body-container-line-1
17.03.2019 Feature Article

NDC Primary Déjà-Vu

NDC Primary Dj-Vu
17.03.2019 LISTEN

They played the same characteristically primitivistic game in the leadup to the 2016 Presidential Election, when Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia, the dynastic General-Secretary of the then-ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), prevented the former Oyarifa, Greater-Accra, Constituency Organizer of the party from fiercely challenging the hitherto unopposed presidential candidacy of then-incumbent President John Dramani Mahama. The then 45-year-old Mr. George Boateng had publicly and vehemently impugned the leadership credibility and competence of the former Atta-Mills’ Vice-President. It was obviously what the payola-obsessed grubby leaders of the National Democratic Congress flatly and adamantly resented and would hear nothing about. Predictably, the former Gonja-West NDC’s Member of Parliament would suffer a crushing and resounding defeat at the hands of then-Candidate Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, who was running for the presidency the third time around.

It was also the sweetest defeat in the annals of Fourth-Republican Ghanaian political culture. I would not be surprised to learn, as of this writing, that Mr. Boateng, the former NDC’s Constituency Organizer, has crossed the proverbial political-carpet to truck with the operatives of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP). You see, by the very nature of its foundation, the Rawlings-fangled political juggernaut that is the National Democratic Congress, like Kim Jong-un’s Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), or North Korea, is simply not capable of forging a healthy and viable democratic political culture. The leaders of the NDC simply find themselves being forced to play by a script which, inasmuch as they would like to take undue credit for, was decidedly not authored by any of their ham-fisted key operatives.

We quizzically witnessed this when Mr. Samuel George Nartey, the brash street-brawling Ningo-Prampram’s NDC-MP, reportedly prevented delegates from at least four of the 93 branches of the constituency from exercising their franchise in the party’s 2020 presidential primary election (See “Sam George ‘Dents’ Mahama’s Victory” DailyGuideNetwork.com 2/25/19). It is very likely that similar such Mahama-inspired shenanigans occurred in many other constituencies across the nation. Which, of course, is not to imply that the former President had not clinched the “landslide” victory that the NDC’s presidential election primary results clearly indicated that he had. The irony here, though, is that Mr. Mahama’s purportedly landslide victory was a “George Boateng-Type of Victory” in which the entire charade was stage-managed from the party’s Kokomlemle headquarters by the former Sunyani-East NDC’s Member of Parliament and former Rawlings-appointed Deputy Defense Minister.

I also amusingly knew that the entire 2020 NDC’s presidential primary was a veritable charade, when the media reported that all the former Mahama cabinet appointees had been asked to contribute a certain amount of money from their stolen pelf towards the nonconsecutive presidential bid of the democratically retired former Rawlings’ Communications Minister. In other words, from the get-go, the deck was heavily stacked against would-be Mahama challengers like Messrs. Ekwow Spio-Garbrah; Joshua Alabi; Goosie Tandoh; Alban SK Bagbin, the putative Methuselah of Fourth-Republican Ghanaian politicians; and Sylvester Mensah, and a couple of others. As of this writing, however, I was not in the know about the fact of whether, indeed, Mr. Spio-Garbrah, the former Rawlings and Mahama Trade Minister, had contributed any cash towards the comeback presidential electioneering campaign of his former boss, as well as his former subaltern or ministerial subordinate.

Whatever the case may be, as of this writing, the failed Mahama challengers were reported to have met with their “conqueror” to map out their collective strategy for wresting democratic power from President Akufo-Addo come December 7, 2020. Unfortunately, having yet to overcome the “George Boateng Funk,” both the NDC and their jaded presidential nominee are likely to go down the same proverbial primrose path of certain crushing defeat, come December 7, 2020 or thereabouts. We know this from a recently leaked audiotape, on which we have the unmistakable voice of Mr. Samuel Ofosu-Ampofo, the National Chairman of the National Democratic Congress, telling his party headquarters colleagues, associates and minions that any attempt to play by the strictly laid-down rules of constitutional democracy, as enshrined in Ghana’s 1992 Republican Constitution, would definitely spell the apocalyptic doom of the National Democratic Congress.

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

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
March 8, 2019
E-mail: [email protected]

body-container-line