With Konadu, the value is the same

If being the longest-reigning junta first lady is any achievement to brag about, then, of course, Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings could be considered to be a significant figure on the Ghanaian political landscape. Maybe her greatest contribution to Mr. Rawlings’ faux-revolution is the “missionary role” she played in bearing the children of the half-Scottish waif.

The last time that I alluded to her $ 4 million diamond-trimmed Chinese undies, somebody well-connected to one of the big-wigs at the institution where I teach brought me up on sexual harassment charges, ageism and sexism. Well, we shall reserve precisely what transpired between the designated hatchet man contracted to professionally liquidate yours truly and the target of such liquidation, exactly a year ago, for another telling or column.

But, of course, even as you can yourselves bear witness, my dear readers, I am still alive and kicking butts like I have always done and shall continue to do, as long as the constitutionally protected murderers and bullies on the Ghanaian political landscape persist in making life unbearable for the rest of us and our “home court” relatives and clansmen and women.

I really and sincerely don’t know why anybody in the Ghanaian media thinks it matters whether Mrs. Rawlings descends to hell with her so-called National Democratic Party (NDP) or decides to return to trucking with the bloody Abongo Boys and Girls of the terror-mongering National Democratic Congress (NDC) – (See “Nana Konadu Won’t Return to NDC – NDP” Daily Guide / Modernghana.com 8/26/15). Either way, it goes without saying that the value is the same.

It is like speculating on whether Dr. Papa Kwesi Nduom is apt to rejoin the rump-Convention People’s Party (r-CPP) in the lead-up to the 2016 general election. These are jaded ideologues and political operatives who have no tricks left in their magician’s box that we haven’t either seen, heard about or experienced before, firsthand.

Of course, I know the logical temptation would be to invoke the familiar devil. You see, you want to woo somebody who brings recognizable value to a near-irreparable product. I mean, here we are talking about democracy and free speech and General Mosquito sidles up talking about cultures-of-silence and identification haircuts. For me, though, the tableau that stands out the most from the Stygian heap of slag that is the NDC’s sociopolitical mess, was that revelatory moment at the 2010 Sunyani Congress when Mrs. Rawlings was afforded perhaps the most resounding jack-booting of her life by then-President John Evans Atta-Mills, late.

Whenever this most resplendent tableau comes to mind, I also think about what the rambunctious Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia had to say for good measure. Well, according to the man popularly known as General Mosquito, the National Democratic Congress used to be owned and operated by somebody and his wife. Now the NDC has transformed itself into a modern political party with genuine national appeal, rather than a personality cult.

Well, you cannot seriously credit the National Democratic Congress with having achieved a broader national appeal, if as Mr. Adjase recently disclosed to a stunned Ghanaian public, one rudely awakes to the fact that it was actually some 76,000-and-odd Togolese nationals who put the now-President John Dramani Mahama into the Flagstaff House.

At any rate, even as I was saying, attempting to differentiate the Kwesi Nduom-owned and operated Progressive People’s Party (PPP) from the National Democratic Congress, is like attempting to differentiate the facial features of a North Vietnamese from a South Vietnamese; or even more poignantly, a North Korean from a South Korean.

You ought to have been present at the 2008 Fetu Afahye in Cape Coast, when Messrs. Nduom and Atta-Mills locked dance steps in sprightly salutatory performance of their “Yeresesamu” (sorting of the deck of playing cards?) credo and/or anthem. I personally don’t think that satirical performance was mere happenstance. Dr. Nduom would go on to preach a politics of tribalism, urging all ethnic Fantes to vote for him, one of their own, and one bred on their own soils, to the exclusion of the other presidential contenders. Well, you can readily fathom which political “alien” these two ethnic Fantes were casting out by the deliberate use of rhetorical elision (See “Mills Bodyguard in a Coma” Ghanaweb.com 9/8/08).

And yet, Dr. Nduom would have the rest of us envisage him in the classical mold of a “public servant.” I don’t know that with all his “Trumpian” bragging about his spectacular wealth, Dr. Nduom refused a single paycheck while he served in the cabinet of the Kufuor-led government of the New Patriotic Party. Indeed, word had it then that the US-trained entrepreneur was among the highest paid in the Kufuor cabinet.

And so who can really begrudge him when the former Convention People’s Party Member of Parliament for Komenda-Edina-Eguafo-Abirem calls himself the most sacrificial public servant of our august Republic?

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
August 26, 2015
E-mail: [email protected]