Prof. Kwasi Amakyi Is a Paid NDC Hack. Period!

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
Sept. 1, 2014
E-mail: [email protected]

When the National Democratic Congress-sponsored Enquirer tabloid tells you that there is any popular political science lecturer at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, who is a staunch New Patriotic Party (NPP) supporter, called Mr. Kwasi Amakye, you ought to check your wrist-watch, if you have one, or cell-phone clock, to see what time of the day it is both on your clock dial and on the political calendar of the country.

I can boldly inform the dear reader that Mr. Kwasi Amakye is a paid National Democratic Congress (NDC) shill or propagandist, and also that he has absolutely no credibility with his characteristically negative prononcements on Ghana's largest opposition party (See "Lecturer Worried About Nana Addo's Age...." Peacefmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 9/1/14).

Indeed, if he is not called Dr. Richard Amoako-Baah, and he is not the head, that is chairman, of the Political Science Department at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, you need not listen, or pay attention, to him. And to be frank with you, my dear reader, I don't even know why the academic dons of KNUST, including the membership of the University Council, continue to allow Mr. Amakye to teach political science in that august institution, let alone proudly hold himself out and up as a sterling lecturer in his discipline and a credible representative of that globally-renowned institution.

One thing, however, is crystal clear: Mr. Amakye is an untenured lecturer - that is, he does not have a permanent job at KNUST. And so it could well be that in his desperate bid to securing himself a tenured professorial appointment, Mr. Amakye feels that taking pot-shots at the widely presumed 2016 presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party would help him to rapidly achieve his aim. Fat chance, I say!

First of all, when Mr. Amakye compares Nana Akufo-Addo to Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, in terms of age and caliber of leadership, it is embarrassingly obvious that the KNUST lecturer has absolutely no clue of what he is talking about, especially when he also adds that presidential candidates in the advanced democracies invariably range in ages between 40 and 50 years old.

Now, here is my tuition-free Political Science 101 lesson for Mr. Amakye: In 1980, when Mr. Ronald Reagan was elected President of the United States, the former Hollywood Class-B movie actor was 69 years old. He would go on to serve two terms in office. Today, most conservative Americans, irrespective of age or ethnicity, proudly tout the tenure of President Reagan as one of the best in the political history of the United States in the twentieth century.

And what is even more interesting, Mr. Reagan did not even have a college education! Likewise, in 1988, when President George Herbert Walker Bush - or the Elder President Bush - assumed official duties at the White House, as President of the United States, the Texas oil mogul was 63 years old. Difficult circumstances would enable him to serve only one term in office. We must also promptly remember that Mr. Bush had a barely 40-year-old Vice-President by the name of Mr. Dan Quayle, whom nearly every American citizen prayed not to ever succeed to the presidency. Indeed, so daft was the Mid-West-born Mr. Quayle considered to be by most Americans, regardless of ideological leaning, that late-night television comedians would beg their audiences to pray fervently that nothing untoward would befall President Bush.

It is also significant to note that when the Younger Mr. George Bush acceded to the presidency in 2000, he was 54 years old; his Vice-President, Mr. Richard Cheney, was 60 years old. "GW," as the Younger Mr. Bush was popularly known, would, like Ronald Reagan, govern the country for two terms. He would also unwisely plunge America into one of its costliest modern wars. What is instructive here, however, is that today almost no well-respected American political scientist or historian thinks that the Younger President Bush was a better president than his father, by mere virtue of his relative youthfulness.

In other words, if Mr. Amakye really knows his stuff as a political science lecturer, he ought to be studiously aware of the fact that in 1980, when Mr. Mugabe was elected Prime Minister of Zimbabwe, he was 56 years old. His youthfulness did not prevent the Nkrumah-mentored Mr. Mugabe from becoming an extortionate dictator, who continues to dominate the political culture of Zimbabwe 34 years later. The fact of the matter, as Mr. Amakye can clearly see for himself, is that age in politics does not necessarily correlate with efficient and competent leadership. It definitely does not necessarily correlate with common sense.

It ought to have also become incontrovertibly clear to Mr. Amakye by now that were youth and administrative competence invariable correlates, President John Dramani Mahama would be performing wonders on the Ghanaian political landscape today. Mr. Mahama also, in spite of his gross administrative incompetence, saw the wisdom in appointing a sixty-something-year-old Mr. Kwesi Bekoe Amissah-Arthur as his Vice-President.

Likewise, President John Agyekum-Kufuor acceded to the presidency in 2000 at 62 years old. A 53-year-old President Barack H. Obama, also has a man more than a decade older than he is as his Vice-President; and that man, of course, is Mr. Joseph Biden. What we find here is a deft balance in age at the presidency between nearly every substantive president and his vice, regardless of whether the concerned leader is the leader of a Third-World country or a First-World country.

At any rate, would Mr. Amakye argue that President Mahama, by mere virtue of his relative youthfulness, has been a far better president than Mr. Kufuor? It is quite obvious here that Mr. Amakye has a visceral, or inveterate, hatred for Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, perhaps one that is based on sub-ethnic affiliation. And Mr. Amakye, of course, is inalienably entitled to his rabid hatred for the New Patriotic Party leader. What Mr. Amakye has absolutely no right to doing, is to pretend that the proverbial average Ghanaian is, somehow, too stupid to fully appreciate who is the best candidate for President of Ghana today.

Also, the rather insolent idea that it can only take a forensically clueless university lecturer like Mr. Amakye to guide the Ghanaian electorate in the right direction, vis-a-vis the choice of who ought to govern the country, is inexcusably criminal!

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