John Kumah’s JoyNews’ Threat Sounds Rather Lame and Tentative

I have not had ample time to listen to his public speeches, addresses and pronouncements to be able to accurately size him up intellectually and politically. But Deputy Finance Minister Dr. John Kumah comes off to me as a very decent and intelligent man. I have even suggested a couple of times to a few people, largely relatives, that I have had occasion to converse with on Ghanaian politics, that I would not be the least bit surprised if in the highly unlikely but definitely long overdue departure of “Agyabone” Ofori-Atta, the Akufo-Addo cousin and substantive Finance Minister, Dr. Kumah were elevated to this very significant and most sensitive post.

As well, I have even opined on occasion my firm belief that it is actually Dr. Kumah who may very well be running the Finance Ministry, albeit with quite a considerable level or degree of hindrance and interference from our seemingly clueless and bumbling Finance Minister and, possibly, together with some other key but largely unknown operatives at the Presidency as well. Whatever the real case scenario may be, it is quite obvious that this seemingly quiet and studious-looking man has been dealt a raw deal by some news reporters and program hosts of the Kwasi Twum-owned and operated Multimedia establishment, a downright damnably malicious deal that has brought the Deputy Finance Minister into what appears to be considerable disrepute, to the extent of even having one of the least progressive, nimble and well-mannered Members of Parliament call the common sense and the integrity of Dr. Kumah into question.

You see, for an intellectually fluffy SOB like Mr. Alhassan Suhuyini, the Tamale-North National Democratic Congress-MP, to call Dr. Kumah “a stupid man” constitutes the very height of insolence. Which was also why in calling upon the relevant media operatives at JoyNews to promptly apologize and delete the gross iconic misrepresentation of the Finance Minister on the Multimedia website, one would also have expected the target or victim of obloquy or crass and gross abuse to have also called on Alhaji Alhassan Suhuyini to promptly retract his insult and apologize to the Deputy Finance Minister, that is, assuming, at least hypothetically, that, indeed, Dr. Kumah had not made the downright provocative remark that is attributed to him by JoyNews against many an innocent and unsuspecting ordinary Ghanaian citizen unsavorily caught up in the tyrannical mesh of the so-called Domestic Debt Exchange Program (DDEP) brouhaha.

This is fundamentally because Mr. Suhuyini is himself a professionally trained journalist whose first proverbial port of call ought to have been for him to have promptly called the Deputy Finance Minister to ascertain from the latter whether, indeed or, in fact, Dr. Kumah had made any statement negatively calling the psychological balance of protesters adversely affected by the DDEP – which is virtually every Government of Ghana bondholder – into question, if, indeed, Messrs. Kumah and Suhuyini are the “good friends” that the Deputy Finance Minister claims both men to be. Which also immediately reminds yours truly of the jaded old saying which runs as follows: “Show me your friend and I would show you your character” or “precisely who you are.” I mean, with “good friends” in august and high places like Alhaji Alhassan Suhuyini, does Dr. Kumah really need any enemies, even in the nationally ubiquitous stables of the Multimedia establishment?

I have also, by the way, lately been thinking that perhaps it is high time that decent and intellectually remarkable junior cabinet appointees like Dr. Kumah seriously signaled to the President that “The Little Man from Kyebi” was not doing either himself or the rest of the nation any good by insistently and adamantly continuing to keep in place “Agyabone” Ofori-Atta, who well appears to have done far more harm to the country’s economy than any other “Kitty Keeper” in recent memory, including the recently deceased Prof. Kwesi Botchway, the man who so ignobly and benightedly introduced the fiscally inexcusably regressive Procrustean IMF-World Bank-sponsored Structural Adjustment Program (SAP), which pretty much eerily reminds this writer of the current so-called Domestic Debt Exchange Program.

At any rate, his threat against what Dr. Kumah terms as the gross and morally and professionally insulting misrepresentation of his opinion on the reaction of the general Ghanaian public towards the DDEP – he claims to have really been addressing Mr. Senyo Hosi, another quite decent New Patriotic Party stalwart – is much rather too lame and decidedly tentative because merely vowing to boycott Multimedia forums or platforms and interviews will not really significantly impact this unarguably foremost private media establishment in the country. To be taken more seriously by the culprits or the target or targets of his conniption or ire, Dr. Kumah’s demand for retraction and an unqualified apology must be legally backed with the certain promise of a defamation lawsuit and forensically sustainable evidence. Otherwise, he would simply be intellectually and psychologically “playing with himself,” if the Dear Reader knows precisely what yours truly is talking about (See “Apologize for Scandalous, False Reportage or I Boycott Your Platform – John Kumah Threatens JoyNews” Modernghana.com 2/5/23).

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
February 5, 2023
E-mail: [email protected]