NDC Did Not Midwife Democracy in Ghana

Maybe somebody needs to instruct the immediate former President that it is not too late, in spite of him having just turned 60 years old, to go back to school and learn some real and true lessons about which personalities and political parties actually “midwifed” constitutional democracy in modern Ghana (See “Ayawaso West Wuogon Byelection Violence: We’ll Match NPP Boot for Boot in 2020 – Mahama Warns” Modernghana.com 2/1/19). Absolutely no political party anywhere in the Third World of the breed or species of the Rawlings-fangled National Democratic Congress (NDC) midwifed democratic governance, least of all on the African continent. He may also have forgotten what his own representatives and assigns did to New Patriotic Party (NPP) supporters and sympathizers at Talensi and Atiwa and other parts of the country; and so, perhaps, somebody needs to jog his apparently rusty and jaded memory.

You see, the fact of the matter is that the operatives of the New Patriotic Party have just demonstrated to their infamous terror-mongering counterparts of the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress that they have fast mastered the raw idiom of the well-calibrated application of strategic violence to guarantee a balancing of political forces in the country, and that if the former President makes the deadly mistake of foolishly indulging in the sort of political thuggery of which the National Democratic Congress has long become notorious for, that is, since the latter’s inception in the early 1990s, and before that during the terror-charged climate fostered by former Flt.-Lt. Jerry John Rawlings, all in all, for some 20 of the most harrowing socioeconomic and cultural times in the country, the key operatives of the Danquah-Busia-Dombo-inspired party would have absolutely no other alternative but drown the brash and pathologically impetuous Bole native in his own blood and brine. If he likes, let Mr. Mahama mark it on the proverbial wall.

It is rather preposterous for somebody who was just trounced at the polls by more than one-million eligible Ghanaian voters to be quixotically attempting to stage a comeback, so that he can continue to wantonly, criminally and unconscionably exploit the resources of our beloved country for the exclusive benefit of himself, his family members and his political cronies and associates. I hope the good people of the Adaklu Constituency, in the Volta Region, and the general population of Ghana, heard him loud and clear, when the former President rather foolishly declared that supporters and sympathizers of the main opposition National Democratic Congress were being forced by the New Patriotic Party-supported vigilante groups to “show our true colors.”

Well, the fact of the matter is that Ghanaians already know the “true colors” of the operatives of the National Democratic Congress and roundly rejected them at the December 2016 polls. And it is highly unlikely for any of the current leaders and/or aspirants of the National Democratic Congress to be returned to power anytime soon, least of all former President John Dramani Mahama, a man who completely lacks common sense and the requisite leadership skills and vision to take Ghana and Ghanaians to the next level of our socioeconomic, political and cultural development. You see, instead of Mr. Kaakamotobi to fatuously and facilely attempt to intimidate his way back into the Jubilee-Flagstaff House, Mr. Mahama ought to be humbly explaining to Ghanaians what he did the last time around that was so auspicious and progressive such as to make him so quixotically convince himself that he deserves to be re-entrusted with their affairs and destiny once more.

This is rather silly, because at another time when he desperately felt the need to moderately differentiate himself from the rest of the NDC’s “revolutionary” hoodlum pack, Mr. Mahama had disingenuously resorted to playing up the purportedly “harmonious, peaceful and conciliatory” values of the Guan-descended people. And so whatever happened to his Guan cultural and moral values this time around? It is, of course, more than quite clear that the mythical monarch of the Hans Christian Andersen fable is stark and butt-naked where common sense and critical- and progressive-thinking are concerned. It is also crystal clear that the NDC’s leaders had characteristically courted trouble as a strategic pretext for withdrawing from the Ayawaso-West Wuogon by election on Thursday, January 31^st, because they simply wanted to save face, being that other than the 1992 parliamentary election season, during which the late Prof. Albert Adu-Boahen instigated a massive boycott, the Ayawaso-West Wuogon parliamentary seat has always been occupied by a bona fide stalwart of the New Patriotic Party.

You see, by and large, residents of the Ayawaso-West Wuogon Constituency are too culturally and intellectually savvy and polished to dance to the vile and cacophonous “Boot-for-Boot” music composed and crudely promoted by the Mahama Posse. An empty political barrel like Mr. John Dramani Mahama makes me really want to throw my weight and support behind either Mr. Ekwow Spio-Garbrah or Mr. Goosie Tandoh, although it is very clear that whichever way the avid political observer of Ghana’s Fourth-Republican culture looks at the game, going into the 2020 Presidential Election, Nana Akufo-Addo and Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia are too progressively strong to be trounced at the polls, short of their corporeal demise or physical liquidation.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
February 9, 2019
E-mail: [email protected]