Opinions of Sunday, 6 May 2012
Columnist: Mensah, Josuah
Good morning Nana, how are you going on with your political activities, I am very sure it is either tedious or laborious or both. Don’t worry your labour may be rewarded at an appropriate time.
Nana, lest I forget; congratulation for having a complete team now after choosing Dr. Bawumia for the second time as your running mate. Both national chairman and the general secretary in your 2008 campaign team has been replaced so, I though with the exception of yourself whom the delegates of your party has mistakenly maintained, you will choose an entirely new winning team however, if you have decided to maintain one of your loosing members(Dr. Bawumia) whom, according to your own party man HON. P.C. Appiah Ofori didn’t add even a vote to the area that he hails from in the north but rather, contributed to the lost of parliamentary seat at his own constituency, then over to you.
LISTENING TOUR
Nana, sometime last year, you embarked on what you called Listening Tour apparently to listen to the plight of Ghanaians and find solutions to them if by mistake you are voted to power by Ghanaians and find solutions to them. Well, I don’t know how successful that tour was because we were in this country when you met your party members at Asamankese and make that infamous “Yen Akan fuo die” and the all die be die declaration. Identifiable bodies such as the Christian council of Ghana and its allied bodies and some respectable men & women of this nation of ours called for the withdrawal of such declaration but you disrespectively refused. Now the question is; if you didn’t listened to the call by this respectable people to withdraw such violent declaration then, what did you listened to during your tour since you cannot be said to be a listening political figure due to the afore-mentioned. Again, who told you that the fact that you are an Akyim man make you more akan that your main opponent (Prez Mills) who is a fante. Please next time learn how to talk.
THE CAMPAIGN STRATEGY
Nana, in the heat of the 2008 campaign I never saw the then Prof. Mills and his running mate (John Mahama)on the same campaign platform and the reason is that, according to the NDC campaign strategy, the then Mr. John Mahama was assigned the responsibility of campaigning at the northing part of the country where he comes from. Efo J.J. was also assigned to campaign in the middle belt (that’s Ashanti, Brong Ahafo & and some areas in the Eastern Region), whilst Prof. Mills took to the coastal areas. This is what the NDC called the Retail Campaigning. That is, meeting a sizeable number of voters and preached to them the gospel according to the NDC. Nana, meanwhile your party (the NPP) was practicing what is called the wholesale campaigning where all the executives of the party meets on a big platform and their presence attracts a large number of observers which deceived you that you have a lot of followers and it is appropriate so since your running mate unlike his counterpart at the NDC, was politically immature and had to be shielded everywhere he goes. For former President Kuffour who is also not as charismatic as Efo Rawlings, couldn’t do anything either at the age of 70. In summary, the NDC were more strategic in their campaign in 2008 than your party.
CAMPAIGN MESSAGE
Nana, your last campaign on Saturday, 6th of December,2008 at Accra Academy was superb. Because it is the last campaign for the first round, the euphoria was great and participation very massive and after creating vehicular traffic from the Graphic road through the Obetsebi-Lamptey circle to the campaign grounds, after paying in advance for almost all the 32 radio stations then and five TV stations for 3 hours, the campaign message was very hollow. In fact you kept on repeating the NPP’s campaign message for the 2000 election that the NDC under Former President Rawlings reversed the economic clock for the nineteen years (that is the number of years that he ruled this country). Nana, the only significant message I heard on that campaign platform from your party members was that the women of the NPP were more beautiful than that of the NDC women and secondly, that Johnson Asiedu Nketia(the NDC general secretary) doesn’t look nice in coat. Nana, the moment I heard this from your party members on the platform, I realized you will lose the election because these are not messages that the electorate want to hear.
