Who Is Full of Hate and Spite, Bawa-Motgari?

Joyce Bawah Mogtari

She may have so scandalously soon forgotten this, and so somebody more sober and levelheaded like yours truly ought to remind Mrs. Joyce Bawa-Motgari, the Mahama spokesperson, so-called, that it was her cousin who, as substantive President of the Democratic Republic of Ghana, in the lead-up to the 2016 general election, told Ghanaians and the world at large that then-Candidate Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and the latter’s running-mate, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, had absolutely no right to criticize his paid poor job performance because Messrs. Akufo-Addo and Bawumia had never sat on the seat of the President of Ghana. Back then, as I vividly recall, Mr. Mahama also called the intelligence and wisdom of the very voters who had put him into the erstwhile Flagstaff House, presently Jubilee House, into question by categorically asserting that they had absolutely no right to criticize his job performance because these ordinary Ghanaian citizens were not naturally endowed with any viable critical-thinking faculties to be able to sensibly differentiate bad leadership performance from a competent or good one.

It would be very interesting and instructive to hear what Mrs. Bawa-Motgari, the former Mahama Deputy Transportation Minister, make of the preceding tirades issued by her cousin and paymaster. I hope she gets well paid enough to find it so easy to tarnish whatever may be left of her reputation and standing in Ghanaian society and political culture. I raise this issue because Mrs. Bawa-Motgari has virulently accused Mr. John Peter Amewu, the Lands and Natural Resources Minister, of being “full of hate and spite,” because Mr. Amewu has dared to call a spade a spade by condignly putting Mr. John Dramani Mahama where he most suitably belongs, to wit, the dunghill of Ghanaian political culture (See “Describing Mahama as Conman ‘Disrespectful’ – Bawa-Motgari” Classfmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 4/30/18).

I suppose that the Mahama cousin and spokesperson is of the weird conviction that her boss spoke truth to power, as it were, and did so with class and finesse, when on April 28, at the so-called National Democratic Congress’ sponsored Unity Walk, the former President had the temerity to call the wisdom of President Akufo-Addo into question, because the latter had responsibly dared to use the soldiers and police officers of Operation Vanguard to track down and arrest recalcitrant small-scale illegal miners whose wantonly predatory activities continue to lay waste to the country’s lands, forests and waterbodies, and to seriously threaten the very existence and survival of Ghanaian citizens.

The Mahama spokeswoman would have Ghanaians believe that, somehow, Mr. Mahama’s arrogant castigation of President Akufo-Addo was done purely out of selfless love and patriotism for the country and its citizenry, but that when Mr. Amewu poignantly exposes the reckless opportunism and mischief underneath Mr. Mahama’s tirade as the symphonic orchestration of a pathological conman and con-artist, somehow, the Lands and Natural Resources Minister is being “hateful and spiteful.” Well, I perfectly understand what Mrs. Bawa-Motgari is both implying and tapping into here, even as a locally renowned Bongo-Frafra native and award-winning journalist had the chutzpah to assert not very long ago, to wit, that the leaders of the main opposition National Democratic Congress have an inalienable right to play fast-and-loose with the people’s business, but that their counterparts of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) were mere mortals who were subject to higher moral values and standards.

Well, I perfectly agree with Mrs. Bawa-Motgari that “it is not easy to accept criticism sometimes by leadership in political discourse, but it is very important that ‘we listen to others before we seem to create wrong impressions and to allude [attribute?] wrong intentions to individuals.” The problem here, though, is that Ms. Bawa-Motgari appears to have apocalyptically failed to constructively and wisely sound out the preceding quite intelligent and meaningful advice to her kinsman, before Mr. Mahama made his imperious remark that sought to strip Messrs. Akufo-Addo and Bawumia and, indeed, Ghanaian citizens and voters at large of their inalienable free-speech right to criticize the man to whom they had entrusted the affairs of their beloved Ghana.

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
May 1, 2018
E-mail: [email protected]