NDC Has Never Played by the Electoral Rules of Democratic Engagement – Part 1

As I vividly recall, the leadership of the present main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) has never been interested in conducting a clean democratic election in the country. Which makes the name of the institutional establishment of the NDC inescapably reminiscent of the equally ironic name of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) or North Korea, as the latter country is much better known and recognized around the world. In the Country of the Three Kims, so far, that is, the cultural and the political praxis of democracy is decidedly nonexistent. What we have there cannot even be called a Constitutional Democratic Dynasty of the sort that presently exists in Ghana’s immediate eastern neighbor, namely, the Veritable Kangaroo Republic of Togoland (KRT), or Togo for short. Now, what we have in Ghana’s aforementioned main opposition political party that passes for democratic electoral engagement can, at best, be described as a coronation.

Which is why it ought not to come as absolutely a surprise that the twice-defeated, one-term former President John “European Airbus Payola” Dramani Mahama continues to have a stranglehold on the ostensibly elective Presidential Nomination post or position of the late Jeremiah “Jerry” John Rawlings-founded institutional juggernaut that is the National Democratic Congress. Which is also why the longtime dynastic former General-Secretary of the latter party would decide to attend and graduate from the Senior-Staff College of the Ghana Armed Forces at the superannuated age of 64, in order to bully his way into being elected National Chairman of the National Democratic Congress with reckless abandon. It is quite unarguably clear that the wiry-framed man by the very fitting nickname of “General Mosquito” unctuously perceives himself to be the avatar or the ideological and the practical incarnation of the late former Ghana Airforce Pilot whom this former elementary school Arithmetic Teacher once publicly and virulently accused of having cannibalized and privatized the institutional establishment of the National Democratic Congress on behalf of his wife, Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings, and himself, of course.

Now, it quaintly turns out that “Lt-Col” Johnson “The Mosquito” Asiedu-Nketia has always wanted to become precisely that of which he has long pretended to be convulsively averse. Now, like it or not, Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia has become the spitting image of Chairman Jerry John Rawlings. Forget about Mr. Kimathi Rawlings! Now, talking about deliberate disenfranchisement, the accusation that the corporate leadership of the National Democratic Congress recently leveled against the Jean Adukwei Mensa-headed Ghana Independent Electoral Commission (GIEC), the real culprits here are the ones doing all the finger pointing. After all, weren’t we all around the proverbial cabbage patch this past June, when the leadership of the National Democratic Congress “nose-thumbingly” informed the membership of the Global Ghanaian Community (GGC) that it had deliberately decided to literally stack the proverbial deck of playing cards against the presidential-candidacy ambitions of Dr. Kwabena Duffuor, by deliberately ensuring that the presidential-primary election delegates who had publicly pledged their support to the former Atta-Mills-appointed Finance Minister did not get to fully exercise their franchise, because the “Madman of Bole” or Bole-Bamboi, in the Akufo-Addo-created Savannah Region, had since long bought and paid a lifetime fee for the title of Presidential Nominee of the National Democratic Congress?

It ought to have become clear to all and sundry that politically formidable presidential-candidacy aspirants like the former Rawlings-appointed Governor of the Bank of Ghana, or aspirants of Asante and/or Non-Fante Akan ethnicity have always been granted absolutely no democratic right of access to gun for the topmost elective position of the Sogakope-Mafia founded institutional establishment of the National Democratic Congress. Then also must be significantly factored into the discursive equation what the “longest-serving” Rawlings-appointed First Chairperson of the Electoral Commission, Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, told the Justice William Atuguba-presided 9 Apex Court panel of jurists that adjudicated the 2012/2013 Akufo-Addo-led Presidential-Election Petition vis-à-vis what constituted “Overvoting” and “Undervoting” by the passionately and the pathologically partisan lights of the former University of Ghana political scientist.

Well, for the benefit of the mnemonic or memory refreshment of those among our regular readers who may have so soon forgotten this most scandalous episode in the 8-month-long hocus-pocus proceedings of the Atuguba-presided game-of-musical-chairs, as it was perfectly characterized by some disconsolately disappointed critics and observers, the University of California, Santa Barbara, doctoral-degree holder in Political Science told the Atuguba-presided Apex Court panel that judicated the aforementioned petition that he had absolutely no forensically credible inkling of precisely what constituted either “Overvoting” or “Undervoting” vis-à-vis the numerical accuracy of ballots cast in the 2012 Presidential Election, compared to the actual number of citizens who had been duly registered to vote in that hotly contested watershed election. Earlier on, Dr. Afari-Gyan had testified before the same Atuguba-presided panel of Supreme Court Jurists that he had been fully aware of the fact of a remarkable number and percentage of legally underage and unqualified minors having been illegally and criminally registered to vote by operatives of both major political parties of the country, namely, the then ruling National Democratic Congress and the main opposition New Patriotic Party.

Now, as to why he and his staff of election experts and temporary or seasonal hires had made absolutely no serious attempt to delete the names of these illegally registered underage citizens from our National Biometric Voters’ Register (NBVR), Dr. Afari-Gyan told the Apex Court Jurists that he thought that only persuasive diplomacy could be used to get these criminally registered underage minors to voluntarily consent or accede to any request aimed at getting these unqualified suborned little criminals and proverbial future leaders of the country to comply with the clearly laid-down laws and rules governing the country’s electoral protocol! This was the caliber of the widely alleged alcoholic who presided over Ghana’s democratic political culture for more than 20 years!

Now, what the foregoing account and observations ought to tell us is the fact that the leadership of the National Democratic Congress – Dr. Afari-Gyan has stated that he is a bona fide member or sympathizer of the Nkrumahist-leaning rump-Convention People’s Party (CPP) which, for all intents and purposes, is absolutely one and the same as the National Democratic Congress – cannot be taken even half seriously, when they make all these loud, delirious and paranoic noises about Mrs. Jean Mensa and her crackerjack staff of election administrators being hellbent on disenfranchising voters from the traditionally known electoral strongholds of the National Democratic Congress.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
September 18, 2023
E-mail: [email protected]