The Only 2024 Polling that Truly Matters Will Be Anchored in Accra, not London

First of all, Ghanaians need to be bluntly and healthily made soberly aware of the fact that the “Country Risk” polling recently conducted by the research and data firm by the name of Fitch Solutions, as well and in the recent past, was absolutely not about us or the least bit in the interest of the socioeconomic development of our Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana. Rather and primarily, it was squarely in the interest of Western financial and commercial lending institutional establishments like the Washington, DC-based Bretton-Woods establishments of the World Bank – that is, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) – and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

So, let absolutely no Ghanaian Ivory-Tower Elitist, such as the chuckleheaded Kobby Mensahs and the Ransford Gyampos fool you, the Dear Reader/Auditor/Spectator, and themselves, of course, into thinking and/or believing that there is really anything worthwhile in such neocolonialist and patently bogus and self-serving opinion-poll surveys for us. No such facile presumption could be more preposterous (See “Election 2024: Fitch Solutions predicts victory for NDC” Modernghana.com 7/18/24). There is absolutely nothing really worthwhile to celebrate here, not even for the key operatives and the staunch supporters and the sympathizers of the country’s main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), whose effectively politically spent, public-dole parasite and ideologically clueless Serial and Dynastic Presidential Candidate, namely, the twice-defeated, one-term former President John “I Have No Classmates in Ghana” Dramani Mahama, is being mischievously projected by the London, UK-based Fitch Solutions research and data-gathering firm to carry 54-percent of the landmark and the watershed December 7, 2024 Presidential Election.

Now, it is not even clear from the news report used for this brief critical analysis or commentary that the 54-percent margin of polling victory being predicted by Fitch is in reference to just the 2024 Presidential Election or both the latter and the 2024 Parliamentary Election as well. But, of course, what is patently clear here is that there is absolutely nothing socioeconomically refreshing or redeeming about the Fitch Solutions polling, since nearly each and every Ghanaian citizen is well aware of the decidedly unarguable fact that generally speaking, the key operatives of the ruling New Patriotic Party have almost invariably tended to be relatively far better managers of Ghana economy than their populist and pathologically kleptomaniacal counterparts among the vanguard ranks of the faux-socialist National Democratic Congress, even as the locally renowned economist, Dr. Nii Moi Thompson, has had innumerable occasions to point this fact out to Ghanaian citizens and voters.

On the latter count must also be promptly added the fact that Dr. Thompson is a former Mahama-appointed Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana National Development Planning Commission (GNDPC) and a passionately pro-proto-Convention People’s Party (CPP) and a Kwame Nkrumah partisan. Plus, it has always routinely been the case that the government in power, especially one that has been consecutively elected twice, such as the present Akufo-Addo-led government of the New Patriotic Party, almost invariably tends to suffer from citizen and voter fatigue and apathy, especially when, as in the latter case, the last two years have also not been managerially kosher on the part of the incumbent government.

Even so, it is rather scandalous for Fitch Solutions’ County Risk Associate Director, Mr. Michael “Mike” Kruiniger, to suggest in the latter firm’s Mid-Year Review for Sub-Saharan Africa, so-called, that, somehow, on the economic and job creation front, Ghanaians have any hope of the Mahama-led ragtag regime of the National Democratic Congress, which has already twice been rejected in the polls over the last eight years, offering any real or formidable alternative to the far more progressive Akufo-Addo and the Bawumia-led government of the New Patriotic Party. Any comparative balance sheet drawn between the present government and the previous Trial-and-Error Mahama regime is highly unlikely to bring the latter up or on par with the former, much less a leg up against the former.

For Fitch Solutions’ Mr. Kruiniger, it clearly appears that what matters most here is for Ghana, irrespective of which of our two major political parties emerges victorious in the 2024 General Election, is that the country continues to servilely pursue the socioeconomically regressive fiscal policies of the Bretton-Woods establishment. This is where Ghanaian politicians and our intellectuals and high-end professionals need to muster the requisite courage and radically break with the slavocratic shackles of the Bretton-Woods establishment. Unfortunately, under the present circumstances and with the invariably kleptomaniacal and the kleptocratic mindsets of the leaderships of the country’s two major parties, we don’t envisage such a psychopolitical and psychocultural renaissance or revolution occurring in the offing.

In the meantime, the strategists and the communications operatives of the New Patriotic Party need to significantly and massively step up their game, if Ghana is to be saved from the State-Capturing Darwinian Apostles of Probity, Accountability, Transparency and Justice and their Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA) Gravy-Train Driver.

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