What Consultative Democratic Process Is Chairman Rawlings Talking About?

There was absolutely nothing “consultative” or fundamentally democratic about the Jerry John Rawlings-led June 4, 1979 putsch that actually delayed Ghanaian democracy by at least two months, in the short term, and may very well have set the stage for the 11-year Rawlings’ dictatorship; so, it is not clear what the Founding-Father of Ghana’s main opposition political party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) means, when former President Rawlings cavalierly and hypocritically accuses the Jean Adukwei Mensa-headed Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) of not pursuing an adequate policy of a consultative decision-making process when, in fact, this is precisely what the key administrators of the IEC have been diligently and studiously and religiously doing ever since the Chairperson of the IEC was officially appointed to the job and to this post on August 1, 2018 (See “Election 2020: Rawlings Urges EC to Use Consultative Approach” Ghana News Agency (GNA) / Ghanaweb.com 6/5/20).

For starters, the very wholesome and salutary decision to compile a new National Biometric Voters’ Register (NBVR) is a controversy and a heated debate that has been raging since 2012, when a crackerjack team of savvy New Patriotic Party (NPP) experts, led by the then-Vice-Presidential Candidate Dr. Mahamadu Bawumia uncovered widespread evidence of the criminal swamping of Ghana’s National Voters’ Register (NVR) with the names and the statistical details or particulars of foreign nationals, largely nonresident citizens of such neighboring countries as Togo, Burkina Faso and the Ivory Coast, and several other West African countries and countries well beyond the West African subregion.

The extant Chairperson of the Electoral Commission (EC), Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, would fiercely and adamantly fight off any reasonable attempt to prune or clean up the National Voters’ Register. The former Political Science Lecturer of the University of Ghana, the country’s tertiary flagship academy, would later admit to the Justice William Atuguba-presided panel of Supreme Court Jurists that, indeed, the country’s Voters’ Register was jampacked with the names of legions of ineligible foreign nationals. It is this category of illegally registered voters that the leaders of the National Democratic Congress would have the rest of the nation believe would be flagrantly and effectively disenfranchised, if such names alien names are legally and sensibly removed from Ghana’s Biometric Voters’ Register (BVR) in the runup to the 2020 General Election.

So, which party is really to blame here, Chairman Rawlings? The leaders of the National Democratic Congress or the conscientious and professionally unimpeachable administrators of the Independent Electoral Commission? This is what Chairman Rawlings ought to have objectively and dispassionately addressed in his 41^st June 4 Annual Address. But, of course, narcissistic pontifical bluster and all, the overwhelming majority of Ghanaian citizens are well aware of the fact that Mr. Rawlings is anything but a morally responsible, honest, upright and accountable leader. We witnessed a striking example of such hawkish dishonesty in the Klottey-Korle Constituency, in Accra-Central, nearly four years ago, when Chairman Rawlings, flanked on both sides by Messrs. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia, the NDC’s General-Secretary, and Godwin Edudzi Tamakloe, the Trokosi Nationalist Lawyer, literally snatched the parliamentary seat of that constituency from the legitimate candidate and parliamentary incumbent for the eldest daughter of Chairman Rawlings, to wit, Dr. Zanetor Agyeman-Rawlings.

It is about time that the Sogakope Mafia Generalissimo come to sober terms with the fact that it is his perennial and ingrained personal political culture of AK-47-toting impunity that has made it extremely difficult for protégés like Mr. Asiedu-Nketia and Mr. Samuel Ofosu-Ampofo, the criminally indicted NDC’s National Chairman, to wisely and maturely come to terms with the fact that the bloody junta years of their political patriarch and patron, when Strongman Rawlings unilaterally dictated governance policy, are well behind Fourth-Republican Ghana. We must also underscore, for the umpteenth time, that the very decision by the administrators and technocrats of Ghana’s Independent Electoral Commission to compile a new National Biometric Voters’ Register was taken with the consultative and collaborative oversight of the bona fide and democratically elected representatives of the people, to wit, the Members of our National Assembly or Parliament. Could such decision be any more democratic?

Finally, the indisputable fact that Mrs. Mensa and her IEC associates and staff have consulted far more with the so-called stakeholders of our electoral system and process, largely the leaders of all the 24, or so, legally registered political parties in the country, as well as some prominent and major Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) leaders than any of her predecessors, ought to be emphasized. So, really, what is Chairman Rawlings saying or implying here?

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

June 5, 2020

E-mail: [email protected]