Elections Are Won on Performance Record

I was amused to hear Fred Agbenyo, the Ex-Deputy Communications Officer, so-called, of Ghana’s main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), lamely assert that the very logically constructive decision by President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to scuttle the December 17 Referendum, aimed at democratizing local government by allowing for the direct election and political party sponsorship of candidates for the post of Metropolitan, Municipal and District Chief Executives presaged victory for Candidate John Dramani Mahama and the main opposition National Democratic Congress in the 2020 general election (See “Abortive Referendum Is Victory for NDC – Fred Agbenyo” Modernghana.com 12/2/19).

Actually, the abortion of the aforesaid Referendum exposes the leaders of the National Democratic Congress to the anger of many a patriotic and progressive-thinking Ghanaian voter for the cynical charlatans and corrupt and self-serving robber-barons that these double-salary-drawing Social-Darwinian political operatives veritably are. It also further strengthens the unrivaled democratic credentials of Nana Akufo-Addo and the largely dynamic and indefatigable leaders of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the leadup to the 2020 general election. Indeed, if I were Candidate John Dramani Mahama – God forbid! – I would be worried silly and regretful of having made the rather desperate and rash decision to contest unarguably the most visionary and successful Fourth-Republican President.

Indeed, even as the President aptly and poignantly pointed out the other day, the very notion that the present nonpartisan sponsorship of candidates at the Metropolitan, Municipal and District and Community levels, somehow, effectively precludes the overt influence of movers-and-shakers of the country’s two major political parties is at once farcical and hypocritical. Of course, the preceding assertion by the President cannot be gainsaid because virtually every adult participant of the current electoral regime, culture or system at the local level is a registered bona fide member of a legitimately registered and recognized political party in the country; besides, the current direct appointment of MMDCEs by the occupant of Jubilee House is inescapably partisan in an indisputably one-party procedural mode.

Which immediately makes the very vow by Candidate Mahama and the NDC’s Abongo Boys and Girls to resoundingly vote “No!” against the aborted December 17 Referendum all too predictable, if also because the passionately, blindly and pathologically populist pro-Left leaders of the Jerry Rawlings-founded National Democratic Congress have absolutely no enviable track-record of both fighting for and staunchly defending the democratic principles and the inviolable and inalienable right of all Ghanaian citizens to freedom and justice, besides these double-salary drawing criminal and political scumbags.

It is also significant to highlight the fact that, by and large, we, Ghanaians, indeed, do love and respect our legitimately invested chiefs and elders; nevertheless, no levelheaded Ghanaian citizen of any remarkable status or worth has ever accused authoritative traditional rulers like The Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei-Tutu, II, for only one obvious example, of fiercely championing the sort of democratic principles that are enshrined in Ghana’s 1992 Constitution.

Ultimately, it is the same Dumsor and Cash-and-Carry and anti-fee-free Senior High School mentality of the indisputably antisocial leaders of the National Democratic Congress that will, once again, see Candidate John Dramani Mahama suffer another seismic and apocalyptic defeat come December 2020 and the effective retirement of the ex-arch-lieutenant of the late President John Evans Atta-Mills who has yet to frankly and credibly explain to the Ghanaian people and the rest of the global community at large, the precise set of circumstances under which his extant boss and the man who generously handpicked the former Gonja-West NDC-MP for the clearly oversized job of a presidential running-mate, met his “mysterious” death. In retrospect, the savvy and prophetic judgment and counsel of the founding patriarch of the National Democratic Congress, to wit, Chairman Jerry John Rawlings, cannot be gainsaid.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
December 2, 2019
E-mail: [email protected]