Opinions of Friday, 24 August 2007
Columnist: Okoampa-Ahoofe, Kwame
Don't Fool Yourself, Dr. Kennedy!
During his latest campaign tour of the Central Region, aspiring New Patriotic Party (NPP) presidential candidate Dr. Arthur Kobina Kennedy was quoted by the (Ghanaian) Statesman as claiming that “now everybody is convinced [that] there are no frontrunners in the race” (8/10/07). Interestingly, the same campaigner was also quoted as saying that “he is now the man to beat in the contest.”
How so? Unless, of course, the man does not understand the English language, or he does not know exactly what he is talking about? Chances are that Dr. Kennedy is feeling the jitters and is just trying hard to put up a brave face and a self-deceptive spin on the reality of the situation on the ground, as it were.
Otherwise, why would the former South Carolina, U. S. A., physician rehash the recent hoopla regarding whether President Kufuor, indeed, has a personally anointed candidate for the presidency and then second-guess our beloved Chief-of-State by cynically pretending to be ambivalent on this already-settled matter?
On the preceding score, this is what Statesman reporter Mr. Kwabena Amankwah had to retail on a telephone interview that he had with the aspirant: “The aspiring presidential candidate sees President Kufuor’s recent assurance that he does not support any of the candidates as ‘highly commendable, but [that] it should be matched by deeds. There are people who are still concerned that events on the ground are not completely in accord with the president’s pronouncement.’”
And just what are these “events on the ground”? And just why should an aspirant who apparently feels confident of his candidacy, well enough to boastfully assert that he is the man to beat, be bothered, in the least, about whether the substantive president is being true to his word, on the preceding score, or not?
Needless to say, all is not well and sound when any presidential aspirant begins to speak in innuendoes. It is unpardonably treacherous, particularly when it equivocally impugns the integrity of the sitting President. Then again, does the President, really, have to convince Dr. Arthur Kennedy of his political – or electoral – neutrality, being that Mr. Kufuor, as noted by this writer not quite long ago, has an inviolable democratic right to support or not support any aspiring candidate for his Party’s presidential nomination?
It is also rather hypocritical for the former South Carolina resident to be, reportedly, lamenting that six-and-half years after the New Patriotic Party (NPP) assumed reins of governance, “the structures of the party are still weak,” and then proceed to smugly list the fact that: “There is no single constituency that can boast of a database on its membership. We don’t have a Communications Director, neither do we have a Press Secretary. We don’t seem to appreciate the need to change the status quo and have such important party officers [sic] as Deputy Secretary, Deputy Organizer and Deputy Women’s Organizer.”
So, if one may aptly ask, where has Dr. Kennedy been all these six-and-half years that he appears to be just presently coming to knowledge about such, admittedly, grievous NPP structural weaknesses? In other words, if he had not been integral to facilitating the formulation of solutions to the preceding critical structural weaknesses since the NPP assumed the democratic reins of governance in 2000, how can any voter, or even members of his own Party, trust that short of patently ineffectual lip-service, Dr. Kennedy, given a shot at the presidency, could creditably acquit himself?
And just what are the specific remedies that the aspirant would have readily put in place in the run-up to Election 2008? Or, perhaps, like a traditional Machiavellian cynic, Dr. Kennedy is waiting until he personally assumes national reins of governance before implementing the same?
Needless to say, chances are that the aspirant has absolutely no concrete remedies for the structural weaknesses that he has glibly identified, short of merely pretending to have them; else, Dr. Kennedy would have since long before unleashing his tirade submitted such remedies to the national executive committee of the NPP or, better yet, to President Kufuor himself! And on this score, we hereby challenge Dr. Kennedy to prove that, indeed, he has proposed or even presented such a constructive, strategic blueprint since the NPP came to power.
This writer personally came to a definitively negative conclusion on an Arthur Kennedy candidacy not quite awhile ago, when he read a brief editorial in a major privately-owned Ghanaian daily, in which the former South Carolina medical administrator was quoted as saying that he (Dr. Kennedy) could not wish Vice-President Aliu Mahama well in the latter’s quest for the presidency because he (Dr. Arthur Kennedy) was in the race to win at all costs! A veritable hint of a “constitutional dictator” in the making, isn’t it?
Interestingly, in quite a curious manner, the editor-publisher of the afore-referenced daily actually thought that such anti-social and outright megalomaniacal attitude to presidential politics, on the part of Dr. Arthur Kobina Kennedy, was quite a noble character trait, particularly in view of the brutally frank manner in which our subject had reportedly expressed the same.
“Frank in what sense, I huffed to myself. And then I added: “This is a veritably and pathetically misguided Ghanaian immigrant who appears to have quickly mastered all the negative vibes concomitant with American democracy, without any of such positive aspects as washing one’s neighbor’s hands and having one’s own washed in turn.”
For this writer, the aforementioned editorial offered a credible portrait of the real Dr. Arthur Kobina Kennedy that Ghanaians deserve to know about, the kind whose leadership we definitely don’t need, and would detest to have bossing us around post-Election 2008. And, let the reader make no mistake, there are quite a remarkable number of Arthur Kennedys in the NPP race for presidential candidacy; they just go by other not-so-common and famous names.
Views expressed by the author(s) do not necessarily reflect those of GhanaHomePage.
