Petition Against Charlotte Osei Is No Time-Bomb, Allotey-Jacobs

You see, the days when the key operatives of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) used intimidation tactics to have their way and literally shortchange Ghanaians of our hard-won democratic political culture are well behind us. And any dastardly attempt by the NDC apparatchiks to regress the onward movement of the removal petition against Electoral Commissioner Charlotte Kesson-Smith Osei, will be met with fierce resistance and consequences which the cynical likes of Mr. Daniel Allotey-Jacobs, the Central Regional Chairman of the main opposition National Democratic Congress will not be able to handle (See “Petition Against EC Boss a Bomb at Nana Addo’s Doorstep – Allotey Jacobs” Peacefmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 7/26/17).

For starters, as already detailed in several previous columns, short of having a glaring motive of rigging the polls to mischievously entrench himself at the Flagstaff House, former President John Dramani Mahama had absolutely no meaningful reason to have transferred Mrs. Osei from one statutory commission to another. Indeed, in removing the latter from her chairwomanship of the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE), President Mahama flagrantly breached the statutory independence that went with the job. Functionally speaking, Mrs. Osei’s transfer did not constitute a promotion from the NCCE to the EC. What it obviously did was that it prevented the young woman from gaining adequate administrative experience at the deliberately cash-famished NCCE.

Thus, the latter institution continues to woefully underperform its major statutory mandate of educatingall Ghanaian citizens about their civil rights and responsibilities in our otherwise robust and progressive democratic culture. Her unorthodox transfer to the EC had only one major motive, to shamelessly and unconscionably rig the 2016 general election in favor of her benefactor. We have all witnessed enough from the EC Chair, particularly her fierce, contumelious and obnoxious running battles with the erstwhile Wood Supreme Court to be facilely deceived by the real motive behind her transfer. Needless to say, it was absolutely no stroke of genius on her part that Election 2016 did not go the way of the sort of veritable circus act – vis-à-vis the infamous pink sheets litigation – that characterized the 2012 Afari-Gyan-presided Presidential Election.

But, really, what I want to highlight here is the vicious strategic jujitsu so deftly orchestrated by a pathologically tribalistic Mr. Mahama, who had decided to use tribesmen and women from the ethnic group of his main challenger and most formidable political opponent against Nana Akufo-Addo, namely, Messrs. Julius Debrah and Ofosu-Ampofo, and then Mrs. Charlotte Osei. And, indeed, for quite a while, this tendentious gambit appeared to be working wonders, except that the infamous military fatigues-addicted Bole-Bamboi petty warlord had scandalously forgotten that Nana Akufo-Addo’s kinsmen and clanswomen had started doing modern politics long before the “Ganger” Boy first sighted the trundling waves of the Atlantic and Gulf of Guinea.

What is significant to observe here, and for the edification of the other NDC operatives who think like Mr. Allotey-Jacobs, is the fact that any decisions ultimately taken on the EC petition by either President Akufo-Addo or Attorney-General Gloria Akuffo would be squarely and categorically based on the strength of the evidence, rather than either sheer political expediency or partisan considerations. It would also definitely not be based on whether supporters and sympathizers of the main opposition National Democratic Congress are in agreement with the same or not. And these NDC apparatchiks and their supporters, sponsors and sympathizers had better not raise capricious Cain, or they would be promptly made to understand the fact that they are no more entitled to Ghanaian citizenship than their political opponents among the rank-and-file membership of the ruling New Patriotic Party.

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