Political Houses Divided Everywhere, Anyhow

The state of our political parties today suggests a near replication of 1981. It is amazing how far back we have travelled. Or, maybe, it is history repeating itself.

The coupist ruling grouping (hardly a political party) is split between the coup principals (who born dogs) and the coopted (dog borns). The one who begat the dog (founder) is at loggerheads with the dog he begat (his acolyte).

As our punishment for allowing that to happen, our ears are full of what we don't need, or want to hear.

The largest opposition party is riddled at the centre between the ancient mariners and the late arrivals. And as for Osagyefo's CPP, it is between the followers of the born-again businessman capitalist doctor of philosophy and the people of the forever socialist professor.

Don't ask about the other party in Parliament. It is now virtually a permanent splinter group, having separated from Osagyefo's Own Party (OOP), and sometimes displaying the strangest of political schizophrenia by supporting the coupist party which deprived it of power. It is ridiculously claiming parity with Osagyefo's own party.

Back then in 1981, the academia-saturated ruling PNP was struggling to hold its centre, as the real politicians were milking the spoils of incumbency at the displeasure of the prudist creatures of the ivory tower who naively believed politics was about altruism.

With a UNC and PFP division having cost them the election, the largest opposition PFP had split further with the expulsion of their most articulate and outspoken MPs, the maverick duo of Obuoba Kwahu lawyer man Kwaku and Bonokyempim Duoduakwa banking economist Joseph Henry.

CPP had worked so hard to return to power as PNP after years in the wilderness following the wicked act of one Emmanuel Kwasi Kotoka, 'the bogus politician who forgot his military assignment', as he was later told.

The ruling PNP's naïve youth activists, truly untutored in Osagyefo's total disdain for coups, eventually ended up supporting the coup d'état that overthrew their own PNP.

In short, the dynamics of 1981 eve-of-coup Ghanaian politics was in a total state of flux. The regrettable result of that state of uncertainty and confusion was the bloodiest coup d'état in our dear nation's history.

We all now know that, just as Osagyefo predicted, that massive December 31 bloodletting was never justified with a positive nation-building end.

You may have wrongfully gotten the impression from my opening paragraphs that I expect another coup. I am not saying that. But when you have a professional coup maker in your midst, you don't delude yourself into thinking that you have seen the last of coups.

Coup makers see public demonstrations as oxygen. Should there be a coup now, one Mfodwo would not need to go and beg the Vandals to hit the streets to support a coup like he did one June 4, 1979 morning at the sacred Observatory. The footsoldiers and the CJA are ever ready, this time.

 Radio Gold will sound the rabble-rousing call. Or, will it? I hear its owners and controllers are not in the born dog camp.

They are rather dog born, begatted by the born dog coup. So all you coup born radio stations that are who born dog stations or simply who born dog, should raise your hands so we get to know you. It will help the NCA monitor you for coup bearing adventures.

No two historical conditions, even if we want to say history repeats itself, are the same. It's more about similarities. Today's foot-soldiers are not like the PNP young Turks. They have a leader in he who born dog who born foot-soldiers.

That is to say, while a palace coup by the PNP young Turks was not possible because they had not been born by the who born dog who had born konom teas of his revolution, the foot-soldiers were born by a who born dog with expertise in coups.

The former is typical bourgeoisie, the latter the proletariat with considerable lumpen segment.  So, unfortunately, we cannot totally rule out coups; and certainly not a palace coup a la SMC.

You may think whatever. But as for me, I believe there was a coup d'état by ballot box in December 2008/January 2009. Otherwise, why would the celebrated coup maker tell an embassy person that he was back?

Rabble-rousing Radio Gold, the siege of the EC, the declaration of a whole region a no-observer-here zone, the mercenary ambush in Tain; what else, if all that together do not constitute usurping the people's sovereignty, to wit a coup, what else would?

My beef is that when, in Thai class, the red-shirted bourgeois CJA and pro-coup proletariat foot-soldiers join forces to hit the streets in support of a coup born by the likes of who born dog, or if he who born dog decides to strike again, whether bourgeois AFAG would be able to yellow-shirt the Thai way and match the who born dog red shirts, I cannot vouch.

A divided house, they say, cannot, and will not stand. By extrapolation, a divided political party cannot, and will not win elections. As a nation, that has been our experience. Danquah/Busia in 1979 and Nkrumahist CPP 1992, 1996, 2004 and 2008.

If we were to have elections today, as pollsters will often conditionally state, then it means there will be no winner. All the parties are divided. And so if things stay like this up to December 7, 2012, no party will be in a position to win; because they will all be divided.

But come to think of it, that will give us our first golden opportunity to field and choose an independent president.

Ho lala laaa! Imagine this nation having a president independent of famished foot-soldiers; who thinks and acts; who has demonstrated in real life experience that he or she is a thinker and a doer; who religiously believes our middle income status should materialise in four years and not with 2020 hindsight; who will truly, literally hit the ground running; who will not be surrounded by standard seven boys and girls. Oh my compatriots, heaven would not be far away!                

By Kwasi Ansu-Kyeremeh

   Comments0