On Perry Okudzeto: A Point of Order

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
August 15, 2014
E-mail: [email protected]

I hope Messrs. Paul Afoko and Kwabena Agyapong mean every word of the same, when they assert that they are trying to "professionalize" the way that governance, or administration, is done at the headquarters of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (See "I Was Stunned By The Proceed-On-Leave Style Of Dismissal - Perry Okudzeto" MyJoyOnline.com 8/15/14).

I make the foregoing observation because there appears to be fast creeping into the Afoko-Agyapong administration of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) a distrbing trend of bulldozing protocol and literally steamrolling their way, juggernaut fashion, vis-a-vis the question of who gets to work at party headquarters and who gets to be shoved over its walls.

Well, according to the First Vice-Chairman of the NPP, Mr. Freddy Blay, the recent summary dismissal of the Deputy Communications Director of the New Patriotic Party ought to have been effected with the approval of the party's National Executive Committee (NEC). Mr. Blay, who is also a member of the NPP-NEC, has vehemently decried the fact that Party Chairman Afoko and General-Secretary Agyapong literally rode roughshod over laid-down procedure for terminating party administrators at the NPP headquarters.

It is also significant to highlight the fact that not very long ago, Messrs. Afoko and Agyapong reportedly attempted to push out the NPP's Financial Officer who fiercely resisted the move. As of this writing, I was not aware of the outcome of this first case of administrative arm-twisting.

What is clear here, however, is that either Messrs. Afoko and Agyapong are determined to alienate as many veteran members of the New Patriotic Party's administrative machinery, thereby ensuring that the party remains on the margins of opposition political culture for the foreseeable future, or they are simply out to exacting vengeance against just about anybody whom they believe to have trucked with the wrong faction of the party. We know which faction of the NPP to which these two men belong. We also know, vehement protestations to the contrary, that Messrs. Afoko and Agyapong are flesh and blood humans who are not above exacting their proverbial pound of flesh, if they so felt convicted.

It is also quite predictable that they would so brazenly orchestrate their flagrant antagonizing of veteran headquarters administrators with whom they appear not to see eye-to-eye in lockstep. And, oh, lest I forget; there was that moment when Mr. Agyapong was also widely reported to have led a phalanx of some machomen into the party headquarters, in a "revolutionary" bid to flushing out the old security personnel. That crudely orchestrated initial coup d'etat also reportedly proved abortive. And so, really, these two party chiefs may well have a sinister agenda up their sleeves that may not necessarily be in the interest of party cohesion and victory at the polls.

Already, the aspiring presidential candidate that Messrs. Afoko and Agyapong used to work for has been talking about how "floating voters" have more electoral significance and heft than core party members and devotees. What I am, however, most interested in than anything else here is for the two gentlement to be alerted to the fact that they are hierarchically accountable to the National Executive Committee of the New Patriotic Party, rather than being a law unto themselves. This is the civilized Twenty-First Century, not the Ghana of the 1940s or 50s and the 60s.

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