Paa Kwesi Just Come Lately

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

For weeks, Nana Akufo-Addo has been fervidly preaching against ethnocentric politics and the politics of violence and intimidation that is the hallmark of the Rawlings and Atta-Mills-led National Democratic Congress (NDC). The latter would comfortably deck the ironic mantle of an “Asomdwoehene” – or Prince-of-Peace – even while vehemently swearing to plunge Ghana into a Kenya-type of apocalypse. Once, the former Associate Professor at the University of Ghana Law School was even invited by the British High Commissioner to Ghana to explain his violent political language. Prof. Atta-Mills would vehemently deny having any sinister intentions on setting the country alight, in the highly likely event of the twice-rejected Rawlings appointee for president losing Election 2008.

All this while, Dr. Paa Kwesi Nduom, the presidential candidate of the rump-Convention People’s Party, was a virtual AWOL – he simply was nowhere to be found. Talking peace does not seem to be the strong suit of the Komenda-CPP Member of Parliament. And this is in no way an accident; the proto-CPP, chaperoned by Mr. Kwame Nkrumah, ran a campaign agenda that made Ghana’s first party to run a government become closely identified with the politics of violence and cronyism. No Ghanaian upwards the age of 50 has quite forgotten the brutal double-assassinations of the Asante Regional general-secretary of the United Party and the latter’s Akyem-Abuakwa counterpart by hired guns of the extant ruling Convention People’s Party. And here, the reference is to the Baffoe Cause Célèbre, of course. And so in a real and sobering historical sense, Dr. Nduom has faithfully and studiously been following the traditional CPP political script.

What is rather flabbergasting is the fact that Paa Kwesi would wait for the catastrophic events of Gushiegu to occur before pretending to subscribe to the kind of Gandhian philosophical placidity, or Satyagraha, advocated by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the immortalized African-American civil rights spearhead. And deviously, albeit all-too-predictably, Paa Kwesi chose to do so by taking undue advantage of the parliamentary candidacy of a man with both Muslim and Northern Ghanaian names in order to appear to be practicing precisely what the Komenda-CPP MP preaches.

And so here he was at Bogoso, in the Prestea-Huni Valley Constituency of the Western Region, introducing an acclaimed candidate by the name of Mr. Mubashir Tamimu Dari – a.k.a. Lawyer T. Dari – and grandstanding about the amount of money lost in the Gushiegu conflagration. And, of course, this too was all in character with Paa Kwesi Nduom. For, let none forget that long before he sported his chameleonic political hat, the Komenda-Edina-Eguafo-Abirem (KEEA) parliamentarian was a bean counter; and he counted beans in millions of dollars. Which pretty much explains the rump-CPP flagbearer’s recently uncovered confidential memo or letter – the media report did not quite make such distinction – addressed to President John Agyekum-Kufuor, his former boss, in which the rump-CPP flagbearer bitterly lamented his loss of approximately $ 11 million (Eleven Million American Dollars) since Komenda Kwesi decided to become a practicing politician in 1992. And so when Komenda Kwesi says of Gushiegu that: “This is not in the interest of democracy,” the former Deloitte and Touche executive is almost definitely thinking about the monetary aspect of democracy, which is capitalism.

Obviously, in parading the acclaimed candidacy of Lawyer T. Dari, on the ticket of the rump-CPP, to the people of Bogoso, Paa Kwesi presumed to locate himself beyond the pale of ethnocentric politics. Nkrumah partially demonstrated this by marrying an Egyptian woman who was young enough to have been the Show Boy’s own daughter. For Paa Kwesi, such demonstration is more of a rhetorical gesture than practice. The same, though, could not be said in the case of Nana Akufo-Addo or even the equally chameleonic Prof. Atta-Mills, whose conjugal affiliation with a non-clanswoman has been viciously used by some cynical political opponents against the man. Instead, Paa Kwesi has elected the patently farcical alternative of dressing like the African Show Boy. But, sad to say, this sartorial superficiality is about the greatest extent of any remarkable “ideological” similarity between Komenda Kwesi and “Africa’s Man of Destiny.”

Then the University of Wisconsin graduate looked the “Bogosoans” straight in the eye and gushed, “The CPP has done it before. We built Abosso Glass Factory and State Hotels, among a host of others. Alas, all these enterprises have either been sold or left to collapse by succeeding governments.”

And here, somebody ought to have pointed out that most of the governments that allowed the supposedly great industrial achievements of the CPP to, literally, go to the dogs were either revivalist CPP or pro-CPP governments, such as NRC/SMC I, AFRC, PNP and P/NDC. In essence, Komenda Kwesi ought to have humbly acknowledged the fact that, indeed, the CPP lost its practical and ideological relevance a long time ago. And that, as Americans are wont to say, “You can put a lipstick on a pig, but it is still a pig,” not a lady!

Then also, Komenda Kwesi waxes tautological when he vaunts, “The CPP will introduce free education from Kindergarten to Senior High School and also build more schools. Meantime, I solemnly urge all parents to ensure that your children go to school, to acquire the requisite skills and qualifications for a brighter future.”

Pathetic, indeed! For having stolen the name “Convention” from Dr. Danquah’s United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC), some sixty years on, the theft-prone CPP still finds it virtually impossible to acknowledge the obvious. And the obvious, of course, is that under the progressive New Patriotic Party government of President J. A. Kufuor, public education is already fee-free. Then also, why would Komenda Kwesi urge parents to send their children to school, if the NPP, under the sterling leadership of President Kufuor, had not built enough schools to make such attendance, as is being fervently exhorted by Dr. Nduom, possible?

Of course, “The CPP has done it before.” Except that the first and last time that they did it, they also wreck the Ghanaian economy beyond recognition. Indeed, so apocalyptic was CPP degradation of the Ghanaian economy that Prof. L. H. Ofosu-Appiah has then-Col. E. K. Kotoka, the immortalized liberator of Ghana from fascist CPP dictatorship, as wistfully observing that if he had known the extent of the untold degradation of Ghana’s economy by Mr. Nkrumah and his CPP regime, he (Col. Kotoka) would have tarried his putsch plans until an imminent popular revolt unseated the CPP. Needless to say, the very jubilant reaction of ordinary Ghanaians to the overthrow of the pro-Communist CPP government on February 24, 1966, is enough evidence of abject CPP stewardship of Ghana.

To be certain, nobody that this writer knows well misses the CPP, not even his own father who had been a CPP Action Trooper, Young Pioneer Instructor and Asante-Mampong CPP District Organizer. Maybe Paa Kwesi still has a lingering taste of the Komenda Sugar Factory on his 55-year-old tongue. My father would have been 80 years old, come February 16, 2009. Thank God, the old man’s dream would be fulfilled by Election 2008, with the auspicious and progressive election of President Akufo-Addo.

Long live Ghana! Long live the Democratic Dream of the Danquah-Busia Tradition!! And, oh yes, long live the ideals of even the woefully misguided, albeit patriotic, African Show Boy!!!

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is the author of 18 books, including “Dr. J. B. Danquah: Architect of Modern Ghana” (iUniverse.com, 2005) and “Reena: Letters to an Indian-American Gal” (Atumpan Publications/lulu.com, 2008). E-mail: [email protected].