Why Candidate Mahama and the NDC Must Not Be Elected in 2024 – Part 2

Now, it clearly begins to make quite a bit of sense why a newly elected President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo would promptly push for the removal of the John “Brazil Embraer Scamming” Dramani Mahama-appointed Electoral Commission’s Chairperson, Mrs. Charlotte Kesson-Smith Osei, when any critically thinking and studious observer puts the authoritative behind-the-scenes accounts of former President John “The Gentle Giant” Agyekum-Kufuor and Retired Commissioner of Police Nathan Kofi Boakye into context and the relevant and the proper perspective (See “2016 elections: It took Otumfuo's intervention before EC declared results — COP Kofi Boakye (Rtd) reveals” Modernghana.com 4/17/24; also, “But for the Asantehene, the 2016 Election Could [Would?] Have Been Messy – Former President Kufuor” Ghanaweb.com 4/17/24).

We have already written and published quite extensively about the clearly politically motivated decision by then-President Mahama to rudely and cavalierly ride roughshod over an entrenched edict of Ghana’s 1992 Republican Constitution not to arbitrarily transfer any of the Heads or Chairpersons of the 7 Statutory Commissions, or so, from one Commission to another, in what Prof. Kofi Abotsi, the expert constitutional lawyer, at the time described in a dispassionately composed and cogently argued mini-essay that appeared in several local Ghanaian newspapers and media portals as a “lateral transfer,” rather than a “vertical transfer” or promotion, which is clearly what the 1992 Constitution stipulates, contrary to what exuberant and strategically naïve and untutored investigative journalists like an award-winning Mr. Manasseh Azure Awuni would have his teeming audience of politically wet-eared and wild-eyed captives believe (See “Akufo-Addo about to remove Special Prosecutor Kissi Agyebeng just like Charlotte Osei — Manasseh Azure” Modernghana.com 5/17/24).

In the case of either Mr. Kissi Agyebeng, whose post is far less sensitive than either Mrs. Charlotte Osei, the Akufo-Addo-removed Mahama-appointed Chairperson of the Independent Electoral Commission, or Mrs. Jean Adukwei Mensa, Fourth-Republican Ghana’s best qualified and most efficient internationally attested and validated Electoral Commission Chairperson, whom, by the way, the leadership of the career and professional ballot-rigging institutional establishment of the National Democratic Congress has been harassing and scheming to illegitimately oust since the very first day of her official induction at Jubilee House on August 2, 2018, by President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo. The most germane or relevant contextual comparison here would be one between Mrs. Osei and Mrs. Mensa, and definitely not between Mr. Agyebeng and Mrs. Osei.

But, of course, it is also perfectly understandable that a nitpicking Mr. Awuni would choose to indiscriminately pair up two obvious incongruities, as long as such incongruous pairing up enables a determined reportorial and/or investigative hatchet man like Mr. Awuni to reach his ultimate goal of creating a groundswell of massive disaffection for both President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, his inveterate target of political abuse and apparent personal animus and the institutional establishment of the New Patriotic Party itself. Unfortunately for the former Multimedia Star Correspondent, heading forth into the 2024 Presidential Election, a lame-duck Nana Akufo-Addo would increasingly become less and less relevant to the overwhelming majority of progressive-thinking Ghanaian citizens and voters.

Rather, it is the relative and the comparative national development achievements of the two major political parties and their respective Presidential Candidates and their Running-Mates that are bound to capture the imagination of many a registered and an eligible voter. Already, there has surfaced quite a slew of media reports indicating a preponderance of underage minors being recruited by operatives of the country’s main opposition National Democratic Congress to register to vote in the December 7, 2024, General Election. Thankfully, the visionary foresight of Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia, the putative Father of the Ghana Card, has almost impeccably ensured that any criminal attempt by the career ballot-rigging National Democratic Congress’ apparatchiks would be stopped dead in their tracks.

On the preceding count, we vividly recall the Mahama-decorated Dr. Afari-Gyan, in 2012, as Chairperson of the Electoral Commission, telling the Atuguba-presided panel of Apex Court Jurists that judicated the Akufo-Addo-, Mahamudu Bawumia- and the late Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey-led Presidential-Election Petition that the former University of California, Santa Barbara, doctoral-degree holder in Political Science had deliberately and knowingly permitted hundreds of thousands of underage minors and teenagers to be criminally registered to vote. It therefore ought to come as absolutely no surprise or shocking or breaking news that early this year, during his University for Development Studies, Tamale Campus, sponsored Harmattan School Lecture Presentations, Mr. Martin ABK Amidu, the former Atta-Mills’ 2000 Presidential-Election Running-Mate and, subsequently, the Atta-Mills-appointed and fired Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, had a predictable but, nonetheless, scandalous occasion to heartily praise the most grossly incompetent National Democratic Congress-appointed Fourth-Republican Electoral Commission’s Chairperson for being the most astute and efficient Ghanaian citizen to have ever been appointed to the latter post by the late former President Jeremiah “Jerry” John Rawlings.

No wonder, as well then, that Mr. Manasseh Azure Awuni would envisage the same set of bizarre and unenviable qualities as constituting the sterling caliber of the Apex Court-defying Mrs. Charlotte Osei, whom the ballot-rigging and voters’ register-corrupting National Democratic Congress’ apparatchiks like Mr. Johnson “The Mosquito” Asiedu-Nketia hope they could return to the Electoral Commission, in the highly unlikely event of having the perennially recycled Serial and the Dynastic Presidential Candidate of the National Democratic Congress back at Jubilee House, so that the man who in the runup to the 2008 Presidential Election, swore to ensure the firm and the hermetic entrenchment of a National Democratic Congress’ “Constitutional Dynasty” in our beloved Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana in perpetuity could literally ride roughshod over the aims, aspirations and the needs and the ideals of Ghanaian citizens and voters.

Back then, as many of us mature adults and studious observers of Ghana’s Fourth Republican political terrain vividly recall, the then Atta-Mills’ Running-Mate made the preceding promise while stumping for the Vice-Presidency in his West-Gonja Constituency, well before the historic incorporation of the latter electoral district into the Akufo-Addo-created Savannah Region. At the time, Running-Mate Mahama compared the painful state and status of being an opposition career politician as one that was strikingly akin to being rudely bumped off one’s horse or camel in the middle of a nowhere desert environment and having one’s face buffeted by Sahara sandblasts or sandstorms.

“Once we get back high up on the horse, we will make sure never to get back down,” Yagbonwura Okogufuo Kwame Gonja would tell his audience of “Non-Kabonga” tribesmen and clanswoman in Bole-Bamboi, Damongo and Yapei and other places in the vicinity and well beyond. This has been the guiding principle of Candidate-General John “Gnassingbe” (Ford Expedition Payola) Dramani Mahama, whose apparent sole reason for establishing his globally infamous Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA) Gravy Train, the Board-of-Directors of whose membership was exclusively composed Northern-Descended Ghanaian citizens, was to “accelerate” rank official corruption on behalf of his northern-descended cronies and associates at the expense of the rest of bona fide Ghanaian citizens, including many an ordinary and underprivileged northern-descended Ghanaian citizens. This is what “The Mistakes-Correcting, Second-Coming of Kwame Gonja” inescapably and unarguably means. Trust me to be Sincerely Yours, Dear Reader.

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
May 19, 2024
E-mail: [email protected]