Hannah Bissiw Is Simply Pathetic!

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

Maybe if President Kufuor’s 2nd Liberty Lecture had been translated into Spanish for the Cuban-trained Deputy Minister of Water Resources, Works and Housing, then I would have taken Dr. Hannah Bissiw’s criticism alleging the speech to have woefully lacked a nationalistic edge to it more seriously (See “Kufuor’s Liberty Lecture was Political Talk – Bissiw” RadioXYZ.com 8/18/12).

And precisely what does the animal doctor mean, when Dr. Bissiw declares that the ideologically poignant and progressive speech by Mr. Kufuor did not bear the recognizable imprint of a speech written by a speech-writer from the former president’s office? Maybe Dr. Bissiw ought to be enlightened about the fact that the terms “nationalist” and “nationalism” did not exist in the vocabulary arsenal of modern Ghanaian politics until the August 4, 1947 founding of the Danquah and Grant-led United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC).

Then also, what needs to be further underscored is the fact that Mr. Kufuor’s Liberty Lecture was “nationalistic” in the classical sense of highlighting the imperative need for the election of experienced and responsible leadership for the development of the country. Furthermore, maybe the progressive concept of “statesmanship” ought to be elucidated for the benefit of cynics like the Works and Housing ministerial second-bananas.

The fact of the matter is that no levelheaded Ghanaian expected former President Kufuor to have commended Mr. Rawlings for politically overstaying his welcome and totally bankrupting Ghana’s economy, as well as treacherously dismantling the country’s industrial development by his rather unimaginative dissolution of the Ghana Industrial Holdings Corporation (GIHOC) and, literally, gifting the scores of factories classified under the umbrella of GIHOC to his spouse, Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings, and the associates and cronies of the Satanic Couple.

It also goes without saying that in an election year, every well-meaning Ghanaian citizen and eligible voter expected a successful leader like Mr. Kufuor to highlight some of the landmark achievements of his party, the main opposition New Patriotic Party, and some of the salient reasons why the former premier candidly and firmly believed that the NPP was the best and most progressive electoral ticket for the development of the country.

You see, critics like Dr. Bissiw, who lamely claim the Kufuor Liberty Speech to have been written by Danquah Institute operatives, appear to be pathologically fixated on the widely perceived past leadership rivalry between Messrs. Kufuor and Akufo-Addo, an all-too-natural and salutary dynamic of all genuinely democratic ideological institutions and political parties. The latter, of course, ought to be poignantly juxtaposed with the crudely authoritarian and communistic tendencies among the executive membership of the National Democratic Congress, that perennially foisted the otherwise unlikely candidacy of the late President John Evans Atta-Mills on the NDC and, in retrospect, to the detriment of the development of the nation at large.

You see, so steeped are they in their own lies and propaganda that the key operatives of the National Democratic Congress find the kind of truths exposed by former President Kufuor in his Liberty Lecture to be too bitter to swallow. One only needs to recall the endless yarns of lies woven about the health of the late President Mills by the likes of Dr. Bissiw, Messrs. Lantey-Vanderpuije, Okudzeto-Ablakwa, Anyidoho, Segbefia and Kwetey to fully appreciate the extent of both personal and collective bitterness that the NDC apparatchiks may be suffering.

*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 Director of The Sintim-Aboagye Center for Politics and Culture and author of “Dr. J. B. Danquah: Architect of Modern Ghana” (iUniverse.com, 2005). E-mail: [email protected]. ###