Arkaah Was Not A Successful Politician!

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

Dr. Kwesi Jonah's desperate call for the country's two major political parties to form a coalition government for the development of the country is grossly misplaced. And so I don't see how any progressively minded critic and/or citizen could support this apparently jaded and utterly confused Legon political scientist (See "Ghana Is In Trouble...." Ghanaweb.com /Radioxyzonline.com 12/9/13).

For the better part of this year, now in its twilight days, Dr. Jonah has been mischievously and provocatively taunting and faulting the Akufo-Addo/New Patriotic Party (NPP)-led Election 2012 Presidential Petition for having wholly and directly caused the country's present economic woes, rather than the grossly incompetent Mahama-led government of the so-called National Democratic Congress (NDC). And so for the same character to be abruptly calling for the immediate establishment of a coalition government between the NDC and the NPP staggers the imagination of many a refelective Ghanaian citizen. In sum, such call is downright scandalous, morally mischievous and logically inconsistent.

Besides, the examples of collaborative governance cited by the clansmen and blind supporters of Dr. Jonah's do not muster practical and historical realities. For starters, the expedient and sham collaboration between the now-late Mr. Ekwow Nkensen Arkaah and then-President Jerry John Rawlings was just that - a rascally expedient collaboration. Nothing either meaningful or lucrative resulted from such devious collaboration, other than the latter's having nearly mauled the former to death.

We must also emphatically point out that Dr. Kwesi Nduom's co-optation by the Kufuor-led New Patriotic Party government, as remarkable as it has been widely made to seem, almost wholly and unilaterally benefited the former Convention People's Party's Member of Parliament for Komenda-Edina-Eguafo-Abirem (KEEA) in the Central Region. On his own, Dr. Nduom could not even effectively work with his own supposed ideological brethren; which is why now he owns and operates his own political machinery, the so-called Progressive People's Party (PPP).

Then also, the major administrative initiatives allegedly introduced by Dr. Nduom, such as the Single-Spine Salary Scale, have been widely faulted for being at least partially responsible for the country's present economic problems. I do not intend to weigh in on the latter assessment one way or another; I have already done so in previous articles.

What is clearly and squarely at issue here, and which Dr. Jonah and his evidently cognitively blind and stolid supporters fail to constructively address, is the politically stultifying "Winner-Takes-All" regime which Ghana's Fourth-Republican Constitution ought to have addressed as a matter of principled democratic praxis. In a real and true democracy, such as prevails here in the United States, Britain, France, Canada, New Zealand and elsewhere, in the civilized world, effective governance is decidedly de-centralized. "All politics is local," as it were. For instance, you cannot have the main opposition New Patriotic Party commandingly win local elections in the Eastern and Asante regions, only to have President John Dramani Mahama cynically impose Metropolitan, Municipal and District chief executives on the people in these two economically major regions like an unelected British colonial administrator.

This is what the entire "Kofi Annan Argument" is squarely about, not the kind of politically and morally untenable phenomenon that Dr. Jonah and his disciples would have the rest of us scandalously subscribe to. Indeed, in the kind of progressively principled democratic cultural regime that well-respected and distinguished Ghanaian citizens like Mr. Annan are talking about, the distribution of our national development resources is effected on the basis of "proportional representation."

Then also, traditionally, coalition governments are formed between major and minor political parties, such as presently exists in the United Kingdom of Great Britain, and not between two major political parties with widely divergent ideologies. The rather bizarre "Jonah Formula" does not exist here in the United States; neither does it exist in Britain. And so I don't know what these charlatanic pretenders to Ghanaian patriotism are talking about.

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*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Department of English
Nassau Community College of SUNY
Garden City, New York
Dec. 11, 2013
E-mail: [email protected]
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