Opinions of Tuesday, 20 June 2023
Columnist: E. G. Buckman
Dr. Bawumia is really struggling to convince the NPP delegates to vote for him to lead the party. Until he stepped out there to engage with the delegates, he thought incumbency was everything. He thought money, power, and purchased declarations could be used to manipulate and hoodwink the NPP delegates.
However, he was very wrong. The reality has now dawned on him that the power in the party doesn’t belong to those at the Jubilee House who are living big and riding in big cars. Indeed, the power belongs to the grassroots guys who sacrificed so much for the party in 2016 and 2020 but still walk barefoot and live on empty stomachs. This time, the delegates are wild awake to demand their pound of flesh from the Jubilee House rich men.
The Vice President’s flamboyant campaign wagon, decorated in falsehoods and blatant distortion of the party’s history, seems to be running on square tyres. They are pushing so hard with power and cash, but it is not moving as they had expected. Signals they are picking clearly show he is going to lose. Oh yes, he will lose. People have seen the light, and so they are going to stand up for their rights.
On the day the vice president filed his nomination, he told the biggest lie in the history of the party when he said he had been a member of the party for the past 22 years. In actual fact, when he said that some of the old folks who were there to support him were so shocked that their jaws dropped instantly. They couldn’t believe what they heard.
How could a man who was brought in to join the party in 2008, and had to be given a five-year waiver to qualify as a running mate, claim to have been a member of the party for 22 years? What he said definitely wasn’t a mathematical or memory mishap; it was a blatant falsehood deliberately crafted to deceive the party delegates.
Following that unfortunate incident, we are told some of his handlers had to boldly tell him to speak the truth about the date of his membership, as majority of the delegates are already aware he is yet to be 15 years in a party that would soon be 31 years. In other words, he hasn’t even had the pass mark yet.
That’s why when they went to Tema West Constituency, he couldn’t tell that falsehood again, but in a big U-turn said that even if he joined the party in 2008, he is like the Apostle Paul in the Bible, who worked more than all the apostles, albeit he didn’t start with them.
Obviously, his reference to Paul was utterly misplaced and misleading, as Paul never competed against those who had been there before him for any leadership position in the early Church. Besides, Paul was brought in to preach the gospel to the Gentiles, and at no point in time was he ashamed of his core mandate (Romans 1:16), like how Dr. Bawumia is so ashamed of his management of the economy that he has deviated from it to digitalization.
Again, it’s a palpable falsehood and quite deceptive for him to claim that he has sacrificed or worked in the party more than all those aspirants who started in 1992.
You see, unlike those patriots who didn’t know what was in for them when they joined the party in those dark days in the early 90s amidst Rawlings’ blatant intimidation, threats and brutalities, he joined the party at the time the party was in power as a running mate to become Vice President, and so every work he did was towards that end.
Which sane person would have turned down that biggest opportunity to stand in the Supreme Court box to become Vice President on the ticket of a party he had never supported nor paid dues to until 2008? Perhaps he is telling us that Nana Addo or the late Jake Obetsebi Lamptey should have gone into the box since they were his co-petitioners.
Besides, if he had read Matthew 16:18-19, he would have known that the keys to the kingdom of Heaven were not given to Paul, albeit he worked so hard. The Lord Jesus gave the keys to Peter, who had been with Him from day one. Beloved, let’s read the Lord’s own words in Matthew 16:18-19 below:
“And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock, I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”
In the same vein, the NPP delegates would give the keys to the transformation of Ghana’s economy to Alan Kyerematen, who had been with the party from day one.
We all hope and pray that going forward, other falsehoods about mobile money interoperability and port paperless projects, etc. would also be stopped. What the party delegates want to hear from the aspirants is their plan and vision that would transform the country, the party, and their lives. They are not interested in cock and bull stories.
Shalom shalom!