shot Democratic Party presidential nominee. Indeed, in so cavalierly patronizing the future first Black President of the United States, the Democratic Senator from Delaware – actually Joe Biden was born and raised in Camden, New Jersey – may very well have meant nothing mean in spirit or essence. Nevertheless, it was quite quizzically obvious that Mr. Biden thought himself to be cocksure of clinching the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party, which he had previously been forced to abandon by charges of plagiarism during the 1988 presidential-election season, if memory serves yours truly accurately.

Back then, the then-Senator Biden had been accused of appropriating a globally memorable and recognizable quote from then-British Labor Party Leader Mr. Neil Kinnock several times on the stumps without making even a single passing reference to the fact that he, Mr. Biden, was not the original source of the quote. In the opinion of both his supporters and detractors, Mr. Biden woefully lacked the creative imagination and integrity requisite for the caliber of a candidate gunning for the august presidency of the most powerful nation on Earth.

Like the now-Vice-President Joseph Biden, who also doubles as the Ex-Officio President of the United States’ Senate, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo must also have felt cocksure about his chances of an Election 2016 victory. And this is precisely where the danger lies. As the three-time Presidential Candidate of Ghana’s main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), Nana Akufo-Addo may have prematurely afflicted himself with the “Buhari Magic.” The latter phenomenon, of course, refers to the current President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Mr. Mahammadu Buhari, a one-time Major-General in the Nigerian Army and a former military dictator who recently clinched that country’s presidency as an elected civilian ruler on his third try.

I have absolutely no doubt in my mind at all, that all things being equal, as it were, Nana Akufo-Addo is certain to emerge victorious in Election 2016. However, equally significant and worthy of note is the fact that such victory as he may be poised to clinching is likely to be made much easier if Ghana’s former Foreign Minister studiously focuses his undivided attention on the affairs of his battle-scarred party, rather than cavalierly and ill-advisedly presuming to be already ahead of his competitors, especially the leaders of minor political parties such as the Greenstreet-led rump-Convention People’s Party.

Some of my readers, particularly the younger ones, may not remember this, but I sternly cautioned then-New Patriotic Party National Chairman Mr. Mac Manu in the lead-up to the 2008 general election against overconfidence and exuberance, when strategic sobriety clearly appeared to be the most winsome tack. Back then, the present Director of the 2016 Akufo-Addo Presidential-Election Campaign had been widely reported to have said that with a whopping parliamentary majority of some 34 seats or thereabouts, it was virtually impossible for the New Patriotic Party to be returned to the gray margins of parliamentary minority status.

Those who care may Google up the response that I gave Mr. Mac Manu at the time. Our sages of yore have said that “You cannot teach an old horse new tricks.” That may very well be true. But it ought to be equally true that “Experience has much that is worthwhile and productive to teach” the healthily careful, wise and self-disciplined.

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