Parliamentary Privileges Committee Should Suspend “Bloody Widow” Placard-Wielding NDC-MPs

Now that the leaders of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), led by the party’s longtime General-Secretary, Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia, aka General Mosquito, have decided to conduct a self-righteous referendum on political violence and contract assassinations in the country, it is about time that a political autopsy was also conducted on the governance track-record of the NDC and the skeletons in the closet of these bloody “revolutionaries,” in the words of former President John Dramani Mahama, publicly exposed for all Ghanaians to fully appreciate why the blame for the recent hostilities and violence that partly characterized the Ayawaso-West Wuogon byelection ought to be squarely laid before the edifice of the Kokomlemle, Accra, headquarters of the country’s main opposition National Democratic Congress.

Calling the widow of Mr. Emmanuel Kyeremateng Agyarko, the former New Patriotic Party’s Member of Parliament for the Ayawaso-West Wuogon Constituency, whose death occasioned the January 31^st, 2019 byelection, a “Bloody Widow,” constituted the height of parliamentary savagery in the annals of postcolonial Ghanaian history (See “ ‘Atta-Mills Bled from His Nose, Ears and Mouth but No One Called Mahama Bloody President” Abronye DC Fires” Ghanaweb.com 2/8/19). Indeed, throughout the four-and-half years that Mr. John Dramani Mahama was the substantive President of the Democratic Republic of Ghana, with widespread rumors of assassination swirling around the death of then-President John Evans Atta-Mills, absolutely no commission of inquiry or inquest was established to probe the “mysterious” death of the former Vice-President and staunch right-hand man to Chairman Jerry John Rawlings, as well as retired tax-law professor at the country’s flagship academy, the University of Ghana.

Mr. Mahama, who is presently desperately fighting to be returned to power, has never been frontally called upon by any Ghanaian citizens, either media operatives or leaders of Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), to explain the underlying motive for publicly and immodestly celebrating the demise of his then-boss as an auspicious act of Divine Providence. On this count, President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo also needs to be reminded of his solemn electioneering-campaign promise to set up a Commission of Inquiry to probe the circumstances surrounding the death of President John Evans Atta-Mills in the leadup to the 2016 general election. That the man who immediately and directly succeeded President Atta-Mills has never mustered the courage to publicly address the circumstances leading up to or surrounding the death of his much-touted magnanimous benefactor ought to concern all levelheaded and patriotic Ghanaian citizens.

Indeed, the first step before the public announcement of his intention to run for the presidency in the 2020 general election, once again, ought to have been a public explanation of his situationally ironic celebration of the death of the man who picked Mr. Mahama as his presidential-election running-mate, against the grain and to the vehement protestation of the National Democratic Congress’ widely acclaimed founding-father and his wife, to wit, Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings. And now, even as Mr. Kwame Baffoe, popularly known as Abronye DC, the First Vice-Chairman of the Brong-Ahafo Regional Chapter of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), pointedly observes, “It is common knowledge that President Atta-Mills did not die of natural causes.”

Now, somebody has some explaining to do, in New York City parlance, or New Yorkese, unless Prof. Mills’ immediate successor has also decided that the “revolutionary roots” of the Rawlings-fangled National Democratic Congress prevents him from literally letting the proverbial cat out of the bag. Abronye DC is also dead-on-target when the Brong-Ahafo’s First Vice-Chairman of the New Patriotic Party observes that “There was something definitely bizarre in the annals of Ghanaian political culture” for then-Vice-President John Dramani Mahama to have had himself sworn in on the same day that then-President John Evans Atta-Mills proverbially met his Maker. While this aspect of his relationship with the man he would posthumously accuse of having made him a “Presidential Spare-Tire” may be aptly deemed to be private and, perhaps, even out of bounds to the general taxpaying public, nevertheless, Mr. Baffoe’s shocking allegation that Mr. Mahama has not paid any courtesy call on Mrs. Ernestina Naadu Mills, widow of the former President, also needs to be thoroughly investigated, if also because it is culturally heretical, plus the fact that Ghanaians need to put all suspicions surrounding the death of Ghana’s first postcolonial President to die in office to one final rest.

I am, however, not the least bit surprised to learn from Abronye DC that the former Vice-President has hermetically and effectively severed all links and contacts with the widow, adult daughters and family members and relatives of the late Vice-President Kwesi Bekoe Amissah-Arthur. This is not the least bit surprising because during the memorial service at the Accra Conference Center, Mrs. Matilda Amissah-Arthur had made it categorically clear that she and her family had absolutely no love or fondness for the man who had rudely and narcissistically abused their paterfamilias in a sickening bid to furthering his vaulting political ambitions.

But what is absolutely beyond any shadow of doubt is the fact that going into the Ayawaso-West Wuogon parliamentary byelection, the hardnosed NDC apparatchiks had hopelessly hoped to use their trademark bullying and intimidation tactics to trounce the redoubtable Mrs. Lydia Seyram Alhassan-Agyarko, widow of Mr. Emmanuel Kyeremateng Agyarko. Unfortunately for these “Summer Revolutionaries,” in the immortalized words of Mr. Thomas Paine, of American Revolution fame, the Mahama-led “Boot-for-Boot” ballot-snatching NDC thugs had been outmaneuvered and overmatched.

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
February 9, 2019
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net