Hypocritical Kwesi Pratt Should Shut the Hell Up!

The self-proclaimed radical Nkrumaist Editor-Publisher of the so-called Insight newspaper has long gone on public record as claiming that he would be a congenital and a bloody fool, if he ever endorsed the presidential candidacy of the then Candidate Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, between 2007 and 2016, or perhaps even well before the preceding dates. Then also, the diarrheal-mouthed nephew of the late Mr. Kojo Botsio, the infamous Nkrumah lieutenant, has gone on public record to have said that he would rather be committed into a mental-health institution than vote for the Danquah-Busia-Dombo-inspired political establishment of the New Patriotic Party (NPP). So, what business is it of Mr. Pratt’s, if Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia declares that although he is the most actively engaged Vice-President in Fourth Republican Ghanaian history, the Walewale native, from the Akufo-Addo-created North-East Region, is still not yet the substantive President of the Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana to be unduly held fully responsible and accountable for each and every foible or policy failure or shortfall of the present Akufo-Addo Administration?

After all, are not all critically thinking and politically observant Ghanaians well aware of the fact that the Vice-President is, constitutionally speaking, only the junior partner of the elected Leader or the substantive President of the Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana? (See “This Is a Complete Betrayal – Kwesi Pratt Slams Bawumia for ‘Ditching’ Akufo-Addo for ‘New Path’” Ghanaweb.com 2/7/24). As well, upon what morally and ideologically credible basis is the Agona-Nsabaa native, from the Central Region, predicating his rather insufferably presumptuous accusation that as Vice-President and the official right-hand man of Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, “Bawumia was involved in all aspects of the government; there is [absolutely] nothing from which he was excluded”?

Is Mr. Pratt now claiming to be a bona fide member of the Akufo-Addo cabinet or a confidant of the man with whom he, and other political activists at the time, virulently demonstrated against autocratic policies of the late I. K. Acheampong-led junta of the Supreme Military Council (SMC) and, subsequently, the so-called Union Government (UG), under the aegis of a civil society organization called the Movement for Freedom and Justice in Ghana (MFJ), during much of the 1970s?

But perhaps what is even more significant and relevant to ask here of Mr. Pratt regards what this fellow Fante kinsman of the late President John Evans Atta-Mills demanded of an Interim-President Mahama when, as the 2012 Presidential Candidate on the ticket of the National Democratic Congress, the former Vice-President and the official right-hand man of the recently deceased Prof. Atta-Mills, as the latter was also affectionately called, stood in the very heart of the capital of the Old Northern Region, namely, Tamale, and characteristically intemperately and vituperatively castigated the former University of Ghana’s Tax-Law Professor and the latter’s fellow Akan and Southern-born or descended former Presidents of the country of having disdainfully and despicably made their fellow Northern-born and northern-descended politicians and associates “Presidential Spare-Tires,” in much the same manner that the Ghana Institute of Journalism alumnus is presently accusing Dr. Bawumia of being egregiously and flagitiously guilty of committing against Nana Akufo-Addo.

In other words, why is Mr. Pratt, who is widely known to have been on the payroll and the fuel-allocation list of Presidents Atta-Mills and Mahama, together with such fellow Fante journalists as Mr. Ben Ephson, Jr., the Editor-Publisher of the Daily Dispatch, for just one remarkable example, now viciously accusing unarguably the most loyal and the longest-serving Presidential Running-Mate in Fourth Republican Ghanaian history, of having betrayed the very Presidential Candidate without whose staunch loyalty and dogged support Nana Akufo-Addo’s long-held and desperate dream of being elected President of the Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana would almost definitely not have materialized or come to pass?

At any rate, what substantive contribution has Mr. Pratt made towards the remarkable success of President Akufo-Addo or former Presidents Atta-Mills and Mahama, short of mounting cheap propaganda spiels for the primary purpose of filling the gas tanks of his vehicles, lining up his wallet and filling up his bank accounts with stolen Ghanaian taxpayer money, to warrant Mr. Pratt to so imperiously presume to have any moral authority to caustically impugn the credibility and the integrity of the Oxbridge, Buckingham and the Simon Fraser-educated crackerjack economist and former Deputy-Governor of the nation’s central treasury, the Bank of Ghana?

The incontrovertible fact of the matter is that notwithstanding his characteristic deference to the now-President Akufo-Addo, almost to a fault, for having Dr. Bawumia the rare and the special privilege of acceding to the coveted status of the Vice-Presidency, against the deafening background of fractious and factional party bickering and squabbling, it also goes without saying that both President Akufo-Addo and Vice-President Bawumia have equally benefited from this strategically visionary and politically foresighted working relationship.

Indeed, had he been paying studious and sedulous attention to some of the most recent pronouncements of Mr. Samuel Atta-Akyea, a cousin to both President Akufo-Addo and the peevishly and scandalously entrenched Finance Minister, Mr. Kenneth Ofori-Atta, a critically thinking Mr. Pratt would have since long arrived at the far better reasoned conclusion that it is the Vice-President, and not the President, who well appears to have been royally betrayed by an avuncular superior who appears to have curiously and shamelessly elected the patently unhealthy promotion of nepotism and pathological narcissism over and above the far greater good and the interest of our commonwealth, that is, the inviolably superior long-term good and interest of our beloved nation, our children, grandchildren and posterity.

The Honest-to-God Truth needs to be told, in toto, without any inhibitions or reservations, and promptly so, even as this author’s maternal grandfather, The Reverend Theodore Henry (Yawbe) Sintim-Aboagye (1896-1982), of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana, Akyem-Asiakwa, Akyem-Begoro, Asante-Juaben and Asante-Mampong, was fond of saying: “Plain-talk purges the soul!” A word to the wise….

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
February 8, 2024
E-mail: [email protected]