Why Is NDC Scared Stiff of Charles Opoku of Assin-North?

The proprietary arrogance of the leadership of the country’s main opposition party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), could not be more insufferably offensive, especially vis-à-vis the desperate attempts being made by the reprobate likes of Mr. Abraham Amaliba, the Bawku-born political hobo who is constantly complaining about how tribalism or ethnic chauvinism has prevented him from winning a parliamentary seat in that Upper-East Region’s municipality; and the former Propaganda Secretary of the National Democratic Congress, presently redesignated as the National Communications Officer of the latter party, Mr. Samuel “Sammy” Gyamfi, to prevent both the Jean Adukwei Mensa-chaired Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) and the leadership of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) from legitimately fielding Mr. Charles Opoku as the latter party’s candidate for the June 27 Assin-North’s Parliamentary Byelection.

Candidate Opoku, who was elected by Assin-North’s New Patriotic Party delegates to represent the party in the upcoming Byelection, is a bona fide indigene of the Assin-North Constituency. The Byelection has been necessitated by the recent Supreme Court’s decision to nullify the validity of the parliamentary seat hitherto held by Mr. James Gyakye Quayson, on the ticket of the National Democratic Congress, on grounds that Mr. Quayson criminally violated a statutory provision of Ghana’s 1992 Republican Constitution which prohibits candidates with dual nationalities or dual citizenship status from running for any parliamentary seat in the country (See “NPP Elects Charles Opoku as Assin-North Byelection Candidate Despite NDC’s Opposition” Modernghana.com 6/7/23).

The hopeless desperation of the leaders of the National Democratic Congress stems from the fact that Mr. Opoku, the 40-year-old engineer and philanthropist, appears to be a far and away favorite son of the Assin-North Constituency in ways that cannot be said of Mr. Quayson, who is widely known to have been a longtime Canadian resident and a veritable political opportunist strategically “tokenized” by a national development agenda-bereft National Democratic Congress. Mr. Quayson is also not known to have either initiated or completed any worthwhile development projects in his district. The rationale for vehemently protesting the candidacy of Mr. Opoku by the NDC’s leadership appears to be the fact that the NPP candidate does not live in the Assin-North Constituent.

Unfortunately for these cynical NDC leaders, the latter grievance is a patent nonissue and a downright preposterous argument, in view of the fact that most of the parliamentary representatives of both major political parties are native-born former denizens of the electoral districts or constituencies which they presently represent, nearly each and every one of them, but have not resided in their respective constituencies or natal localities for decades.

In reality, what these notorious scofflaw leaders of the National Democratic Congress need to worry themselves about is least bit the validity of the candidacy of Mr. Owusu, who reportedly won 397 votes as against the 136 votes polled by his only internal political rival or challenger in the June 7 New Patriotic Party’s constituency primary. Rather, the real problem that the NDC’s leadership needs to worry about is the fact that Mr. Quayson, whom it adamantly insists on re-fielding for the June 27 Byelection, against all reason and common sense, is a criminal convict presently awaiting trial and the near-certain possibility of being handed a considerable prison sentence in the offing. Which, in effect, means that even in the highly unlikely event of Candidate Quayson’s clinching an electoral victory, such victory is very likely to be extremely short-lived, because the courts are apt to step in, once again, to promptly invalidate this characteristically patent act of treasonous criminality on the part of both the candidate and the entire national swashbuckling leadership of the National Democratic Congress.

Now, what the preceding means is that barring any strategically savvy decision to replace Candidate Quayson with a more “wholesome” candidate, there is almost the certain possibility of the New Patriotic Party’s easily snatching the Assin-North parliamentary seat from the politically hawkish National Democratic Congress. The apparently adamant refusal by the NDC leadership to replace a legally severely damaged and irreparably compromised candidate – they claim that such obduracy is intended to reward Candidate Quayson for his brazen act of inexcusable criminality – all but assures the New Patriotic Party candidate of an impregnable victory well before the very first ballot has been cast.

Once again, a soundly defeated NDC leadership is apt to do what it is nauseatingly known to do best: cry foul and take to the principal streets of our cities, towns and villages with waves of cheaply rented protesters. Which, by the way, will be all well and good, as it inescapably signals the patently pedestrian fact that as an institutional establishment, the leadership of the country’s main opposition National Democratic Congress has absolutely nothing meaningful or worthwhile to offer the overwhelming majority of Ghana’s electorate, besides blindly looting and greedily and unconscionably sharing the collective wealth of the State among themselves and their friends and associates in their inimitable kleptocratic political con game.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
June 9, 2023
E-mail: [email protected]