Opinions of Thursday, 2 June 2016
Columnist: Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
We have always known that the National Democratic Congress (NDC) was a fascist dictatorship, but we were not quite sure that it was an iron-clad Communist Party as well, its cross-dressing General-Secretary’s recent flirtations with the Beijing authorities notwithstanding.
Now we don’t know exactly what went on between the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) and Foreign Minister Hanna Tetteh prior to the institute’s decision to unfurl the schedule for this year’s presidential debates, which has met with a firestorm of protests from some executive operatives of the National Democratic Congress.
What is clear, however, is the glaring fact that the NDC is, after all, not nearly half as functional as the pretentious likes of Messrs. Portuphy, Asiedu-Nketia, Anyidoho and Adams would have the rest of the nation believe.
Now we are being told that contrary to what party headquarters machinists like Mr. Koku Anyidoho would have the rest of the nation believe, the Executive Director of the IEA, Mrs. Jean Mensa, had, indeed, had high-level talks with Ms. Tetteh before announcing its schedule for the 2016 presidential debates. The party headquarters’ Abongo Boys are fussing over the fact that Ms. Tetteh would jaw-jaw it with the IEA’s director over and above their heads.
And now more than a week after the likes of Messrs. Felix Kwakye-Ofosu and Haruna Iddrisu cursed out Mrs. Mensa, Mr. Anyidoho claims to be disturbed by the fact that neither Ms. Tetteh nor the substantive leader of the NDC, to wit, President John Dramani Mahama, have let on any bit of hint regarding their role in the fixing of the dates for the IEA debates.
Well, the NDC Abongo Boys may not like to hear this, but common sense ought to have fully apprised them, by now, of the obvious fact that if President Mahama and the woman widely described as his most intimate associate and confidante are not complaining, either publicly or privately, then, of course, these government bigwigs are perfectly in agreement with the IEA’s operatives.
What is intriguing and worthy of note and has, in fact, been known for quite some time now, is the fact that its seemingly well-choreographed public pretensions and all, notwithstanding, the National Democratic Congress may very well be the more practically and functionally dysfunctional of the country’s two major political parties.
The party’s key operatives simply know better how to put on a masquerade. And now that their proverbial veritable house of cards has been exposed for what it inescapably is, the phony likes of Messrs. Anyidoho and Adams are raving and ranting about party discipline.
“That is why we are building a party school; building structures for people to be taken through orientation so that people accept that the party is supreme…. No individual is bigger than the party. If you are a minister, you don’t speak on behalf of the party and disrespect the party’s chairman and the whole hierarchy,” Mr. Anyidoho was recently quoted to have said. From the preceding quote, we learn several things about the abjectly poor caliber of the men in charge of the National Democratic Congress’ party machine.
First of all, very loud and pontifical public pretensions and all, there clearly appears to be extremely poor communication nexus between party headquarters and the Flagstaff House, and even among the key cabinet operatives of the party, to hear the likes of Messrs. Haruna Iddrisu and Kwakye-Ofosu bitch senselessly about the IEA-sponsored debates.
Then also, there is a palpable sense of complete disarray between the Flagstaff House and Kokomlemle, which is why the control-freak likes of Messrs. Asiedu-Nketia and Anyidoho would have experts flown in from China to tutor these decidedly gauche party bigwigs on how to toe the proverbial party line.
Now, let’s talk about the importation of illegal Serbian and South African mercenaries. As for the patently farcical theocratic concept of party supremacy, I guess one could aptly say that the NDC apparatchiks never severed their political and ideological umbilical cords from the uteruses of both the proto-Convention People’s Party and its latter-day incarnation, to wit, the Greenstreet-led rump-Convention People’s Party