Ghana Poll Exposes Albion

It won't come as a surprise to me, dear reader, if I find you do not know that Ghana, the first sub-Saharan African country to attain political independence, recently held highly competitive legislative and presidential elections.

I forgive you because for the likes of CNN, BBC and SkyNews, Ghana, just like Zambia before it, was a non-event.

Yet the Ghana poll closely mirrored the harmonised elections and presidential run-off Zimbabwe held last year.

Just like the harmonised elections here, the first round of Ghana's presidential contest was inconclusive. Nana Akufo-Addo of the then ruling National Patriotic Party led John Atta Mills of the National Democratic Congress with 49,13 percent of the vote to 47,92 percent.

As there were more than two contestants and as no candidate surpassed the 50 percent threshold required for an outright win, a second round of voting was called between the two top contestants.

The run-off was also so close that special voting had to be organised in the last constituency to report in, in order to separate the candidates, who in the end were separated only by half a percentage point.

Despite all this drama, the Ghanaian poll was hardly big news in the Western media that, ironically, went hysterical when Zimbabwe held its own elections last year.

To the right-wingers in Western newsrooms, the Ghanaian election merited nothing more than passing mention on BBC and CNN, at most making only the scroll bar at the bottom of the screen.

Gone were the hourly reports, hysterical, flushed correspondents, and supremacist pronouncements from the likes of George "Warmonger" Bush and Gordon Brown, who spoke like contestants where Zimbabwe was concerned.

In fact, the Ghanaian election might as well not have taken place.
This begs the question: Why the difference in coverage between Ghana and Zimbabwe?

Well, Ghanaians went to the polls on December 7 to elect MPs and a president as John Kufour had served his mandatory two terms beginning 2000.

Though the elections featured several parties, the real fight was always between the National Patriotic Party of the outgoing president, Kufour, which fielded former foreign affairs minister Nana Akufo-Addo, and the National Democratic Congress of former president Jerry John Rawlings which fielded Professor John Evans Atta Mills.

The first round of the presidential contest did not produce an outright winner, necessitating a second round of voting between the two top contenders: Akufo-Addo and Atta Mills.

The run-off was duly set for December 28 and the race was again tight, necessitating a third round of voting in one contentious constituency, a place called Tain.

The ruling party, whose candidate -- Akufo-Addo -- was trailing the opposition candidate -- Atta Mills -- after the other 229 constituencies had reported in, decided to "boycott" the poll, with a day to go, when it became clear Atta Mills was unstoppable in Tain.

The NPP cited "irregularities" for its "boycott", but the Electoral Commission would have none of it and proceeded with the poll regardless, saying the NPP could not boycott a phase of a process it was party to.

Even though the NPP had announced its "boycott", its supporters turned out to vote and their candidate was whitewashed with Prof Atta Mills winning 19 566 votes to Akufo-Addo's 2 035 in Tain.

Overall in the second round, the president-elect, Atta Mills, garnered 50,23 percent of the vote to Akufo-Addo's 49,77 percent.
Mills was, thus, duly declared winner and is set to assume office tomorrow.

What makes the Ghanaian poll interesting is that it mirrored what transpired here, and one would have expected to hear the Westerners make the same noises they made then.

Zimbabwe held four-tier harmonised elections on March 29 last year comprising of the presidential, House of Assembly, Senate and local government polls.

The presidential contest was inconclusive with MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai leading Cde Mugabe of Zanu-PF with 47,9 percent of the vote to 43,2 percent, while Simba Makoni of Mavambo had 8 percent with independent candidate Langton Towungana weighing in with the rest.

A second round of voting was called for June 27 and despite earlier indications that he would participate, Tsvangirai was advised by his handlers -- just five days before the poll -- to "boycott".

The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission naturally proceeded with the poll regardless, saying Tsvangirai could not pull out in the middle of a contest and even Tsvangirai's allies in the NCA declared his "boycott" a nullity.

As was widely expected, Tsvangirai was soundly trounced in the run-off with President Mugabe scoring a landslide of 90,20 percent to Tsvangirai's 9,8 percent.

The Westerners, who were relishing returns on a decade of investment in regime change, were stunned and began dismissing the run-off as a sham, claiming the inconclusive result of March 29 should stand.
Tsvangirai, in his wisdom or lack of it, began parroting the Western line.

Sentiments we did not hear the Westerners repeat over Ghana, all we got from the White House and Whitehall was deafening silence.

We did not hear the likes of US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer say Akufo-Addo should be declared the winner on the strength of the 1,21 percent lead he had over Atta Mills in the first round.

We did not hear British Foreign Secretary David Miliband say the Ghana run-off was a sham because Akufo-Addo had announced a "boycott" of voting in the remaining constituency.

All we got, apart from effusive endorsement of the Ghana poll from the likes of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, was silence.

This begs the questions: Why was a run-off acceptable, in Western eyes, in Ghana and not in Zimbabwe? Why was Akufo-Addo's "boycott" inconsequential when Tsvangirai's "boycott" was deemed to render an election "a sham"?

The answer, dear reader, is simple; it lies in the history of Ghana and Zimbabwe's relationship to that history.

The Westerners long achieved what they wanted in Ghana when they hoodwinked Ghanaians to overthrow the left-wing government of the progressive founding president, Dr Kwame Nkrumah, after just nine years in power.

They are busy trying to do the same here.
Ghana's founding leader stood accused of the same "crime" President Mugabe is being targeted for -- daring to empower indigenous people at the expense of white capital.

Nkrumah attempted to rapidly indigenise and industrialise Ghana's economy, saying that was the only way Ghanaians could achieve total independence by cutting dependence on the erstwhile coloniser.

President Mugabe's decision to empower citizens on the back of their resources invited the ongoing backlash from the West.

In fact, the script regime change advocates have been using in Zimbabwe is the same script that was used against the Convention People's Party-led government in Ghana.

Zimbabwe today, is a throwback to the Ghana of 1957 to 1966. Thankfully, the Westerners are coming unstuck every time as Zimbabweans and their progressive African brothers have the benefit of hindsight.

Zimbabwe is the last frontier in the struggle between white capital and black nationalist resistance.

Zimbabwe has dared do what no other African country, with the notable exception of Nkrumah's Ghana, has ever done. That is transforming the struggle for independence from the political to the economic dimension.

To the resource-poor West, that is an unforgivable sin.

In fact, the US is on record saying: "The actions and policies of the Zimbabwe Government pose a continuous and extraordinary threat to the foreign policy of the United States," a foreign policy of plunder.
Need I say more, when Ghana has ably exposed Albion's nether regions?