Lying and Scamming Mr. Tear-Down Cut Down to Size

I guess some of us who want the most visionary and progressive Ghanaian political party, to wit, the Akufo-Addo-led New Patriotic Party (NPP), to remain in power for the foreseeable future, so as to expedite the direly needed development of the country, are doomed to voluntarily pinch-hit for the Communications Department of the NPP for the quite some time to come. Individually, quite a remarkable number of the key operatives of the ruling party are doing extremely well in promptly parrying off the cold-calculated and systematic lies of the Propaganda Directorate of the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), including the flagrant lies of Tear-Down Candidate John Dramani Mahama. But even as I hinted to Nana Akufo-Addo last August, when I paid the President a brief visit at Jubilee House, to be effective, the entire apparatus of the NPP’s Communications Department will need to be reconfigured and better coordinated in order to achieve the sort of results that the proverbial doctor ordered.

So far, Mr. Kojo Oppong-Nkrumah is doing quite remarkably well; the man can obviously think on his feet. Still, he needs to strategically avoid being apologetically put on the defensive by the operatives of the National Democratic Congress, in particular by the NDC’s parliamentary representatives. But, of course, my Communications Laureate is the newly elected Bono Regional Chairman of the NPP, Mr. Kwame Baffoe – aka Abronye DC – who promptly, aptly and admirably and authoritatively descended on Candidate Mahama recently, when the latter cavalierly presumed to insult the intelligence of Ghanaian citizens and voters, when the self-proclaimed “Presidential Spare-Tire” of the late President John Evans Atta-Mills toured some bus terminals and lorry stations in the Accra Metropolitan Area (AMA) and opportunistically concocted the patently preposterous lie that the recently introduced Luxury Vehicles Tax had been insensitively and indiscriminately imposed on relatively well-heeled Ghanaian citizens, and that the man who imposed the highest number and amount of taxes on Ghanaians, ironically, was also poised to scrapping the Luxury Vehicles Tax in the highly unlikely event of him being returned to the Jubilee-Flagstaff House (See “Luxury Vehicles Tax: Abronye DC Descends Heavily on John Mahama” Ghanaweb.com 4/20/19).

Now, we learn from Abronye DC that the truth of the matter, which was predictably and practically impossible for a politically desperate Candidate Mahama to publicly acknowledge to his audience, is that the LVT was actually wisely and selectively imposed, with importers of commercial vehicles of various descriptions, including passenger vehicles with a minimum capacity of 10 passengers, being effectively exempted. Then also, imported tractors used for commercial farming and ambulances are equally exempted. Exempted as well, are commercial vehicles used for the transportation of goods, for both humans and animals. This pretty much explains why during the first-quarter of the collection of the LVT, the government was only able to net some GHȻ 25 Million. Ever the pathological sophist, Candidate Presidential Spare-Tire chose to use the preceding figure to deviously hoodwink his audiences into believing that the LVT was, after all, far more of a nuisance than it was a revenue-enhancing economic-policy initiative.

Unfortunately for this self-serving pathological political scam-artist, what “Comrade” (My profuse apologies to Mr. Orwell) Mahama left out of his mendacious attempt to discredit his much more visionary and progressive successor, and which readily or immediately exposed him for being a tax-obsessed politician was, of course, the unmistakable impression that the former President is far more interested in imposing unbearable tax levies on Ghanaians than either scrapping or abolishing the same altogether. In other words, for “Comrade” Mahama, it would have been savvier for President Akufo-Addo to have mercilessly milked Ghanaian importers of big-engine-capacity vehicles than selectively and rationally and fairly imposing the same. This practically humane and socially and morally considerate approach to taxation is what clearly differentiates a forward-looking and thinking and inimitably progressive President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo from a reckless tax-and-spend former President John Dramani Mahama.

The good news here is that eligible Ghanaian voters have more than an ample record on the tax-obsessed profile of the erstwhile Mills-Mahama regimes upon which to base the practical decision of who best qualifies to continue to manage their affairs, that is, either President Fee-Free Education or Mr. Tear-Down the same.

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

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
April 24, 2019
E-mail: [email protected]