The Illegitimate Presidency of Rawlings Justifies ...

... Dr. Amoako’s Parliamentary Election – Part 1

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

Long before the sticky question of Dual-Citizenship rose to the fore, I had already commented on both the fundamentally and fatally flawed Fourth-Republican Constitution of Ghana. Back then, in 1991, I was a graduate student at Temple University, Philadelphia, and freelancing for a weekly (or bi-weekly, I forget exactly which) newspaper called the Nigerian News Digest, which would shortly be renamed African News Weekly. Actually, I was supposed to have been freelancing for the Nigerian News Digest, but it never quite happened that way because, upon the unctuous pretext of extreme penury, the publishers, a married Nigerian couple with engineering degrees from Cornell University, never paid me a dime for my yeoman’s efforts. They would later mail me a Wal-Mart gift-certificate worth a piddling $50.00 (Fifty Dollars) that I could not even use, because I could not figure out the location of the nearest Wal-Mart supermarket. Now, though, I know of at least three Wal-Mart locations, including one that is only a stone’s throw from my office at Nassau Community College, Garden City, Long Island, New York. I mention both the Nigerian News Digest and the African News Weekly, because it was during my working encounter with these two newspapers that I seriously began to write and publish on issues affecting continental Africa, in particular, and Ghana, in general, or maybe both the other way around and somewhere in-between. That was, of course, the Pre-Internet era of African journalism, which means that unless copies of the afore-referenced newspapers are neatly archived somewhere, it is highly unlikely that the bulk of my quite considerable contributions have been preserved. One, of course, always hopes, in spite of our global notoriety for being poor record-keepers, that somewhere in the basement of a public library, or even the private home of a meticulous scholar, are neatly stacked copies of both the Nigerian News Digest and the African News Weekly. Back in 1991, when the statal atomization of Nigeria from 19 (or was it 21?) states into a whopping 36 states was proceeding with cancerous rapidity, against trenchant and vehement protests from this writer (largely in organically pan-Africanist vein), whose protests were, by turns, promptly and roundly condemned by many a Nigerian national for being both naively meddlesome and cognitively addled, a woebegone Constituent Assembly, sitting in the famous Ghanaian capital of Accra, was very busy cowardly crafting a Constitution which would, literally, hand over the destiny of our country to the whims of a half-Scottish Ghanaian strongman who, by 1991, had been ruling our country, as a de facto dictator, for nearly eleven years. In sum, to fully appreciate the “constitutional” institutionalization of Dual-Citizenship in Ghana’s Fourth Republic, the serious student of Ghanaian political history needs to, perforce, revisit that grim, albeit landmark moment in 1991, when the Constituent Assembly, among whose membership was Mr. John Agyekum-Kufuor, Ghana’s now-presidential incumbent, timidly handed over the country to ex-Flt.-Lt. Jeremiah John Rawlings to “constitutionally” ride roughshod over the Ghanaian people for another eight long years, or two “electoral” terms. And so it is quite ludicrously curious for any Ghanaian of sound mind and health to be complaining about the fact of a bona fide Ghanaian-born holder of Dual-Citizenship having recently won the legitimate right, via an electoral primary, to represent the voters and citizens of the very district, Akyem-Abuakwa North, in which the man was born. The matter gets even more intriguingly bizarre and messier because this is not the very first time that Dr. Samuel Kwadwo Amoako has contested in a primary election in his Abuakwa-North constituency; his maiden run was in 2004, I hear. And back then, as reliable reports indicate, Dr. Amoako was resoundingly trounced by a Mr. J. B. Danquah-Adu, reportedly either the grandson or great-grandson of Dr. Joseph (Kwame Kyeretwie) Boakye-Danquah, the putative Doyen of Gold Coast and Ghanaian Politics. In 2004, when he handily defeated Dr. S. K. Amoako, there is, as of this writing (6/19/08), no available record or evidence indicating that Mr. J. B. Danquah-Adu had, indeed, legitimately impugned the validity of the candidacy of his “Ghanaian-American” rival on the ticket of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP). In short, had Mr. Danquah-Adu been a straitlaced candidate, or a personality who strictly and honestly played by the rules, come rain or shine, as it were, the recently defeated Member of Parliament (MP) for Abuakwa North would have since 2004 brought the issue of the “questionable candidacy” of his rival before the trio of the district, regional and national Grievance Committee of the NPP. It, therefore, now appears that Mr. Danquah-Adu has decided to file a lawsuit against Dr. S. K. Amoako largely because, since 2004, this is the very first time that Dr. Amoako appears to have seriously threatened Mr. Danquah-Adu’s political career and, perhaps, also seriously threatened the defeated candidate’s livelihood. Either way, things appear not to look very good for Mr. Danquah-Adu, precisely because the Abuakwa-North MP has seriously blighted any chance for his electoral rescue, or political redemption, by becoming his own precedent. In other words, Mr. Danquah-Adu is a strong witness against his own best interest because, in 2004 when he first had a legitimate opportunity and right to bump Dr. Amoako off the electoral primary ballot, the former simply chose to play politics as usual. And so, in essence, it could not validly – or authentically – be that in launching his lawsuit against his electoral conqueror, Mr. Danquah-Adu is in any way, shape or form legitimately attempting to reassert the primacy of Constitutional Normalcy in this particular context. At best, the plaintiff comes off as a shameless opportunist and, at the worst, a reckless political reprobate and/or impenitent rascal. Indeed, without necessarily presuming to hold brief for the “defendant,” as others have expediently and opportunistically done, it can hardly be gainsaid that it was only the defeated Abuakwa-North NPP-MP who had been in the know about the alleged Dual-Citizenship of Dr. Amoako, going into the Election 2008 Parliamentary Primary. Very likely, both his electors and the local party operatives were also in the know. If so, then the electoral mandate, or decision, to have Dr. Amoako, rather than Mr. Danquah-Adu, represent the people of Abuakwa-North in the Ghana National Assembly, or Parliament, may well have a lot to do with the perceived dismal performance of the defeated candidate, rather than any flagrant breaching of electoral laws or even Ghana’s patently toothless Fourth-Republican Constitution. If, indeed, the preceding observation has validity, then Mr. Danquah-Adu appears to have a far better chance in promptly reassessing his campaign strategy and/or political ethics, as well as his general political performance over the last four years, to see whether he would be able to retool it for better prospects come Election 2012. Short of the preceding, Mr. Danquah-Adu’s behavior appears at once sophomoric and ignoble. It is almost as if the defeated Abuakwa-North MP regards his Parliamentary Seat as a heirloom or private property to which he is immutably, or inalienably, entitled.