Nana, I recently heard you have embarked on another tour this time along the coastal areas dubbed Tour to restore hope or something of that sought. Nana I heard you on Joy FM promising the fisher folks at either Bortianor or Kokrobite in the Gt. Accra Region that if you are voted to power, you will provide them with Fibre Glass Canoe. I also heard you saying that the then Prof. Mills told Kuffour that because he is not from the coast, he built cold stores at Kumasi instead at the coastal communities. You again accused President Mills of desolving with the ministry of fisheries set up by Former President Kuffour. Nana, for your information, these are not messages that will appeal to the costal people. The fisher folks were having two major problems before the NDC came to power and that is; the issue with the pre-mix fuel and pair trawling. These problems has been solved by the NDC under Atta Mills. At the time of writing this article, there was a news item on GTV which reported about a teachers bungalow built by the people of Miamia, a fishing community in the western region as result of GHS 800,000 or so which was accrued from the sales of pre-mix fuel as a result of prudent measures adopted by the NDC. Nana, prominent among your campaign message for this year’s election is your intention to make education free from the primary to theSHS. Well, I don’t know how feasible itisl because according to the director of the Institute of Education Planning and administration(IEPA), Prof.George Oduro ,the nation does not need a fee-free education policy.”What we need as a nation is not the mere consolidation of the fee-free education policy in basic schools and its extension to the senior high school as some politicians keep promising” he said. He again said “research strongly suggest that free education was provided at the expense of quality teaching and learning in schools and asked politicians to reduce the level of interference in the implementation of educational plan”. Nana, the this is what an expert has said, may be you have to reframe your policy on education.
Nana, your listening tour took you to the Volta region and you were quoted as saying that the Voltarians have voted in a particular direction too much and that they should this time change their direction of voting. Nana, don’t you thing this advice best fits those in Ashanti region? WHO IS THE MOST VILLIFIED POLITICAL FIGURE IN GHANA Nana, I recently heard you saying that you are the most vilified political figure in this figure. Well, I don’t think so because it is still fresh in our minds what your father and his cronies did to Nkrumah in the 1950s and the 60s. Your father and his cronies, after several unsuccessive bomb attacks on Nkrumah thought Nkrumah has some spiritual powers that is why he survived all the bomb attacks on him, for this reason they lied to Ghanaians that Nkrumah had some spiritual powers called Kankan Nyame which is housed somewhere in the castle. Unfortunately for Nkrumah and fortunately for your father’s party, Nkrumah was not in the country when he was over thrown in 1966 after your father and his cronies had connived with the CIA , did they found that Kankan Nyame at the castle? Your father and his cronies didn’t only vilified Nkrumah but also sought his life.
Nana, we were in this country in the mid of the 1990s when your party members told Ghanaians that former President Rawlings was impotent that is why his wife who could not be satisfied by her husband, bought the Jacuzzi bath which is believed to have an in- built facility that gives sexual arousement.According to them, if that is not the issue, why didn’t her deposit the bath at the 37 military hospital for those with similar ailment for which reason was supposed to have bought the bath have access to it. Again, Your party members has said many times in this country that Nana Konadu Agyemang was barren and that all the four children he had with his husband were not her biological children but adopted ones. If you asked them to substantiate their claim, the only reason they give is that they have never seen her pregnant on television. Very childish isn’t it. Who saw Nkrumah’s wife on TV with pregnancy, who saw Busia’s wife on TV pregnant , who saw Dr. Limann’s wife on TV pregnancy. Will they also claim that the above mentioned past Presidents couldn’t impregnate their wives because they didn’t see them on TV pregnant?
Nana, the then Prof. Mills was said to be dead in South Africa by your party members. What is more vilifying than to tell a living person that he is dead? Your party people spread this falsehood thrice during the 2008 campaign and any time they made that allegation, you lose one of your prominent members. For instance, the week they made that false allegation, Hon. Peter Ala Adjetey died. The week the second allegation was made, Hawa Yakubu died. And the last allegation they made, Kwodwo Baah Wiredu died. Think about it.
IS AKUFFO-ADDO THE RIGHT SUBTITITE?
Nana, don’t you think you put the seal on the endorsement of your main rival, Prez. Mills and justified why he should be retained in the up-coming polls when you said “With the right programme in place, in the next ten years, Ghana can become a self-sustained, confident economy in many ways, with an extensive agricultural industry that will feed our neighbours and beyond”. You said this when you met the researchers of your party from the 10 regions at Tamale somewhere last year . If you will use ten years to develop Ghana, then Atta Mills has not erred to ask Ghanaians to give eight years to do same.
You keep on saying you haven’t seen what Atta Mills has done for this nation the three and half years that he has been in power. How can you see if you couldn’t see what Rawlings did for Ghana for the Nineteen years that he ruled this nation. Do you think you are the right substitute to be our next president granting that Atta Mills is not performimg?
To conclude, please wait patiently for your time as Atta Mills did and God willing, in 2056 when you are 114 years, you may set the record as the oldest man to become a president