Prof. Atta-Mills Deserves Every Abuse He Receives from the Rawlingses

It has been more than two years, now, since Professor John Evans Atta-Mills was appointed presidential candidate, a la the infamous Swedru Declaration, by ex-President Jeremiah John Rawlings. And while the P/NDC operatives have always cynically insisted, contrary to truth and common sense that, indeed, the former University of Ghana law professor had been duly elected by the overwhelming majority of the P/NDC congressional delegates, nonetheless, the infantile and short-shrift treatment accorded the former “Vice”-President of Ghana, unmistakably confirms to avid students of Fourth-Republican Ghanaian politics the fact that the Rawlingses, in fact, do agree with those of us who are deeply convinced that, indeed, Professor Atta-Mills was peremptorily appointed by the satanic couple.

And so it came as all too predictable, in fact a matter of course, to those of us who have been studiously following events unfold among P/NDC operatives that the Rawlingses and their lackeys would attempt to impugn the discretionary reserve – or right – of Professor Atta-Mills in the selection of his running-mate (Statesman 4/3/08).

The man whose name widely circulated in the Ghanaian media recently as Professor Atta-Mills' running-mate is the NDC-MP for Bole-Bamboi, Mr. John Mahama. Interestingly, while Mr. Mahama is unarguably the most astute political pragmatist among the top-echelons of the so-called National Democratic Congress, predictably, in the wake of reports indicating that the Bole-Bamboi Member of Parliament had been selected by the P/NDC flagbearer as his running-mate, Mrs. Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings promptly took to the country's airwaves and caustically castigated Mr. John Mahama as one who is known for being grossly “incompetent” and incurably indecisive.

Whatever Mrs. Agyeman-Rawlings meant by the foregoing characterization was not immediately clarified. What has become incontrovertibly clear to potential Ghanaian voters and, indeed, the citizenry at large, is the fact that Mr. John Mahama has increasingly been shaping himself up as a quintessential statesman, rather than a run-of-the-mill politician. And this may, precisely, be what the Rawlings camp immitigably resents.

Quite recently, for example, in the wake of Kenya's post-electoral mayhem, Professor Atta-Mills was widely reported to have vowed to precipitate a Kenya-esque reprise in Ghana, should the certain crushing defeat of the P/NDC in Election 2008 become a historical reality. This inexcusably benighted remark saw the former “Vice”-President and his partners in premeditated mayhem summoned to the residence of the British High Commissioner; Professor Atta-Mills, shame-facedly then reversed himself by claiming, rather sillily that more than any other major political party in the country, the P/NDC was studiously about the proactive business of “growing” Ghanaian democracy.

Refreshingly, however, the far more civically and ideologically enlightened Mr. John Mahama promptly rebuked Professor Atta-Mills by emphatically debunking the historicity of the P/NDC presidential candidate's threatened intent and desire to violently abrogate Ghanaian democracy. And so it is very plausible to interpret Mrs. Agyeman-Rawlings' accusation of Mr. Mahama in terms of the proposed running-mate of Professor Atta-Mills' being temperamentally too refined for the politically crude and regressive agenda of the Rawlings Corporation in the wake of the P/NDC's certain defeat come Election 2008.

In terms of logic – or ratiocination – Mrs. Agyeman-Rawlings may be the most bumfuzzled of the P/NDC's neocolonial imperialists. For at the same time that the former first lady is impugning the leadership flair of Mr. John Mahama, Mrs. Agyeman-Rawlings also curiously claims that Professor Atta-Mills' choice of Alhaji Mohammed Mumuni as his Election 2004 running-mate was fatally flawed. This is quite interesting because in the wake of Alhaji Mumuni's involvement in a major motor-accident during the course of Election 2004, the P/NDC operatives threw a shroud of suspicion around the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP). In other words, rather than stake her present claim, the political kinsfolk of Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings preferred to accuse the NPP executives of attempting to assassinate Alhaji Mumuni. And if memory serves us accurately, even some leading members of the NPP who had gone to the 37 Military Hospital to commiserate with the Mumuni family, as well as wish the patient a speedy convalescence, were rudely turned away. So now what are we learning? That, after all, Alhaji Mohammed Mumuni was a cheaply expendable political commodity whose demise might not have caused the kind of apocalyptic ripple that back in 2004 the P/NDC operatives gave Ghanaians to believe.

Now, Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings is fervidly claiming that, indeed, the very “misguided” choice of Alhaji Mumuni must, in all likelihood, have preempted any chance at victory for the P/NDC in Election 2004. What needs to be frontally pointed out to the narcissistic and tone-deaf Mrs. Agyeman-Rawlings and her swashbuckling husband is the incontrovertible fact of the P/NDC having lost Election 2004 precisely because of the dismal human-rights record of the Rawlings Corporation.

And just why is Mrs. Agyeman-Rawlings insistent, against common sense and internal P/NDC opinion poll that Mrs. Betty Mould-Iddrisu, wife of Mr. Mahama Iddrisu, a former Minister of Defense, ought to, perforce, partner Professor Atta-Mills into Election 2008? We think we know the answer to the foregoing question. And it has to do with both the ex-first lady's own pseudo-feminist ego trip, particularly her devious attempt at paving the way for her own possible run for the presidency.

Recently, an exuberant Rawlings lickspittle even had the temerity to suggest that Ghanaians attempt to copycat the Clintons by having Agyeman-Rawlings gun for the presidency. The afore-referenced propagandist was barely smart enough to also drop the names of a few prominent women in the Kufuor cabinet.

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English and Journalism at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is the author of 14 books, including “Romantic Explorations” (Atumpan Publications/lulu.com, 2008), his 11th volume of poetry. E-mail: [email protected].