Alan Kyerematen Was Not Even a Member of NPP in December 2008

When the staunch backer of Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia and the New Patriotic Party’s Member of Parliament for Afiduase (Effiduase)-Asokore Constituency, in the Asante Region, Dr. Kwame Ayew Afriyie, calls the 2024 Alan John Kwadwo Kyerematen Presidential-Election Campaign Team to the carpet for rudely and cavalierly attempting to ignore the heavily tainted membership and active-participation record of their candidate in regard to the epic democratic struggle to gain well-deserved access to Jubilee House, or the Presidency, and Parliament as well, the vehemently and implacably revolted critic does so unimpeachably on the strength of the available and readily accessible evidence (See “You Didn’t Shout ‘Aduru Me So’ [It is my turn] When We Needed Someone to Mount the Witness Box’ – NPP-MP Takes Swipe at Alan” Modernghana.com 5/18/23).

The fact of the matter is that after pompously claiming that he and his thoroughly routed campaign-team operatives had major issues with the necessary and logical need to synergistically collaborate with the triumphant Team Akufo-Addo for the even more uphill battle against the Mills-Mahama Team for the coveted occupancy of the Presidency, in the wake of the New Patriotic Party’s December 2007 Presidential-Primary Election, Alan Cash, as Mr. Kyerematen is also popularly known, wasted nearly half of the year 2008 pretending to be interested in amicably and constructively hashing out whatever differences the 2007 NPP Presidential-Primary Runner-Up had with Team Akufo-Addo. For the latter purpose, we significantly noted that a blue-ribbon Committee of Eminent Elders of the New Patriotic Party, led by the late Mr. B J Da Rocha, would be established to facilitate the swift and thorough ironing out of any kinks or major differences that the putative Presidential-Candidacy Favorite Steed of a lame-duck President John “The Gentle Giant” Agyekum-Kufuor perceived or even delusively imagined to be militating against his amicable strategic collaboration with the 2008 NPP’s Presidential Nominee, to wit, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

In the end, the legendary and nationally celebrated Mr. Da Rocha would sadly and angrily conclude that, in fact, Candidate Kyerematen had absolutely no credible or substantive grievance against Team Akufo-Addo, short of the downright ludicrous feeling that the decisively defeated Candidate Kyerematen was incorrigibly and intransigently convinced that he was a far better presidential-candidacy material than the former Agyekum-Kufuor-appointed Attorney-General and Justice Minister and, subsequently, Minister for Foreign Affairs and ECOWAS Regional Integration.

Now, the preceding details and observations tell us several things about the character and the modus operandi of this pathologically self-centered and morbidly self-important former Agyekum-Kufuor-appointed Minister for Trade, Industry and Special Presidential Initiatives. The first and the most obvious of his massive character foibles is the fact that Candidate Kyerematen has this unbridled streak of arrogance that makes the burly statured native of Edweso (Ejisu) and Patasi, both in the Asante Region, falsely perceive himself to be far more significant than the very institutional establishment of the Danquah-Busia-Dombo-inspired New Patriotic Party.

Indeed, a critical examination of the general demeanor of the man disturbingly reflects the profile of one who has an acute sense of his own familial privilege and hereditary sense of entitlement. In this sense, therefore – and I broach this with extreme but absolutely necessary reluctance – Alan Cash strikingly shares this politically and strategically inimical or downright negative and pernicious trait and major character weakness, to be certain, with another former New Patriotic Party presidential candidate, later nominee, whose vaulting leadership ambition may have ended up causing him to take unnecessarily too long to arrive at his fervidly desired destination. However, unlike this other character, Candidate Kyerematen has had and continues to have an extremely difficult time in transcending this professionally fatal moral character defect for both his very own personal good and the greater good of his fanatical supporters and hangers-on.

The problem here, though, is that decidedly unlike his much older behavioral “twin brother,” as some have critically observed, this writer does not absolutely in any way whatsoever envisage Candidate Kyerematen’s ever being able to healthily grow out of such wholly self-constructed suicidal fish trap. This is rather unfortunate but that is the way that it fatally and permanently is with some inordinately egocentric and egomaniacal personalities. The fact of the matter is that Alan Cash has this oversized ego that prevents this otherwise physical and political behemoth from clearly visualizing the proverbial bigger picture. A political cataract of some sort.

The other equally strategically fatal flaw with Alan Cash is that as reputedly academically precocious as he very well might have been while growing up as a little boy and a preadolescent, nevertheless, the mid-to-late 60-something-year-old professionally trained lawyer and business administrator of some nondescript sort, having also been the longest-serving Trade and Industry Minister in both the New Patriotic Party-sponsored governments of Messrs. Agyekum-Kufuor and Akufo-Addo, while on the hustings or the electioneering-campaign trail, Candidate Cash does not remarkably come off as a politician who is capable of drawing genuine crowds of staunch and ideologically devoted supporters, short of his own very close friends and associates with stiff upper lips like himself.

Then also, our protagonist visibly lacks that strategically fetching sense of self-deprecation of the winsome sort that is widely associated with Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia, which has been widely observed to put the Walewale native, from the Akufo-Addo-created North-East Region, in a class all by himself. That is the way it is, I guess. Which, in essence, means that there is little to absolutely nothing that can be done about it. Like teaching an old horse new strategies and maneuvers, you say, Dear Reader? Well, your guess, as they say, is as darn fantabulously kosher as my own.

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
May 31, 2023
E-mail: [email protected]