Manasseh Should Stop Shilling for an Incurably Corrupt Mahama

Investigative journalist Manasseh Azure Awuni should put on his thinking cap and stop making an irreparable nuisance of himself and his professional credibility by pretending as if the patently irrational and socio-politically unhealthy attempt by former President John “European Airbus Payola” Dramani Mahama to mischievously and self-servingly politicize the judiciary was the right thing to do, because it absolutely is not (See “Stop Being the Mouthpiece of the Judiciary – Manasseh Tells Akufo-Addo” Modernghana.com 9/13/22). After all, wasn't it the same then investigative and broadcast journalist with the Multimedia Radio and Television Network who exposed the former President's criminal abuse of his position as Vice-President in the late President John Evans Atta-Mills-led government of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), to solicit a humongous payola package from the Burkinabe road and building contractor by the name of Monsieur Jibril/Gibril Kanazoe?

So, why does Mr. Awuni want to backpedal now? Have his palms been greased recently by Osagyefo Kwame Gonja? It conspicuously looks like it. Then, also, is it not quite obvious and logical that a thoroughgoing corrupt and kleptocratic politician, in the evergreen words of the late President Jeremiah “Jerry” John Rawlings, the globally acclaimed Founding-Father of the National Democratic Congress, would so cheaply resort to rabidly detesting the very membership and institutional establishment of the judiciary that primarily exists to prevent the kind of egregious acts of heinous criminality and nation-wrecking behavior that the Bole-Bamboi native, from the Akufo-Addo-created Savannah Region, has proven himself to be exceptionally adept at more than any other prominent Ghanaian politician?

You see, as a professionally trained lawyer who has remarkably distinguished himself in his field of practice and has an enviable track-record in the legal sub-discipline of civil and human rights activism, it goes without saying that President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo is far and away better qualified to staunchly defend the integrity and credibility of both Chief Justice Kwasi Anin-Yeboah and the judicial establishment, as a whole, than the rabble-rousing robber-baron and reprobate and unconscionable self-serving critic who stands against everything for which the judicial system was established to jealously safeguard and protect.

Then, also, the very idea that the former President would so flagitiously and egregiously champion the formation of a National Democratic Congress' Lawyers' Association or Conference, even when he himself has absolutely no professional competence in the legal practice, speaks volumes to the decidedly untenable and democratically ignoble and ungodly attempt by this Russian-trained so-called political historian and communications specialist to divide and politicize the hitherto purely meritorious and civically inclusive and socially responsible professional discipline of human rights protection and the promotion of probity, accountability, transparency and justice in government.

Which is also why it could not have been more opportune for President Akufo-Addo to have issued his well-targeted and long-overdue response to a democracy- and nation-wrecking former President Mahama at a two-day conference of the Ghana Bar Association (GBA), the professionally inclusive and ideologically and politically neutral umbrella organization and referee of all qualified and certified legal practitioners in Ghana, in the Volta Regional Capital of Ho. In other words, by so rather unwisely going to bat for Yagbowura Kwame Gonja, Mr. Manasseh Azure Awuni risks not only irreparably undermining his own hard-earned image and reputation as a front-rank media practitioner, he also risks making himself a stumbling block in the way of democratic good governance and morally responsible and accountable leadership.

You see, the good news here is that the former President has, so far, only managed to convince Ghanaian voters who were yet to make up their minds vis-à-vis the best or most ideal Presidential Candidate to choose or select in the watershed runup to the 2024 Presidential Election – we are talking about the so-called swing-voters here, by the way – that the former Atta-Mills Arch-Lieutenant who, 10 years on, can still not look Ghanaians straight in the eye and tell us precisely the circumstances under which his former boss met his death, definitely does not deserve to be counted among the best qualified 2024 Presidential-Election Candidates or Nominees. The man clearly lacks common sense and moral and professional integrity. Plus, who wants to be taken back to the miserable days of Dumsor?

If, indeed, the judiciary is as politically biased as Mr. Mahama maintains, how does creating an association of lawyers who brazenly and ideologically claim to subscribe to the tenets and the populist and “lootocratic” political agenda of the National Democratic Congress defuse such purportedly morally and professionally biased and unsavory judicial practice or subculture? It is almost as if the leadership of the National Democratic Congress only finds something wrong with the sort of judicial bias that it now blames Chief Justice Anin-Yeboah of having singularly and prejudicially institutionalized as the modus operandi of our nation's judicial system, primarily because such perceived judicial prejudice or bias was not institutionalized by jurists either appointed by leadership of the National Democratic Congress or perceived to hew to the faux-socialist and “lootocratic” tendencies of the putative Gonja and the Sogakope mafia thugs who routinely call the shots in the Rawlings-fangled State-Capture juggernaut that is the National Democratic Congress.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
September 13, 2022
E-mail: [email protected]