Alan Once Resigned from NPP, Not Bawumia

I want to be blunt, upfront and deliberately pedestrian here, because those who almost literally destroyed the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), in the runup to the 2008 General Election appear to be shamelessly back at their “my way or the highway” game of political nihilism once again. And we had better name names here because they need to be sent a strong warning and signal to the inescapable fact that they cannot, must not, and will not be allowed to run from their ignoble and infantile track-record.

For starters, it is offensively and absurdly uncivilized for anybody to accuse Madam Amma Busia, sister of the legendary Prime Minister Kofi Abrefa Busia, of having ridden roughshod over the rules of the New Patriotic Party when, in reality, it was Mr. Alan John Kwadwo Kyerematen and his pathologically self-centered staunch partisan backers, sponsors and patrons who not only flagrantly broke the rules of the New Patriotic Party but, in the immortalized and eloquent words of Mr. B J Da Rocha, the first National Chairman of the New Patriotic Party, criminally attempted to royally sabotage the existence and well-being of the Danquah-Busia-Dombo-inspired neoliberal political establishment because their favorite candidate for the 2008 Presidential Election had been roundly and seismically routed by the now-President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo (See “Amma Busia Breaks NPP Rules” Modernghana.com 4/19/21).

It is also insufferably preposterous for anybody to assert or claim that in expressing her airtight and irrevocably hermetic support for the 2024 Presidential Candidacy of Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia, the venerable Elderly-Lady of the New Patriotic Party has, somehow, execrably and egregiously revolted against party Headquarters edict not to openly campaign for any presidential aspirant before the official call or permission has been granted for any 2024 Presidential Candidacy Aspirants to publicly and officially announce their intention to contest the same. You see, the free and unfettered expression of one’s opinion is inalienably integral to our hallowed democratic political culture, both as a party and as a nation. That was precisely what Madam Amma Busia did and was doing when she voiced her unimpeachable opinion that in terms of administrative performance, academic and professional credentials and political profile and/or stature, Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia was absolutely without any coequal among the known and suspected Presidential-Candidacy Aspirants of the New Patriotic Party in the approach towards the 2024 Presidential Election.

Madam Amma Busia did not claim to be launching the 2024 Presidential-Election Campaign of the Vice-President, when she reportedly expressed her honest to “Divine Providence” truths about the personality-profile heft of the Oxbridge-educated Dr. Bawumia. Neither has the Bono-Wenchi native been anywhere reported to have been named to any membership of the presently decidedly nonexistent 2024 Presidential-Election Campaign of Alhaji Mahamudu Bawumia. I suppose that Mr. Antwi Dapaah, the author of the rather puerile and desultory article captioned “Amma Busia Breaks NPP Rules” is telling the rest of us party loyalists and stalwarts and law-abiding Ghanaian citizens, as well, that when Mr. Alan John Kwadwo Kyerematen, the present Trade and Industry Minister, capriciously, selfishly and vindictively resigned from the New Patriotic Party, with only 4 months to the 2008 Presidential Election – actually, General Election – that this party- and nation-wrecking decision and act was intended to send a positive signal to the youths of the party on how to respect party rules and leadership.

Mr. Antwi Dapaah clearly did not grow up in the same cultural environment in which most of our primary readers and Ghanaian citizens grew up or were raised. It is also cognitively insolent for Mr. Antwi Dapaah to smugly assert that “In recent weeks, it seems there is a deliberate effort to stop all aspiring candidates from campaigning except Dr. Bawumia.” The obvious Kyerematen shill – and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that, by the way – must be promptly called upon to cite at least one instance in which the Vice-President may be envisaged to have broken party rule vis-à-vis the 2024 Presidential-Election Campaign Ban, failure of which proof he would be obligated to issue an unqualified public apology to his target of vitriol and victim of abuse. Fortunately, the record of true party loyalists and builders, as well as saboteurs, is open for the perusal and scrutiny of all who care to avail themselves of the same.

Indeed, even as the legendary and mythical Mr. Robert Nesta Marley – aka Bob Marley – once sang soulfully but inescapably truthfully, “You’re running and you’re running and you’re running away, / But you sure can’t run away from yourself, / You surely can’t run away from yourself, / You surely can’t run away from yourself.” And to the latter prophetic lines, one might aptly add, “And your blotchy track-record of party sabotage and betrayal follows you….”

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

April 19, 2021

E-mail: [email protected]