Don’t Push Your Luck, Mr. Rawlings!

In the wake of massive election-related demonstrations by disgruntled New Patriotic Party (NPP) supporters and sympathizers in the Asante regional capital of Kumasi, in which two television journalists were reportedly injured, the founding-proprietor of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) issued a thinly veiled warning to President John Agyekum-Kufuor and NPP presidential candidate Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, vowing to harshly retaliate against any perceived acts of provocation and/or violence perpetrated against members and sympathizers of the power-hungry NDC.

From the preceding, it clearly appears that the former Ghanaian dictator is under the erroneous impression that the currently deadlocked Election 2008 presidential run-off is a direct contest between Messrs. Rawlings and Akufo-Addo, rather than being between the latter and former vice-president John Evans Atta-Mills. And here we, the bona fide citizens of Ghana, both at home and abroad, feel patriotically compelled to sternly warn the former military dictator and pseudo-civilian president that if, as we have suspected all along, Mr. Rawlings is using Prof. Atta-Mills as a convenient and expedient façade in order to stage another bloody political comeback, then he is definitely in for a rude awakening.

We know the foregoing for a fact, because in a press release signed by his new press secretary, Mr. Kofi Adams, the former bloody dictator makes the following arrogant statement: “NDC supporters and indeed all Ghanaians are being cautioned to exercise a great deal of restraint, but let no one be confused. Any acts of violence that occur and are taking place are the direct machinations of the desperate NPP government who believe they are the sole controllers of this country and are unwilling to hand over power when it is clear that they have lost” (Myjoyonline.com 12/31/08).

Mr. Rawlings went on to shamelessly and scandalously claim that: “The NDC in spite of the clear fraud which saw increases of over 30,000 [votes?] in some Ashanti constituency results between December 7 and 28 has been sportsmanlike and agreed in the interest of peace to accept that the Tain [constituency] vote take place.”

In the foregoing quote, ever the clinically deluded dictator and inveterate enemy of constitutional democracy, the former chairman of the so-called Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) appears to believe that, indeed, it is his personal judgment call to determine which constituency of registered Ghanaian voters and citizens get to vote as a mark of his own magnanimous gesture.

And here, also, we take the salutary opportunity to remind the former Ghana Air Force pilot that Ghanaians have come a long way from the envious AFRC “revolutionary” politics of 1979, as well as the ethnic cleansing and witch-hunting era of the so-called Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC), that witnessed the gangster-style abduction, torture and state-sponsored execution of Supreme Court judges.

Maybe Mr. Rawlings also needs to be reminded, as amply and eloquently documented by the late Prof. Albert A. Adu-Boahen, that it was he and his widely discredited National Democratic Congress (NDC) party that invented and perfected the criminal art of electoral fraud in Fourth-Republican Ghana. Thus, rather than presuming to self-righteously instruct any individual or group of Ghanaian citizens on the need to healthily pursuing a morally upright political culture, the career coup-plotter ought to look himself up in the mirror in order to unmistakably recognize the only Ghanaians citizen who requires a lengthy lecture on the imperative need to avert political violence in the interest of peace and stability in the country if, indeed, Mr. Rawlings feels genuinely convicted of his imperious and pontifical assertions.

It is also interesting to note that in the press release signed by Mr. Kofi Adam, the former dictator does not specifically name any single verifiable instance of organized mayhem against members, supporters and sympathizers of his NDC terror machine, except the fact of two Metro-TV journalists, namely, Messrs. Abdul Basid and Jeff Nsiah Boadu, who had allegedly ventured out to cover the NPP demonstrations having been injured. Are readers, therefore, to legitimately assume that Messrs. Basid and Boadu were, indeed, NDC spies or party operatives planted amidst the demonstrators in order to induce the sort of critical forensic evidence that Mr. Rawlings believes he needs to make his bogus case to the international community?

Not surprisingly, the stentorian and perennially and annoyingly self-righteous NPP accuser makes absolutely no mention about the widespread voter fraud in the Volta region, for which occurrence ample evidence exists. Or does Mr. Rawlings, the self-styled “Notsie” (Republic of Benin) native presume the eastern bank of the Volta to be his personal and exclusive electoral preserve?

*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 18 books, including “Ghanaian Politics Today” (Atumpan Publications/lulu.com, 2008). E-mail: [email protected].