Edward Mahama Vows to Re-Introduce P/NDC Government Policy

We have time and time again counseled this obstetrician-gynecologist to stick to his much-in-demand and venerable trade and stop pretending as if national politics is squarely about a sophomoric game of empty promises. And so it hardly comes as any surprise, at all, that Dr. Edward N. Mahama, presidential candidate of the People's National Convention (PNC), would be ironically promising to re-introduce the effete and largely rhetorical P/NDC-minted pseudo-credo of “Probity and Accountability” while at the same time impugning the integrity of the P/NDC, together with that of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), for fanning the flames of factionalism and dissension on the Ghanaian political landscape.

Perhaps somebody with a keener sense of history ought to alert Dr. Mahama to the incontrovertible fact that it has only been with the advent of the Danquah-Busia Tradition at the helm of our national affairs, during the past eight years, that Ghanaians have tasted of the vintage fruits of democracy in its most elaborate and advanced form. And if he had bothered to check the records, the PNC leader would almost definitely have selected a different name for his supposedly Nkrumah-inspired party. He, of course, would also have selected a different “Patron Saint” for his party.

Indeed, what is patently corrupt about Ghanaian politics is the infantile idea that, somehow, it needs to be ethereally devoid of the kind of spirited excitement and necessary ideological differentiation required in order for the electorate to make the most appropriate and astute judgment call in the selection of its leadership. Thus the vapid and hypocritically other-worldly call for political and ideological homogeneity smacks of the culturally, intellectually and morally regressive.

And, yes, while it is laudable, and even indisputably imperative, to counsel a violence-free election, it is equally significant to observe that this is the first time in a generation that the viable capacity to counter violence with measured violence has healthily ceased to be the monopoly of a single political party or ideological camp, to wit, the so-called Provisional National Democratic Congress (P/NDC).

The PNC leader also needs to be informed in no uncertain terms that “genuine national reconciliation” can simply not exist when the impenitent butchers and clinical assassins of yesteryear continue to roam the length and breadth of the country self-righteously peddling lies and unconscionably pretending to deserve the sympathy of the very people they have unremittingly savaged, repressed and oppressed. And, needless to say, it is only to be expected that the eudaemonious spirit of the adherents of the Danquah-Busia Tradition would battle toe-to-toe against the determined Satanic forces of the so-called National Democratic Congress (NDC) for the salvation of the soul and integrity of our country. It is also instructive to learn of the flat refusal of the violence-oriented opposition NDC to constructively engage the ruling NPP in a dialogue aimed at forestalling the possibility of a violent outbreak in the wake of the certain defeat of the Rawlings Corporation in Election 2008. This state of affairs should not disturb anyone at all; all that the NPP government needs to do is to be militarily prepared to deal decisively with the war-mongering P/NDC thuggocrats.

On the question of the apparently unsavory attempt to “stifle democracy and create dictatorship” on the part of any ideological or political party, were he bold, honest and courageous enough, Dr. Mahama would have called out the P/NDC for exactly what it is, a veritable terrorist organization determined to enslave Ghanaians in perpetuity. But, of course, having deviously and disingenuously forged an ideological alliance with the Rawlings Corporation, one does not expect the PNC presidential candidate to do much more than vacuously truck pontifical political platitudes.

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is the author of “Dr. J. B. Danquah: Architect of Modern Ghana” (iUniverse.com, 2005). E-mail: [email protected].