The Keywords Are "Beauty" And "Character"

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



The devious attempt being made to railroad one of the two putatively most formidable personalities among the top ranks of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) in favor of another will not work (See "Women Vote for Handsome Men - Kufuor" Daily Dispatch 3/31/14). It would not work because the dynamics of how presidential elections are lost and won are far more complex than some of our novice pundits would have Ghanaians believe.



There is, of course, absolutely no gainsaying the fact that "beauty" plays a considerable part in the decision of voters everywhere in the democratic world, irrespective of cultural and/or technological advancement. In mainstream American commercial parlance it is called "packaging." Still, ultimately, it is the temper of the times and the issues at stake, and how these factors are handled by the contestants and/or candidates involved that determine who gets to run a government and who resigns her-/himself to the gray margins of the political and ideological opposition.



And I don't suppose for even a split-second that of the five, or so, leading contenders who vied for the Election 2008 and 2012 presidency, the most prepossessing, or attractive, candidates, respectively, were Messrs. John Evans Atta-Mills and John Dramani Mahama. The other candidates, as I remember them, were Drs. Papa Kwesi Nduom, Abu Sakara, Edward Mahama; and Nana Akufo-Addo and Mr. Hassan Ayariga.



I have also never heard any pundit worthy of such designation remark that Prime Minister Kofi Abrefa Busia edged Mr. Komla Agbeli Gbedemah out of the 1969 prime ministerialship squarely on the strength of the physical attraction or looks of the former, rather than the victor's widely respected cognitive puissance, eloquence and scholarship as a world-class sociologist who, very likely, appreciated the problems and needs of the Ghanaian electorate much better than his rivals and political opponents.



Likewise, the same argument cannot pass muster when juxtaposed against the country's 1979 presidential election, a contest that was fiercely fought between Dr. Hilla (Babini) Limann and Mr. Victor Owusu. I would rather not draw in the consecutive, and respective, contests between former Chairman Jerry John Rawlings, on the one hand, and Professor Albert Adu-Amankwaa Boahen and Mr. John Agyekum-Kufuor, on the other, in 1992 and 1996. Suffice it to observe in passing, however, that vestigial postcolonial products like the half-Scottish Mr. Rawlings continue to favorably garner traction from their unearned status as model "Afropeans." They are the primary and veritable beneficiaries of the deleterious psychological impact of post-slavo-colonial regimes the world over.



What is clear about how presidential elections are won in postcolonial Ghana, especially in our Fourth-Republican democratic dispensation, is that whichever candidate manages to more effectively character-assassinate - or slander - his most formidable opponent invariably carries the vote. But, of course, the latter is often significantly aided by which political party is the more nihilistic or self-destructive; which is simply another way of saying that the party with more petty-minded "crabs-in-a-bucket" syndrome tends to be poised for a crushing defeat even before the first ballot has been cast.



In other words, character, charisma and personality have equal synergistic chances of making or breaking a candidate as much as beauty or one's degree of cynosure. And the foregoing factors have absolutely nothing to do with the purportedly superficial inclination of the vast majority of women towards "sexy men." We may not want to facilely discount stereotypical feminine fantasies as a determinant in electoral choices where men happen to be the foremost or predominant candidates.



By the same token, neither can focus, poise and finesse be facilely discounted as prime ingredients of winsome candidates. Indeed, when roles get reversed, with women being the drivers and men the fares or passengers, as it were, the end results tend not to be any significantly different. To be certain, men are more apt to rabidly appropriate their prurient faculties in the selection of winsome female candidates.



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

Department of English

Nassau Community College of SUNY

Garden City, New York

March 31, 2014

E-mail: [email protected]

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