We Need Unity, Honesty And Discipline To Win Power

There can absolutely be no gainsaying the fact that a party deeply divided like the present New Patriotic Party (NPP) cannot be expected to win power or be returned to the democratic reins of governance (See "We Need Unity To Win Power In 2016 - Joe Ghartey" Peacefmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 5/30/15). What, however, remains to be resolved is whether justice ought to be literally thrown under the bus in the desperate pursuit of unity. And also whether merely holding our fires of rancor, incrimination and recrimination can necessarily be equated with either peace and/or unity. In other words, much more needs to be done beyond effusive and pontifical calls for a united front. American civil rights activists are fond of the following maxim: "No Justice, No Peace!"

I perfectly agree with Mr. Joseph Ghartey, the Essikado-Ketan New Patriotic Party Member of Parliament and former Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, that unity is an indispensable prerequisite to winning power and the democratic right to governance. Still, regarding the question of whether NPP National Chairman, Mr. Paul Afoko, and the party's General-Secretary, Mr. Kwabena Agyei Agyepong, get to be afforded free administrative rein while police investigators enquire into the scandalous acid-dousing assassination of Mr. Adams Mahama, the former Upper-East Regional Chairman of the New Patriotic Party, must be given more serious thought than merely affording the two besieged men a knee-jerk sort of the benefit of the doubt.

The fact of the matter is that Messrs. Afoko and Agyepong are no ordinary citizens. They are the topmost administrators of the country's largest opposition party. The apparent zeal to keeping them in office may well induce a cooling of the feet of police investigators, for the latter may very well be disinclined to court the conniption of a formidable mass of unity-craving desperadoes. Indeed, anybody who has been paying close and sedulous attention to published reactions of some major players among the ranks of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), readily senses that the present call for a ceasefire, first publicly and officially demanded by the 2016 Presidential Candidate of the New Patriotic Party, is of far greater benefit to the key operatives of the NDC than it is to the rank-and-file membership of the NPP.

The problem that the likes of the Essikado-Ketan MP, who also doubles as the Second-Deputy Speaker of Ghana's Parliament, face is the decidedly blighted public image that Messrs. Afoko and Agyepong present to the party. No doubt, NDC National Chairman, Mr. Kofi Portuphy, and General-Secretary Johnson Asiedu-Nketia, must be celebrating the latest windfall presented to them by the leadership of the New Patriotic Party. And that windfall, of course, is the patently weak-kneed decision by the leadership of the New Patriotic Party to let Messrs. Afoko and Agyepong to remain fully at post until the investigative dragnet of the Ghana Police Service ropes them in, assuming that it ever does.

What makes this situation very different from other known similar cases, is the fact that when the news of the acid-dousing assassination of Mr. Adams Mahama broke, Mr. Afoko promptly copped an alibi for his younger brother, Mr. Gregory Afoko, who had been almost immediately fingered by many local party stalwarts who had been studiously following his widely alleged vigilante activities. We must also hasten to add that Mr. Gregory Afoko is a notorious ex-convict who is known to have spent a remarkable temporal span in the slammer. Now, it well appears that Big Brother Paul's alibi has woefully failed to catch or muster forensic scrutiny. The younger Mr. Afoko is also widely known to have constituted a posse of vigilantes routinely used to "protect" the NPP National Chairman, whenever the latter and his close factional associates would, reportedly, be in the Bolgatanga township.

This aspect of the case is very significant because Mr. Gregory Afoko's unnamed vigilante group has been widely acknowledged to be rabidly anti-Akufo-Addo and also virulently opposed to any staunch local backer of the 2016 New Patriotic Party's flagbearer. It would be meaningful if the NPP set up its own investigations panel to enquire into any operational links which Messrs. Afoko and Agyepong may have had to the aforementioned group, as well as others that may exist elsewhere around the country. Messrs. Afoko and Agyepong are clearly under an inescapable cloud of suspicion which can only be effectively resolved if these two men are temporarily asked to stay away from party headquarters, until all investigations are complete. The two men may well emerge unscathed legally, but it may not necessarily imply that there hasn't been any wrongdoing on their part.

In other words, how tough-minded Nana Akufo-Addo and his associates are able to handle the present crisis may very well determine whether the three-time flagbearer of the New Patriotic Party would be able to gain legitimate electoral access to the Flagstaff House come January 2017.

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
May 30, 2015
E-mail: [email protected]