Needless manifesto-stealing fear

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

The decision by both major political parties to delay the public release of their electioneering-campaign manifestos makes inexcusable nonsense of the entire idea and purpose of crafting and disseminating the manifesto of a political party intent on being offered the mandate to democratically manage the people’s business.

A manifesto, even as the devious Cretin-of-California recently adumbrated in a miserly pabulum that he shamelessly passed off as a substantive opinion piece, is a synoptic statement of intent presented to the voting public by the movers-and-shakers of any political party seeking to be afforded the trust and confidence of the electorate in the form of informed consent to govern for a constitutionally specified period of time.

This is not an exact quote, of course, for the Cretin’s definition was characteristically a halting mess of tail-chasing chimera. And I am also quite certain that the definition of a political manifesto presented here is far more felicitous and meaningful than the decidedly poor excuse offered by the former Idiot-of-Irmo, South Carolina.

To be certain, I merely alluded to the definition offered by the Cretin-cum-Idiot to simply underscore the fact that even a patent cognitive basket such as this medical-license hacking SOB remarkably appreciates the fundamental value and imperative need for any political party seeking to be granted the sacred mandate of the people to coherently formulate and publish cogent reasons why the leaders of the party so concerned deserve to be entrusted with the mandate of the people.

In reality, the presentation of a manifesto to members of the electorate by a political party that already has a track-record of woefully unsound performance is as good as none. Rather, the crafting and publication of a manifesto is more beneficial to the leadership of a political party that has a proven and relatively sound governance record, such as the New Patriotic Party, or one that has yet to be afforded the mandate to govern.

And so the raging and decidedly tired wrangling over whether the leaders of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) lacks creative initiative and originality and/or are pathological plagiarists is beside the point, which is the imperative necessity for each and every eligible Ghanaian voter to compare the governance records of both the NDC and the country’s main opposition New Patriotic Party before casting his/her ballot.

For example, as I had the occasion about a week, or so, ago to call an NDC fanatic who had been spewing rancid inanities on one of the legion Ghanaian web-radio stations located somewhere in the State of Georgia, right here in the United States, to order, whenever any of the paid NDC shills brags about the Mahama government’s establishment of several social intervention programs, my gut reaction has been to walk that rascal through the 8-year elected tenure of Chairman Jerry John Rawlings and demand that that political scumbag point to any single one of these so-called NDC-hatched social intervention programs.

Very likely, that NDC apparatchik would draw a blank, almost as if some highway bandit had ambushed him/her and savagely smacked the back of his/her head with the butt of an AK-47 assault rifle.

The fact of the matter is that until the auspicious democratic accession of Mr. John Agyekum-Kufuor and the New Patriotic Party in 2001, the phraseology of “social intervention programs” was totally absent from the vocabulary of the NDC leaders.

It is also significant to observe that most of the current NDC’s crop of faux-social democratic leaders, including President John Dramani Mahama, were front-row cabinet appointees under Mr. Rawlings’ tenure.

To be certain, about the only systematically orchestrated project that approximates what may be aptly termed as the NDC brand, or version, of a social interventionist program is what was then widely known as “Shit-Bombing” whose chief architect and executioner, you guessed absolutely right, dear reader, was then-Communication Minister, Mr. John Dramani Mahama.

In the nearly 8 years of the NDC’s return to power, Ghana’s economy has precipitously declined from the auspicious status of a fast-rising middle-income nation to the scandalous basket case of HIPC categorized socioeconomic nation bequeathed Ghanaians by the 20 protracted years of abject misrule by the Rawlings-led, you guessed right again, Provisional/National Democratic Congress (P/NDC).

Which is why the fear of the NDC operatives’ plagiarizing the manifesto of the Akufo-Addo-led New Patriotic Party ought not to have been made into the sort of politically paralyzing priority that it pathetically seems to have become for Chairman Freddie Blay and his associates at the party’s Kokomlemle headquarters.

Indeed, rather than being hung up on the drafting and publishing of a creative, original and visionary manifesto, Nana Akufo-Addo and his Research and Communication teams would be far better off documenting and disseminating the major socioeconomic achievements of the 8-year tenure of President Kufuor, such as the implementation of the foresighted and progressive National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS); and also how the NDC, under the chaotic “state-of-nature” tenures of Messrs.

Atta-Mills and Mahama have virtually collapsed nearly every one of the seminal industrial projects and quality-of-life improvement policy mechanisms implemented by the New Patriotic Party.

Nana Akufo-Addo would be far better off underscoring the intention of his government, if afforded the mandate, to build up on President Kufuor’s legacy. Yes, he is naturally and logically entitled to forging and implementing his own discrete development agenda but, needless to say, this cannot be effectively done without also wisely and constructively pursuing a salutary course of ideological continuity.