Opinions of Friday, 18 January 2008
Columnist: Okoampa-Ahoofe, Kwame
NPP is United Against a Reprise of NDC Reign-of-Terror
Mr. Koku Anyidoho's rejoining article to another written by Mr. Yaw Boadu Ayeboafo, editor of the Daily Graphic, I believe, is rather amusing, if also because it is "buttinsky-cally"? or perhaps more aptly, "buttinskically"? desperate. I have already responded to a similar officious NDC expression of unctuous democratic concern, and so I shall neither attempt to belabor my point here, nor unduly engage the precious time of my dear reader.
In his rejoinder, wistfully titled "Re: NPP, a United Party" (Ghanaweb.com 1/9/08), Mr. Anyidoho makes the following rather risible observation: "The NPP's [presidential candidacy] race can be likened to a marathon whiles that of the NDC can be likened to a sprint. The ability of Prof. Mills to set a record in his sprint race, and Akufo-Addo's inability to secure a clear victory in his marathon race, has got nothing to do with the distances run and the number of contestants [involved]; it has everything to do with the ability and competence of the race runners."?
Indeed, we really wish that we could unreservedly concur with Mr. Koku Anyidoho; unfortunately, with what we know about Mr. Rawlings' unpardonably dictatorial and criminal 'Swedru Declaration,'? during which declaration the founding-owner of the so-called Provisional National Democratic Congress (P/NDC) peremptorily anointed Professor John Evans Atta-Mills as the eternal presidential candidate of the NDC, it is rather unconscionably hypocritical for Mr. Anyidoho to pretend that his readers, as well as the average Ghanaian voter, like members of the P/NDC, take the solemn and inviolable practice of democratic culture for sheer charade, or dramaturgical pretense.
Or would Mr. Anyidoho, a shameless P/NDC propagandist, have us fast-forward to the barbaric and outright savage process by which the former Vice-President was “elected”? And, indeed, if the writer really believes that Professor Atta-Mills was duly elected NDC presidential candidate for Election 2008, then like the latter, Mr. Anyidoho must be living in a fool's paradise. And the very eerie fact that Dr. Obed Asamoah and quite a distinguished phalanx of NDC executives and rank-and-file members emerged out of Hotel EREDEC, and the NDC congress of the Atta-Mills coronation, with a blueprint for the formation of another party, an NDC splinter group called the Freedom Democratic Party (DFP), ought to have given Mr. Anyidoho a humble pause before the writer presumed to impugn the democratic integrity of the NPP Delegates' Convention that witnessed the election of Nana Addo-Dankwa Akufo-Addo as the presidential candidate of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP).
Indeed, what is at stake in Election 2008 is not a mere, prosaic contest of personalities, as the P/NDC hacks would have their followers and sympathizers believe. Rather, what is at stake is a democratic decision on the destiny of Ghana during the course of the next four years. Thus Election 2008 is more of a contest of ideologies, particularly regarding which of the major Ghanaian political parties could best carry our country to its next most logical level of democratic advancement ? in effect, be able to relatively successfully pilot Ghana through the indispensable realms of socioeconomic, political and cultural development.
And so far, needless to say, during the nearly eight years that the New Patriotic Party has wielded the democratic mandate of the Ghanaian voter, phenomenal and unprecedented improvements have been registered in such critical realms of national endeavor as healthcare and business, education and human rights. No longer, for instance, do ideologically dissenting Ghanaians have to go to bed wondering whether some P/NDC commandos would not be waking them up in the middle of the night in order to have them executed at the Bundase Military Range in the very manner of the three Supreme Court judges and the retired Army officer, among a legion of others.
Perhaps before presuming to make facile comparisons between the electoral percentages clinched, respectively, by Professor Atta-Mills and Nana Akufo-Addo, Mr. Koku Anyidoho needs to profile all the remaining 16 or 17 aspiring presidential candidates who ran against Nana Akufo-Addo and then compare each and every one of them with their NDC counterparts. Needless to say, his stated abject disregard for the far more distinguished profiles of most of the NPP presidential aspirants against whom Nana Akufo-Addo competed, speaks more intelligently about the caliber of critic that Mr. Anyidoho evidently is, than anything deemed meaningful that the writer presumes to communicate to his readers, particularly regarding the ethnic and professional diversity of the NPP contestants.
And, if, indeed, anybody should be blamed for having criminally cheapened the Ghanaian presidency, it is Mr. Jeremiah John Rawlings, the certified career coup-plotter and democracy hijacker, not the 18 erstwhile aspiring NPP presidential candidates, as Mr. Anyidoho would have his readers believe. Indeed it would, no doubt, have been more meaningful for Mr. Anyidoho to have explained to his readers precisely why a supposedly, relatively more “able” and “competent” Professor Atta-Mills has yet to be able to name, or select, a running mate, more than a year after his coronation as P/NDC presidential candidate for Election 2008. The pity is that the Rawlings second-bananas has been gunning for the presidency some eight years now! I bet my proverbial bottom-dollar that we may yet witness Nana Akufo-Addo select his running mate long before the supposedly more “able” and “competent” Professor Atta-Mills does the same. And wouldn’t this be ironic?
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