Can NDC leaders ever be trusted by Ghanaian voters?

They are either mentally retarded or they have, in their desperate and blind bid to grabbing for power, decided that they could care less about the fact of whether Ghanaian voters think and believe that they are trustworthy or that they are simply a bunch of brazen and impenitent kleptocrats who are only interested in filling up their wallets and bank accounts with development-earmarked taxpayer money. That was what the double-salary drawing Mahama cabinet and executive appointees meant when they, nearly each and every one of them, decided to venture into public service by being elected parliamentarians to represent their constituents in the various parts of the country.

Which was also why the Haruna Iddrisu Gang and the Mahama Posse shamelessly decided to unconscionably walk back their earlier announced very public and seemingly patriotic decision to staunchly and massively back President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s very progressive and healthily democratic decision to have all Metropolitan, Municipal and District Chief Executives (MMDCEs) directly elected by the very people they have been designated to govern.

Indeed, a recent forensically sustainable evidence presented for public scrutiny and appreciation of the charlatanic caliber of many a National Democratic Congress’ parliamentarian, by Mr. Abdul-Malik Kweku Baako, the Editor-Publisher of the New Crusading Guide, for example, had the Parliamentary Minority Leader and NDC-MP for Tamale-South, exposing the patent scam that is the present so-called nonpartisan election of our local representatives in the District Assemblies and at the Unit or Community levels before the Speaker of Parliament, Prof. Aaron Michael Oquaye, among other things, as follows:

“Mr. Speaker, the pretense must end; and all of us here know that clandestinely, political parties support district assembly elections in Ghana. It is provided [for] in the Constitutional Review Report and I can read portions of it [before this august assembly of Member of the House]…. So Mr. Speaker, two principles: amend the Constitution, allow for popular elections of DCEs, but do it on the principle of partisanship” (See “Kweku Baako Jnr Exposes NDC in Election of MMDCEs on Partisan Basis” Peacefmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 12/5/19).

It is both quite significant and patently preposterous to hear the NDC’s Parliamentary Minority Leader talk about the inescapably imperative need for all members of the august House of our National Assembly to staunchly uphold the salutary democratic principle regarding the proposed direct election of MMDCEs by Ghanaian voters themselves, and then turn round just a couple of months later to vehemently preach the diametrically opposite opinion of the same. Quite significant and inescapably absurd, because “democratic principles” are the least set of tenets in the vocabulary and at the center of the historical praxis of the leaders of the Rawlings-founded National Democratic Congress, and the leaders of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) ought to have been fully aware of this fact and practical reality.

Ghanaians also know for a fact that but for the fierce political struggles of the luminary likes of President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and Council-of-State Member and firebrand legal wit Mr. Sam Okudjeto, Ghana could very well be a dynastic military dictatorship in the mold of North Korea today, with Chairman Jerry John Rawlings on the cusp of retirement and poised to handing over the reins of leadership to either his eldest daughter and current NDC-MP for Klottey-Korle Constituency, Dr. Zanetor Agyeman-Rawlings, or perhaps the only officially known and acknowledged son of the infamous bloody couple, namely, Mr. Kimathi Rawlings, if memory serves yours truly accurately.

It is also for the preceding reason, that is, the opportune exposure of the Haruna Iddrisu Gang, the Mahama Posse and the Asiedu-Nketia-managed NDC propaganda machine why I staunchly believe that, in spite of the grand NDC betrayal of the scuttled December 17 Referendum on the long overdue amendment of Articles 53(3) and 243(1) of the current Constitution, the latter referendum ought to still have been allowed to take place as scheduled. In short, allowing the December 17 Referendum to go ahead, in spite of the withering betrayal by the leaders of the National Democratic Congress, would have historically and auspiciously cemented the already unrivaled democratic credentials of the man who drafted the landmark Repeal of the Criminal Libel Law.

In the words of the immortalized Nigerian novelist, essayist, thinker and the beloved avuncular teacher of yours truly, namely, Prof. Chinua Achebe (1930-2013): “It is still morning on Creation Day.” In other words, the last of the imperative need to amending Articles 53(3) and 243(1) of the Constitution could still be well ahead of us as a nation.

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

E-mail: [email protected]