Alan Kyerematen’s “Milk of Amnesia”

Campaigning for New Patriotic Party (NPP) presidential candidacy in the Upper-Eastern towns and cities of Binduri, Tongo and Bolgatanga, among several others, recently, Mr. Alan Kyerematen is reported to have asked his supporters and sympathizers “not to rely on past election results as a guide to determine who they choose to lead the party” (See “Yenim Wo Firi Tete Cannot Win Elections for NPP – Alan” MyJoyOnline.com 6/10/10).

Naturally, one had expected the distant runner-up in the 2007 NPP presidential primary to conveniently wish that potential supporters would readily forget about the past, for the past is a screaming indictment against the man. Unfortunately, doing so would also imply asking Ghanaians to summarily discount the deliberate process by which a democratic culture is built and developed. Nonetheless, Candidate Kyerematen is able to do just that, at least in his own imagination, because the man has never held and/or won any elective position in either government or parliament.

As Trade Minister, the Edweso (Ejisu) native had been handpicked by President J. A. Kufuor, his mentor and relative. And by many credible accounts, Mr. Kyerematen had barely held his own vis-à-vis the much-touted Presidential Special Initiatives (PSI), a program launched by the Kufuor government to ensure the economic independence and productivity of the small- and medium-scaled Ghanaian farmer and entrepreneur. And so it must come as quite a wonder to many of his listeners to hear their former Trade Minister glorify himself over the ringing success of a program which, to many of them, never quite got off the proverbial ground.

Of course, not many of us avid students of Fourth-Republican Ghanaian political culture expected Mr. Kyerematen to harp on his considerable – some even claim his “major” – contribution to the electoral defeat of Nana Akufo-Addo in the 2008 presidential election. And true to expectation, Candidate Kyerematen did not disappoint. He did not, for instance, recall the fact that the putative favorite of President Kufuor had effectively and deliberately stalled the progress of the Akufo-Addo Campaign by threatening to resign from the NPP and then making good on his threat and forcing such party heavyweights as Messrs. Da Rocha (God Rest His Soul) and Mac Manu, among a legion of others, to divert precious attention and manpower resources from the Akufo-Addo Campaign into coddling the contused ego of a brash and infantile Alan Kyerematen.

In the end, having wasted party time and capital resources for the better part of a month, Mr. Kyerematen would declare himself to be noncommittal to the NPP’s collective attempt to clinch democratic power for an unprecedented third unbroken term. And so it is rather amusing for Candidate Kyerematen to be traipsing the country pretending to be the most fetching and/or winsome candidate to vie for the NPP’s presidential nomination. The grim and glaring fact is that when it mattered most to stand up and be counted among the enviable ranks of true patriots, Candidate Kyerematen was AWOL – nowhere to be found!

If, indeed, Mr. Kyerematen believes that he had nothing to do with Nana Akufo-Addo’s dismal pulling up short at 49-percent of the national poll, then, I am afraid, the self-proclaimed “First Fante President” is living in a fool’s paradise. To be certain, one had expected that having caused such flagrant mischief to his party and nation, at large, Mr. Kyerematen would have wisely gone into hibernation until still-raw wounds got healed.

Unfortunately, what we have here is a man who is so dead-set on becoming president that he evidently couldn’t care less about whose collective interests and aspirations he trampled. It is also rather amusing for Candidate Kyerematen to assert that “70-percent of the country’s voters are under the age of 35, which means that they would be attracted to a ‘candidate that is youthful, energetic, dynamic and resourceful, since they can relate to him better,’” and then turn round to affirm the supposedly authoritative statement of 85-year-old Mr. Moses Achor that Ghanaians are, somehow, clamoring for the presidency of Candidate Kyerematen.

This kind of brazenly cynical politicking is called “abject hypocrisy,” and one had hoped that the candidate would be decent enough to eschew such tawdry gimmickry. Indeed, what Mr. Kyerematen also conveniently fails to tell his audience(s) is that at 62 years old, President Kufuor was not exactly a 35-year-old Ghanaian’s idea of a “youthful candidate” whom they could better relate to, compared to then 56-year-old Candidate Atta-Mills. And so why have the camps of Messrs. Kyerematen and Frimpong-Boateng been snidely and viciously making epic capital out of the age of Candidate Akufo-Addo?

We think we definitively know the answer; however, for the sake of party unity and the progressive destiny of Ghana, as a whole, we would rather not let on the same.

Ultimately, like it or hate it, it is the past records of achievements, or the woeful lack thereof, of the candidates scramming to be elected NPP flagbearer for Election 2010 by which voters are going to make their decisions. And the Kyerematen and Frimpong-Boateng camps had better get on with the program, as New Yorkers are wont to say, or kiss their dreams and/or ambitions goodbye!

*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 a Governing Board Member of the Accra-based Danquah Institute (DI) and the author of 21 books, including “Ghanaian Politics Today” (Atumpan Publications/Lulu.com, 2008). E-mail: [email protected].