There will be payback time for NDC, trust me

The leaders of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) do not need any lecture from Prof. Ransford Gyampo, the renowned University of Ghana’s political scientist, in order to decide on how to respond to any future invitation to the NPP’s leaders to attend any delegates’ conferences organized or hosted by their counterparts of the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), in the wake of the rather fatuously infantile decision by the NDC’s leaders to boycott the just-ended NPP’s Delegates’ Conference organized in the Eastern Regional Capital of Koforidua (See “Political Science Lecturer Blasts NDC for Boycotting NPP Conference” CitiNewsRoom.com / Modernghana.com 7/9/18).

The career General-Secretary of the NDC, Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia, has given several reasons for his party’s flat refusal to solidarize with their main political opponents, none of which has any significance beyond pathological cynicism. For instance, one reason given by the NDC’s political machine operatives is their virulent disagreement with the removal of Mrs. Charlotte Amma Kesson-Smith Osei as Chairperson of the Electoral Commission (EC). This NDC pretext has absolutely no merit, because the dismissal of Mrs. Osei was a legally deliberate decision squarely predicated on the findings of a blue-ribbon Committee of Enquiry established by Chief Justice Sophia AB Akuffo to investigate some grievances submitted in the form of a petition by some staff members of the EC to President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo. The Committee of Enquiry, it is worth noting, was established only after incontestable prima facie evidence of wrongdoing had been established against Mrs. Osei.

Earlier on, the latter had been unconstitutionally transferred from the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE), where she was serving as the Chairperson, because the NCCE is one of the constitutionally protected commissions the fortunes of whose leadership is not subject to the capricious decisions of any sitting President. What is more, the transfer of Mrs. Osei from the NCCE to the EC was a lateral act rather than a promotion, which clearly points to the fact of then-President John Dramani Mahama’s harboring an ulterior motive which had absolutely nothing to do with the professional competence of the transferee. There has also been established evidence that the appointee had intended to rig the 2016 Presidential Election in favor of her benefactor. We must, however, quickly point out that the critical question of whether, indeed, Mrs. Osei had colluded with operatives of the then-ruling National Democratic Congress lies well outside the purview of the present discussion.

What we are concerned with here is the admonishment by Prof. Gyampo that the New Patriotic Party’s leaders should not be about the very smart business of retribution or returning the NDC’s boycott of the NPP’s Koforidua Delegates’ Conference in kind or with one of their own. I am quite certain that, like me, Prof. Gyampo took a course in senior high school called Physics. In particular, I have my book opened to the page that says that: “To Every Action, There Is a Reaction.” Even God, Divine Providence, is retributive. But, of course, one does not need to take a course in Physics or Mechanics to arrive at the all-too-commonsensical conclusion that it constitutes the height of inexcusable stupidity for the leaders of the ruling New Patriotic Party to presume their National Democratic Congress’ counterparts to reside in a realm above the Natural Laws of Justice, Physics and Common Sense.

Needless to say, when the NDC’s leaders decided to boycott the most recent NPP’s National Delegates’ Conference, they were, by their own publicly stated confession, doing so in direct reaction to the legal and legitimate dismissal of the former Electoral Commission. It is only in a vacuum that any action is not immediately or directly followed, logically, by a reaction. The good news here is that we do not live in a vacuum. The NDC’s leaders also claim, rather lamely, that the invitation advanced to them to attend and solidarize with their counterparts of the New Patriotic Party came too late. Such response is sheer poppycock. Malarkey. Because like most Ghanaian citizens, the July 6 through 8 NPP’s Delegates Conference was known for months ahead of schedule. And the NDC’s leaders were also well aware of the fact that their invitation to attend was a matter of course or a patent formality.

I am also sure that during the course of the last 26 years, the NDC’s operatives have sent even more tardy invitations to their NPP counterparts whose tardiness was not facilely invoked as a pretext to boycott these delegates’ conferences. Then also, invoking the June 29 passing of former Vice-President Kwesi BekoeAmissah-Arthur as a pretext does not cut ice, in Woolfian parlance, because there is incontrovertible evidence that both the leadership and personality of the former Bank of Ghana’s governor were no more respected or admired by the key NDC operatives than they were by the latter’s counterparts.

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