Go to Hell, Sammy Crabbe!

Sammy Crabbe

Now that his lawsuit against the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) has been thrown out by an Accra High Court judge, the party ought to be seriously looking forward to effectively severing links with Mr. Sammy Crabbe by summary expulsion (See “I Disagree with the Judge; I’ll Appeal His Ruling – Crabbe” Citifmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 6/2/16). I continue to wonder how this man managed to get himself elected Second Vice-Chairman of the most democratic major political party in the country. The man clearly comes off as both emotionally and psychologically unhinged.

You see, what got me curious about Mr. Crabbe’s suit was when he decided to characterize his all-too-appropriate indefinite suspension as Second Vice-Chairman of the NPP as a glaring case of human rights violation, almost as if it was his inalienable right to have been voted into the position of NPP’s Second Vice-Chairman. Then he also decided to abuse the decent level of protection afforded him against arbitrary removal or dismissal as an administrative executive by the party’s constitution.

The problem with Mr. Crabbe is that once his presidential candidate of choice got roundly trounced not once or twice but three times, by Nana Akufo-Addo, he quickly came to envisage his position as a veritable missionary cudgel or truncheon to be used to mercilessly bash in the clean-shaven skull of the former Justice Minister, thereby swiftly and effectively ending his political career.

It was in this aspect of his strategic maneuvering that he increasingly came to envisage the indefinitely suspended Chairman Paul A. Afoko as a martyr against whose rabidly anti-Akufo-Addo wagon to hedge his bet. It was apt to become a drawn-out war of attrition, once it became clear to the so-called Big Three than the man they were so hell-bent on taking down was anchored by roots that went far deeper into the bowels of the Earth than those of the proverbial mahogany tree.

What I find to be quite fascinating about Mr. Crabbe’s litigation tack is his devious and mischievous attempt to play fast-and-loose with the standing rules of the party. For instance, he was fully aware of the fact that the party’s National Disciplinary Committee (NDC) was established to take care of matters pertaining to the conduct of each and every member of the New Patriotic Party without exception; and yet, Mr. Crabbe deliberately pretended that he and his associates stood at least a notch above the influence and authority of this executive institutional arm of the party.

Thus the trio had adamantly maintained that it was only a National Delegates’ Congress that had the power to sanction them via an electoral process. Which in effect meant that short of Divine Intervention, Messrs. Afoko, Agyepong and Crabbe were inviolably a law unto themselves.

Then having woefully failed to overrule the standing disciplinary protocol of the party with their own self-interested interpretation of the same, the trio would vacuously resort to impugning the qualification of a couple of the National Disciplinary Committee members to sit on the NDC. That such lurid tack insufferably smacked of sexism, at least in one instance, had been predictably lost on the trio. And, indeed, the latter non-starter strategy may well have seriously derailed their case.

Thankfully, Justice Dennis Adjei was able to boldly, objectively and fearlessly bring the full heft of justice to bear upon the pate of Mr. Crabbe, by wisely reminding the plaintiff that the membership of the National Executive Council (NC) did not breach any rules of conduct when it quite appropriately and logically permitted the disciplinary arm of the party to examine, evaluate and sanction the so-called Big Three headquarters administrators who had so cavalierly and snootily presumed to run the affairs of the party according to their own whimsical roadmap, rather than that which had been democratically designed and sanctioned by the NPP-NEC.

Mr. Crabbe has brazenly indicated that he has absolutely no respect for the collective interests of the NPP in the hectic lead-up to Election 2012. Speaking to the media in the wake of his conclusive judicial loss, the suspended Second Vice-Chairman of the New Patriotic Party noted that rather than accept the verdict of the Human Rights Court and promptly join hands with the party’s presidential campaign team to ensure an electoral landslide victory on November 7, he intended to spend the next five or six months systematically thwarting the efforts of Team Akufo-Addo and Bawumia with an appeal request. The NPP-NEC can, of course, promptly respond by petitioning the court to stay all proceedings until after the November 7 general election.

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