Trust Me, Alan Kyerematen’s Ambition for the Presidency Is Purely Driven by His “Lost” Investments in the NPP

I have said it many times before that Candidate Alan John Kwadwo Kyerematen is a perennially appointed career politician who has never held any elective position in his life and is therefore a man without a constituency. A self-deluded orphan politician. In a democratic political culture, the former John “The Gentle Giant” Agyekum-Kufuor-appointed Trade and Industry and Presidential Special Initiatives Minister cannot credibly stake any claim to having had any practically organic or intimate relationship with any recognizable constituency of Ghanaian citizens and voters in ways that can be said of such major and legendary Ghanaian leaders as President Kwame Nkrumah, Prime Minister Kofi Abrefa Busia, Presidents Hilla “Babini” Limann, John Agyekum-Kufuor, John Dramani Mahama and Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

The cases of the now-Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia and the late President John Evans Atta-Mills are, of course, understandably different from the norm. Merely claiming to be either propelled or impelled towards the goal of assuming the Presidency on sheer grounds of one’s love for the country and one’s fellow Ghanaian citizens is absolutely nothing short of plain poppycock (See “My Presidential ambition is driven by my love for Ghana, passion to see people prosper - Alan Kyerematen” Modernghana.com 10/30/24).

Fortunately for us but unfortunately for Candidate Kyerematen, the burly and the sweaty man has made a lot of imperious statements and pronouncements that diametrically contradict what the thrice-defeated New patriotic Party (NPP) Presidential Candidate - actually Aspirant for the Presidential Nomination of the latter party - claims to be his deep-seated love for both the country and the people of Ghana. You see, as relatively far back as December 2007 and much of 2008, a soundly defeated Candidate Kyerematen was claiming that but for the counsel of some party elders whom he very much respected at the time, that is circa 1996, Mr. Kyerematen would have easily beaten a then Candidate Agyekum-Kufuor to the Presidential Nomination of the proverbial Elephant Party.

Back then, an irredeemably defeated Candidate Kyerematen made his rather presumptuous assertion more on grounds of leadership entitlement than what the “longest-playing” Trade and Industry Minister in Ghana’s Fourth Republic now curiously claims to be his deep-seated love or unrivaled patriotism for Ghana. Equally paradoxical, however, even while Mr. Kyerematen has lately been strenuously and vociferously advocating for the need to rise above partisan lines and labels, the Asante-Edweso/Ejisu and Kumasi-Patasi native does not explain to his audiences why in the wake of his third and fourth official resignations of his membership status and affiliation with the presently ruling New Patriotic Party, Alan Cash, as Mr. Kyerematen is also popularly known, did not decide to gun for the Presidency as an Independent Candidate but instead as the founder and the leader of a political party called Movement for Change (M4C) or the Butterfly Party - aka The Afrafranto Alliance.

Another quaint and downright comical aspect of this narrative is that in the past, Mr. Kyerematen has also vehemently denied the well-documented fact of him having officially resigned from and renounced his membership affiliation with the New Patriotic Party. In short, our unfazed and unflappable contention here is that Alan Cash has not always put Ghana and the wellbeing of Ghanaians first and foremost above everything else. At any rate, it is not clear exactly what he means, when Candidate Kyerematen asserts that: “The wellbeing of every Ghanaian is what drives me forward.”

Now, the next most logical question becomes: Precisely when did the total and the collective wellbeing of each and every Ghanaian citizen become his foremost motivating political factor, and why such laudable motivation has not made him humble enough to be able to swallow his pride and apparently vaulting ambition for the Presidency, instead of harmoniously and progressively collaborating with his sometime ideological and political associates in the vanguard ranks of the New Patriotic Party to move the nation forward. You see, there is this clearly narcissistic and egomaniacal streak in the demeanor and the rhetoric of the “Butterfly Man” that virulently belies or contradicts his seemingly selfless claim to his Presidential ambition being solely and wholly motivated by sheer or pure patriotism.

At any rate, Candidate Kyerematen has not rolled out much or adequately said much to indicate or prove that, indeed, he has any practically unique or relatively more progressive national development agenda than those or that which has already been put into practice or actualized by the present lame-duck Akufo-Addo Administration, such as the implementation of the Universally Fee-Free Senior High, Technical, Vocational and STEM Education System. At 70-plus years old, as this author has already noted ad-infinitum, there does not seem to be much left on his plate or in the proverbial bag of tricks of a decidedly superannuated Alan Cash that is apt to be deemed to be any more progressive, visionary or socioeconomically and technologically significant than what Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia has been doing over the course of at least the past four years.

Ghanaians need more than the jaded love of a morbidly self-infatuated grizzled career politician to move us out of the current socioeconomic and leadership hiccups. There can also be no gainsaying that Vice-President Bawumia is the candidate to beat, going into the December 7, 2024 Presidential Election. No two ways about that. Just remember, Dear Reader: Candidate Mahamudu Bawumia is Number One on the Ballot Sheet. “Truth,” Ghanaians always say, “Is Only One and Nothing More.” Eye Number One, Eye Bawumia! Eye Sor-Sor; Ennye Sor-Sor to Dumsor.

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
Oct. 30, 2024
E-mail: [email protected]