Opinions of Saturday, 10 December 2016
Columnist: Okoampa-Ahoofe, Kwame
By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
I am too mentally fatigued to celebrate the landslide victory of the Akufo-Addo-led New Patriotic Party (NPP) over the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC). That the margin of victory between Messrs. Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and John Dramani Mahama, the main challenger and the presidential incumbent, respectively, has been characterized by some pundits as “historic” and “unprecedented,” pretty much reflects the deep anguish and great craving of the Ghanaian electorate for a more progressive and competent government.
This is what the NPP, through two terms of governance, under the leadership of President John Agyekum-Kufuor, has inimitably demonstrated that it is capable of doing far better than any Fourth-Republican political party.
Ultimately, it is Ghanaian voters themselves, and not the handpicked executive operatives of the Electoral Commission (EC), who will determine which of these two major contenders has the mandate to govern the country for the next four years. And so far, all the available credible electoral records point to the commanding victory of Nana Akufo-Addo and the New Patriotic Party.
Well, there is something funny going on among the ranks of the routed leaders of the National Democratic Congress, a considerable number of whose movers and shakers lost the parliamentary seats out which they have made full-time boondoggle careers for the past two decades.
That something funny is that having decisively lost their legislative power and influence, these political rascals and scam-artists have been scheming around the clock to massage the figures of the 2016 presidential election, during the 72-hour waiting period which the Electoral Commission has arrogated unto itself, for whatever it may be worth, to ensure that an irredeemably defeated President John Dramani Mahama gets to rule by hook or crook (See “We’ll Devise a Plan to Rule Ghana – Asiedu-Nketia” MyRadio360.com / Ghanaweb.com 12/9/16).
Some levelheaded and well-respected distinguished Ghanaian had better warn Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia and the NDC Abongo Boys that their game-time is up, and any quixotic attempt by these vicious political scam-artists to take Ghanaians back into the bad, old days (which are nearly completely behind us, take or leave some four weeks from now) will be fiercely and apocalyptically repulsed.
Mr. Asiedu-Nketia must be forcefully and frontally told that under absolutely no circumstances will an epically and convincingly defeated President Mahama be allowed to govern with a parliamentary minority. These pathological kleptocrats had better rouse themselves to the dramatically altered political terrain of the country and behave likewise before it is too late.
The condemnation by the members of the so-called Ghana National Peace Council of the flat and justified refusal of the New Patriotic Party leadership to sit mum and dumb, while the Electoral Commission and the Mahama Posse took Ghanaian voters and citizens for a ride, once more, is decidedly irrelevant.
The fact of the matter is that nobody elected the members of the Peace Council to tell Ghanaians how to best defend their clearly enshrined inalienable constitutional rights. What is incontrovertibly factual is that on December 7, 2016, eligible Ghanaian voters went into the polling booth and decisively elected Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, on the ticket of the New Patriotic Party, and mandated these two gentlemen to govern our country for the next four years.