And Bawumia Wept!

“I told you before that in Dr. Bawumia we have an intelligent, positively scheming, proactively exuberant, adventurously sagacious politician. How he turned a mournful thanksgiving event into a political showpiece for recognition and legitimacy as Nana Addo’s heir apparent is pure milk and honey!”

It would be interesting, who emerges as the flagbearer of the New Patriotic Party in the 2024 elections. The elections may be some three years away, but the political grandstanding, shoving, and jostling is already underway in the party and the early birds are out of their nests, encircling the worms.

Alan Kyeremanten was a big name in the NPP, a major contender for the party’s flagbearership as far back as 2007. But his defeat by Nana Addo, coupled with the events that led to rumors of his resignation from the party in 2008 has radically reduced his influence in the party and even among the generality of Ghanaians for that matter.

But where Allan Cash (I wonder if he still has the cash) seemed to have dimmed and faded among party Faithfuls, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has flourished and blossomed in leaps and bounds. The Veep has become the hatchet man and the tormentor-in-Chief of the NDC since he became a politician. It would be fair to say that Dr. Bawumia is peerless when it comes to political shrewdness and propagandizing. He can play to the gallery very skillfully but at the same time, he seems to understand the inner workings of economic indices, his background as the Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana providing an anchor.

The Veep led a delegation of chiefs from his hometown to the Manhyia Palace a couple of days ago ostensibly to express his gratitude to His Majesty, Otumfuo Osei Tutu 11 for the role he played during the funeral rites of his late mother. But what was meant to be a normal show of appreciation to the Otumfuo transmogrified into a desperate, tearful, passionate plea for adoption as a political son of the Otumfuo!

His Excellency begged and pleaded with the King to consider him his son! “I have no father or mother now,” he lamented in a piercing, choky voice. “You are my everything,” he wept. But how the hatchet man became the weeping man of the palace is fit for analysis by the gods of politics. It is like saying “Nana Addo will soon expire his term. Consider me as his successor!

I told you before that in Dr. Bawumia we have an intelligent, positively scheming, proactively exuberant, adventurously sagacious politician. How he turned a mournful thanksgiving event into a political showpiece for recognition and legitimacy in Manhyia is pure milk and honey!

Jacob of the Bible was a schemer, who worked very hard to steal the blessing of legitimacy from Esau, his twin brother, and the rightful candidate for the original blessing. But whether it is a domestic scheming or a national contrivance, somehow the schemers always win, while the Esau's of this world wear their chain of legitimacy around their necks and do nothing except to cry foul when it is too late.

But Jacob had Rebecca as a partner in the crime. Indeed, she was the one who conceived the whole plot and masterminded its successful execution from beginning to the end. Unconfirmed reports in the party suggest that the President is solidly galvanizing support for his hard-working, young, and charismatic deputy. And who can blame the president for his choice?

The Veep's overall contribution to the success of the Akufo Addo led Government is unmatchable. But whether that is enough to put him in the Flagstaff House in 2024 ─all other matters properly weighed on the scale ─ is another matter altogether. Time will tell.