NDC US REACTS TO NPP US ALLEGATIONS AGAINST PRESIDENT MAHAMA

“Remember, the mind thinks in pictures and symbols, not words. So as we worry we are seeing scenes of ourselves failing. We can sometimes be quite vivid in imagining this failure. We see ourselves embarrassed, flopping, standing with egg on our faces. The rerunning of these tapes in our heads becomes a habit, and it then affects all our behavior.” -- Alan Loy McGinnis, in, Confidence

The story posted on your web, dated October 9th 2012, and attributed to the NPP US Public Relations Committee, regarding corruption is a mere baseless and unfounded allegations upon allegations leveled against his Excellency the President, that their parent party gurus in Ghana are echoing and re-echoing every now and then, in the absence of any pragmatic and practical message in their manifesto to the electorates.

If they are real concerned and patriotic citizens of Ghana, then they should come out boldly and petition the president to the Serious Fraud Office or CHIRAJ, with their so-called factual evidence, as the President himself threw a challenge to them recently at our party manifesto launching in the Volta region.

What we deem interesting is that, this modus oparandi of given a dog a bad name in order to hang it that they adopted, is being read in between the line by the majority of Ghanaian voters, who are sick and tied of taking their strange and serious allegations and false promises hook, line and sinker.

They are very aware of a sudden turn of event since the emergence of his Excellency President Mahama on the campaign scene, and seeing a looming signs of defeat staring them on their faces, by virtue of his charisma and charm, magnanimity and marketability, they are becoming very frustrated and using every unorthodox and eccentric means to tarnish his enviable reputation, with the hope that Ghanaians will vote for them. Their desperate situation is reminiscent of a quotable quote of a western philosopher, Norman Cousin who says, “People are never more insecure than when they become obsessed with their fears (of losing) at the expense of their dreams.”

But before they portray themselves as anti-corruption advocates, they should start this advocacy right from their door steps, by asking Nana Akufo Addo to come out and deny if he was not responsible for the wide distribution of diplomatic passports to their party cronies and other series of cocaine scandals. This news have gone viral through the social media networks, when he was the Attorney General and Minister of Justice. They should also urge their party gurus including former President Kufour, former ministers of state, including the notorious member of the legislature, Kennedy Agyapong to come out boldly as the President did, and volunteer themselves for investigations if they think they are clean, for charity begins at home.

They think we forgot the rife and rampant spate of corruption and embezzlement of the national cake, that we Ghanaians observed during their eight years term in office, which was unprecedented in the political history of Ghana. As if Milan Kudera, a political scientist, predicted this NPP behavior of covering their misdeeds when he wrote in 1992 that, “The struggle of a man (politician) against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”

Another approach they adopting is the utopian and impossible promises to the electorates regarding free SHS education, for the sake of securing their votes. Even Gabbey Okerey Darko of Dankwa-Busia Foundation and a leading member of the NPP cautioned Nana Addo to be mindful of his promise, which is unachievable and unattainable.

They also have another laughable promise of creating a special zongo development fund. This is even insulting to the zongos, because it presupposes that, they admitting their government did not do much to cater for the welfare of the zongos. However in their bid to seek the votes of the zongo communities, they are making this vague promise which they themselves know will not be taken lightly by the rest of the Ghanaian ethnic groups.
But President Mahama and the great Akatamanso party would not take Ghanaians for a ride to make those promises, because they take inspiration from the quotes of US President Bill Clinton, who said in his campaign, in 1999, “What we believe is what works.” And we only promise what works in our Better Ghana Agenda Manifesto.

Some of their members are also adopting the intellectual approach by quoting manuscripts from the President's book out of context, and alleging that the president insults farmers or does not respect farmers. But whoever reads the book, as I am currently doing, would notice that, the President was giving a historical narrative of how Ghanaians in general perceive farmers, but put it in a metaphor. However, the farmers they are trying to incite and agitate against the president know that, what they are saying does not hold water, they are not perturbed and will not buy it, because they tried and tested the NDC government policies for the betterment of their socio-economic wellbeing, since he was the Vice-President and they know that as President, he would go the extra mile to further improve upon these policies.

They are also using the religious element, by telling the Muslim communities that, they have a Muslim Vice-Presidential candidate and we have not. But our simple and sensible answer to this is that, Muslims in Ghana are discerning people and would not vote on religious grounds. Besides, they know President Mahama is a Muslim by his action. If they(NPP) care to know further, what the President did to the various Muslim communities in Ghana since he was an MP and a deputy Minister, the former Vice-President Aliu Mahama has never done even a quarter of it, during his eight years as Vice-President. Because his hands were tied in their party, they used him for Muslim votes and damped him, as they are doing now for Bawumia and he was never given opportunities as the NDC gave and still giving President Mahama to chompion the course of the Muslims and zongo communities in Ghana.

We can give so many instances of President Mahama's help to the Muslims in Ghana. He helped to restore Friday Muslim radio program in Kumasi, which was suspended by the GBC radio in 1998. He recommended numerous Muslims students to gain admissions into high schools and universities as well helped many unemployed graduates to secure jobs after school. Even when it comes to the Hajj, the Muslim annual pilgrimage to Mecca, it was under his able leadership as Vice-President that, Hajj operations begins to have a human face. Because under the NPP administration, it was poorly managed. He was the first ever Vice-President to donate an official vehicle to the national chief Imam. We of the NDC know that, we secured over 43 percent of our entire votes from the Muslim and zongo communities, because they clearly see that, the NDC is the most universal, broad based and all encompassing party which is not dominated by only one ethnic group. And unless the NPP shed off its Akan confederacy syndrome of rejecting a Muslim or norther, who contests at their primaries to be a presidential candidate, as it happened to the former Vice-President Aliu Mahama, they will never test power in the political history of Ghana. 

From all indications, as the polls prove to us, Ghanaians will not return the NPP into power, having known their true colors of castigations, vilifications, unfounded allegations
against the NDC, as well as their false and utopian promises just to secure their votes. As another western political theorist, Edmund Burk (1729-1797) observed, “The conduct of a losing party never appears right, at least it can never possess the only infallible criterion of wisdom to vulgar judgment.” This quote coincidentally finds expression in what the NPP is engaged in, as they are making their ultimate journey towards another terrible and terrifying defeat come December 7th, 2012.

Husseini Y Baba Al-Waiz, Press Secretary, NDC New York