Now Who Is Looking Stupid?

Nana Akufo-Addo and Dr. Bawumia and their associates of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) would do best to let the Mahama Posse stew in their own brine, as it were. It was only a matter of time before the key operatives of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), among them Koku Anyidoho, Johnson Asiedu-Nketia, Kofi Portuphy and Kofi Adams came to their senses. And oh, I almost forgot to add the name of the sharp-toothed and hopelessly wet-eared Samuel Okudzeto-Ablakwa. I am here, of course, referring to the comical decision of the NDC Abongo Boys to have the Presidential Candidate of the New Patriotic Party debate President John Dramani Mahama (See “Electorate Loses If NPP Declines Debate Challenge – Kwakye-Ofosu” Citifmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 10/21/16).

The winner here, as I wrote not very long ago, is Mrs. Jean Mensa, the Executive Director of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), the think-tank that seminally pioneered the enviably democratic tradition and culture of making presidential debates a major and an integral feature of our electoral protocol. I wrote back then that the cynical decision by the operatives of the NDC to bovinely trash this healthy IEA-established tradition, to the scandalous extent of even impugning the credibility of Mrs. Mensa, was going to be dearly paid for by the NDC boys in the offing. Now, the perennially poor-mouthing Deputy Communications Minister, Mr. Felix Kwakye-Ofosu, would have Ghanaians believe that the electorate would be the poorer for the flat refusal of Nana Akufo-Addo and the rest of the leadership of the main opposition New Patriotic Party to have the former debate President Mahama.

We have to remind these rascals about that morally outrageous and opprobrious moment when Mr. Anyidoho, one of the several redundant vice-chairpersons of the National Democratic Congress, vitriolically lit into both Ms. Hanna Tetteh and Mr. Mahama, as well, for flagrantly violating party rules by covertly negotiating with the IEA’s Executive Director to have their candidate and incumbent President of Ghana debate Nana Akufo-Addo. Back then, the NDC’s Abongo Boys appeared to be more interested in setting up a nuisance debating forum, in much the same manner as they had done in the lead-up to the 2012 presidential election, when the NDC apparatchiks allegedly paid Mr. Hassan Ayariga, then-presidential candidate of the People’s National Convention (PNC), to recklessly litter Akufo-Addo’s entire presentation with his deliberately orchestrated coughs.

This time around, it well appears that having been thoroughly upstaged in the media propaganda arena by their most formidable political opponents, the NDC boys have decided that the best way to even up the scores would be to have their outmatched candidate go one-on-one with Nana Akufo-Addo. Fortunately, the time-tested tradition of presidential debates has never been predicated on the convenience or at the whims of only one party of this two-sided rhetorical equation. Back when the Mosquito Group roundly rejected the IEA’s hosting of the presidential debates, Mr. Okudzeto-Ablakwa, the Deputy Education Minister, recalled the fact of a sanguine President Kufuor’s having flatly refused to debate then-Candidate John Evans Atta-Mills, because as a popular and administratively successful incumbent, the NPP leader did not see the avenue of a presidential debating forum to be either a vote-getter or an image enhancer.

Well, the NDC leaders also claim that their candidate has been equally successful as Ghana’s Chief Administrator and so did not need a debating forum to justify his stewardship. Their sudden turnaround ought to tell Ghanaian voters what NDC operatives like Messrs. Edward Omane-Boamah, the substantive Communications Minister, Kwakye-Ofosu and Okudzeto-Ablakwa really think about the performance of President Mahama. Recently, these same Mahama shills who claim that their leader is only surpassed in political achievements by President Nkrumah, have also been bitterly complaining that the message of their leader appears to have met with a media stonewall. Well, dear reader, you don’t have to be a genius or a college-educated person to figure out what the foregoing plaint means.

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Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
October 21, 2016
E-mail: [email protected]