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09.04.2021 Feature Article

NDC Had Absolutely No Choice on Ken Ofori-Atta’s Vetting Approval

NDC Had Absolutely No Choice on Ken Ofori-Attas Vetting Approval
09.04.2021 LISTEN

The Parliamentary Appointments Committee’s decision to approve the renomination of Mr. Ken Ofori-Atta as Minister of Finance was decidedly a matter of course, as it were. You see, even as veteran journalist and Editor-Publisher of the New Crusading Guide, Mr. Kweku Baako, pointed out the other day, all that the cofounder of Databank, the functional equivalent of Ghana’s first modern stock exchange, needed to be able to comfortably resume the highly sensitive portfolio, in which he had already creditably acquitted himself for some four years now, was just 50-percent of the voting membership of the Parliamentary Appointments Committee (PAC). What the foregoing means is that it would really not have mattered, if even not a single member from the National Democratic Congress on the PAC had cast his or her vote for the approval of the renomination of Mr. Ofori-Atta.

All that the Finance Minister-Designate needed was the unanimous approval of the 50-percent New Patriotic Party’s membership on the PAC. So, really, the NDC members on the PAC did themselves a lot of good by making themselves relevant by wisely following through with the approval of the renomination of Mr. Ofori-Atta as Ghana’s finest Finance Minister of the Fourth Republic. As well, contrary to what Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia, the dynastic General-Secretary of the National Democratic Congress, would have the rest of us believe, Mr. Ofori-Atta is no ministerial “lame-duck” at all. He could very well be reappointed to the post of Finance Minister in a Mahamudu Bawumia Administration, although Mr. Ofori-Atta is far more likely to be appointed a Senior Minister with supervisory powers over the Finance Ministry, if a President Bawumia so decides and Mr. Ofori-Atta graciously consents to the same.

The more pragmatic and likely case scenario, however, would be that by the time that Vice-President Bawumia succeeds an outgoing President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, Mr. Ofori-Atta would have groomed several of his present staff members and appointees in the Finance Ministry to take over from him. Everybody knows that Mr. Asiedu-Nketia is merely being delusional, when the former Deputy Defense Minister, under the tenure of the late former President Jerry John Rawlings, rather facetiously asserts that the key operatives of his party counseled the PAC approval of the renomination of Mr. Ofori-Atta because strategically ridding themselves of a retired Mr. Ofori-Atta, come Election 2024, would make it easier for the National Democratic Congress to clinch a massive electoral victory. Now, this goes to show any critically thinking reader or auditor that the leaders of the National Democratic Congress are morbidly and deathly afraid of Mr. Ofori-Atta, the executive lynchpin of the phenomenal economic success story of the Akufo-Addo-led government of the New Patriotic Party.

But, of course, whether they are morbidly and/or deathly afraid of Mr. Ofori-Atta is well beside the point because when they go into the polling booth in December 2024, Ghanaian voters will be casting their ballots based on how competently and efficiently the ruling New Patriotic Party would have handled the economy, and definitely not the practically and patently irrelevant fact of whether Mr. Ofori-Atta was poised to playing any active role in a Bawumia Presidency (See “NDC Approved ‘Lame-Duck’ Ofori-Atta for Easy Win in 2024 – Asiedu-Nketia Jabs” Modernghana.com 3/31/21). So far, absolutely none of the most ardent National Democratic Congress’ critics of the Columbia University- and Yale University-educated Mr. Ofori-Atta has convincingly demonstrated that they are the intellectual and professional coequals of the latter, least of all Mr. Isaac Adongo, the Mahama-appointed Deputy Finance Minister, who kleptocratically colluded and collaborated with Mr. Seth Terkper and the rest of the NDC’s robber-barons to effectively grind Ghana’s economy to a screeching halt, including the apocalyptic bankrupting of the John Agyekum-Kufuor-minted National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS).

We need to also bear solidly in mind that warts and all, Mr. Ofori-Atta has demonstrated a level of administrative competence the likes of which was not even experienced under the equally progressive tenure of President Agyekum-Kufuor. We also need to recall the historically incontrovertible fact that Mr. Ofori-Atta played a key role in the critical resolution of the Mahama-minted economically destructive culture of Dumsor, which the former Arch-Lieutenant of the late President John Evans Atta-Mills categorically and publicly stated that the most successful Ghanaian entrepreneurs had creatively figured out an industrially progressive means of working around the “jazzily” erratic schedule of Dumsor, rather than having the Mahama regime studiously working around the clock to ensure a prompt and effective resolution of the same.

If NDC operatives like General Mosquito – as Mr. Asiedu-Nketia is popularly known – sound comical and confused, you bet these megalomaniacal political rascals and robber-barons are in a panic mode, even as Ghanaians have increasingly come to realize the grim and factual reality that the Cash-and-Carry-minded leadership of the faux social democratic National Democratic Congress is absolutely no viable alternative to the pragmatically neoliberal and social-interventionist oriented leadership of the ruling New Patriotic Party.

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

April 3, 2021

E-mail: [email protected]

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