The Political Strategy Is to Knock Candidate Mahama Completely Out of His Senses

It is rather naïve for Legon Political-Marketing Strategist, so-called, Kobby Mensah, to fault failed Presidential Primary Candidate Kennedy Ohene Agyapong for wisely deciding to join Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia’s mammoth 2024 Presidential-Election Campaign Rally in the Asante Regional Capital of Kumasi without having first consulted with his base of party supporters (See “Who taught you such political strategy— Prof. Kobby Mensah blasts Kenn Agyapong after campaigning for Bawumia” Modernghana.com 6/19/24).

The Senior Lecturer at the University of Ghana, Legon, is almost correct so far as conventional protocol is concerned, except that Candidate Agyapong’s grossly miscalculated decision to contest the Vice-President which, by the way, was widely and predictably doomed even well before such politically divisive decision was taken, has been over for more than a half year, and there is even far less time for the staunch New Patriotic Party (NPP) bulwark or vanguard stalwart to recklessly and inadvisably pussyfoot over a decision that has clearly been a foregone conclusion ever since the widely anticipated declaration of the Vice-President as the decisive winner of the November 4, 2023, New Patriotic Party-sponsored Presidential-Election Primary.

The truth of the matter is that while, indeed, the Assin-Central’s Member of Parliament has made quite a flurry or a slew of very unflattering remarks and unproven allegations against the then frontrunner of the party’s 2024 Presidential Primary, such remarks were all to be expected in any such robust democratic contest, unlike in the case of the country’s main opposition political party, namely, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), where the twice-defeated, one-term for President John “I Have No Classmates in Ghana” Dramani Mahama had already been preemptively and peremptorily crowned the Serial and the Dynastic Presidential Candidate, going as relatively far back as 2012.

Even so, Dynastic Candidate Mahama has not gone absolutely without any formidable challengers, especially in the person of Dr. Kwabena Duffuor, whose very public allegation of the Johnson “The Mosquito” Asiedu-Nketia Gang’s having characteristically and thoroughly rigged up and criminally corrupted the National Democratic Congress’ National Delegates Voters’ Register to unduly favor Kwame Gonja, had also been publicly acknowledged by leading party heavyweights, including Mrs. Betty Mould-Idrissi, the former Attorney-General and Minister of Justice and, subsequently, Education Minister; and Speaker Emeritus Edward Doe Adjaho, to name just a couple that readily come to mind.

Even more significant must be put on record the fact that the so-called Kennedy Agyapong “base” or “core” of staunch party supporters are also bona fide members of the New Patriotic Party, and not “party outsiders” or “floating voters,” which simply means that it is highly unlikely for any critical mass of such committed partisans to facilely cross ideological camps or flip their votes unwisely in favor of the candidate who has categorically stated innumerable times that his sole and foremost purpose for earnestly and desperately pleading to be returned to Jubilee House by Ghanaian citizens and voters is so that “He can correct his past mistakes,” and not primarily because he has any progressive and/or creative and innovative agenda for the comprehensive socioeconomic development of our beloved Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana.

With scarcely six months to go into the watershed 2024 Presidential Election, this is not the time for any strategically savvy party stalwart, such as Mr. Ohene Agyapong, to wobble and waffle over drawn-out matters of protocol and intraparty political and ideological differences, knowing fully well that the alternative outside of the immitigably progressive bounds of the New Patriotic Party is Stygian Darkness the likes of which may effectively doom our beloved nation to the sort of existential calamity that met the late President John Evans Atta-Mills, which was heartily, euphorically and publicly celebrated by the key operatives of the National Democratic Congress, led by then Vice-President John “European Airbus Payola” Dramani Mahama as a godsend largesse that auspiciously marked the birth and the Presidency of Ghana’s first postcolonial-born leader by an “Inscrutable Divine Providence,” who so cavalierly supposed that blindly and unconscionably creaming hardworking and wantonly exploited blue-collar Ghanaian workers and civil servants was the most significant event to have occurred to the country since the importation of the very first Christmas Toy Pistol from Taiwan.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
June 22, 2024
E-mail: [email protected]