Who Is Being Disenfranchised, Sam Yalley?

When I read his former portfolio designation as CEO of the National Pensions Regulatory Authority, I couldn’t help but be intrigued; you see, I thought Mr. Sam P. Yalley was going to enlighten his fellow Ghanaians about how the Mahama Posse came close to literally emptying the vaults of the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT), the state-owned bank that is charged with safeguarding the payroll deductions and the pension savings of Ghanaian workers and civil servants. But, hell no, Mr. Yalley had inadvisably decided to wade into the already settled debate over the decision by the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) to compile a new National Biometric Voters’ Register (NBVR), because the one that was used in administering the 2020 General Election is commonly agreed by almost all civically patriotic Ghanaian citizens to have been illegally packed with non-Ghanaians or foreign nationals.

On the preceding count must also be underscored the fact that opposition National Democratic Congress’ robber-barons like Mr. Yalley – Little Dramani would never name you a fat cat to oversee where the money is and the chance to steal some of it, if you have not demonstrated a genius aptitude or knack for kleptocratic shenanigans – would conveniently and mendaciously have Ghanaians believe that the very wholesome decision by the IEC to compile a new National Voters’ Register is unilaterally being undertaken by chief administrators of the official statutory establishment expressly and exclusively charged with the conduct of all regional and national elections in the country, as well as some local and institutional elections.

In the case of the current National Biometric Voters’ Register, the cynical and self-serving likes of Mr. Yalley would criminally have their constituents and fellow ideological and political truckers believe that, somehow, the personal desires and wishes of the Indemnity Clause-protected operatives of the National Democratic Congress supersede the tenets and stipulations set out by the 1992 Republican Constitution of Ghana. Which, of course, is more than patently absurd. To be certain, it is downright criminal. It also goes without saying that the decision by the Jean Adukwei Mensa-headed Independent Electoral Commission was resoundingly approved by the legitimate representatives of the Ghanaian people at the national level, to wit, our National Assembly or Parliament.

And yet, Mr. Yalley, the former Mahama-appointed High Commissioner or Ambassador to India, thinks that it is tantamount to downright tyranny for the IEC to go ahead with the compilation of a new National Biometric Voters’ Register, because such a wholesome and democratically progressive decision is in diametric opposition to the will of the “revolutionary” and judge-butchering leaders of the National Democratic Congress. Had Mr. Yalley bothered to read the latest tweet by his own party’s so-called National Communications Officer, in which Mr. Samuel “Sammy” Gyamfi shamelessly sought to liken the brutal Minneapolis, Minnesota, cold-blooded Neo-Nazi-style police knee-chokehold asphyxiation of 46-year-old Mr. George Floyd, a bona fide African-American citizen of the United States, Mr. Yalley would have also heard Mr. Gyamfi loudly and pontifically assert that he unabashedly believed that it was the inalienable constitutional right of the leaders of the John Dramani Mahama-led National Democratic Congress to ensure that all foreign-born residents in Ghana got jampacked onto our National Voters’ Register, without any exceptions whatsoever.

The preceding is, in fact, according to the NDC’s National Communications Officer, what party leaders like Messrs. Samuel Ofosu-Ampofo, the National Chairman of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), who is currently standing trial at an Accra High Court for sedition, and party General-Secretary, Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia, mean when this hoodlum pack of political robber-barons and thieves of the future of our youths, in the memorable words of Nigeria’s Nobel Literature Prize Laureate Prof. Wole Soyinka, accuse Mrs. Adukwei Mensa, Chairperson of Ghana’s Independent Electoral Commission, of adopting a “Xenophobic Approach” to the compilation of a new National Biometric Voters’ Register.

And for the flat, adamant and all-too-righteous decision to uphold the integrity of Ghana’s democratic political culture, Mr. Yalley and his thievish associates and cronies want a reprise of the infamous Rawlings-led June 4, 1979 Uprising, which witnessed the ethnic-oriented slaughter of tens of thousands of Akan-descended Ghanaians by the Anlo-Ewe Trokosi Nationalist-engineered junta of the so-called Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC). I was also wondering, as an aside, whether the middle initial “P” of Mr. Yalley’s name had something to do with the Payola-Guzzling Mahama-chaperoned European Airbus SE Scandal currently being investigated by Mr. Martin ABK Amidu, the Akufo-Addo-appointed Independent Special Prosecutor.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

June 2, 2020

E-mail: [email protected]