The New Patriotic Party’s Deputy Communications Director, Mr. Anthony A. Karbo, has called on his supporters and sympathizers to disregard a scandalous allegation making the rounds in the media to the damnable effect that he had stolen a cellphone belonging to the three-time Presidential Candidate of the main opposition party during the party’s special conference in Sunyani, the Brong-Ahafo regional capital (See “I Did Not Steal Nana Addo’s Phone – Karbo” Ultimatefmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 9/3/16).
I am quite certain that this allegation has absolutely no teeth in reality. But, unfortunately, what we are dealing with here is malicious and vicious political propaganda, which Mr. Karbo firmly believes was fabricated and propagated by elements belonging to the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC). The catch here, though, is that Mr. Karbo has not conducted the necessary investigative work in order to forensically sustainably arrive at the conclusion that, indeed, this dastardly attempt to tarnish his image and reputation is the veritable handicraft of some NDC apparatchiks.
And this is very easy to do, since the aforesaid allegation is reported to have been published by a media website called Ghanapoliticsonline.com. The latter website has been described as heavily pro-National Democratic Congress. And so what Mr. Karbo needs to do, if he really desires to have a fighting chance at this year’s parliamentary elections, is to get the proprietors and/or operators of the Ghanapoliticsonline.com website to write and publish a note of apology unreservedly retracting the aforementioned publication and vowing not to repeat this repugnant and criminal act of defamation and character assassination.
The first step is to get a lawyer to write a letter regarding the victim of defamation’s intention of launching a lawsuit against the owners and operators of Ghanapoliticsonline.com, unless they promptly retract and apologize for the defamatory publication. Failure to do so would engender the certain possibility of the defamers’ meeting the defamed and his lawyer in court to settle matters.
Mr. Karbo is currently the New Patriotic Party’s official parliamentary candidate for the Lawra constituency, in the Upper-West Region. Merely telling his supporters and sympathizers to disregard the defamatory accusation will not meliorate the incalculable personal and political damage that he may have already suffered from such act of defamation. Then also, Mr. Karbo needs to get Nana Akufo-Addo to issue a public statement, copied to the various media establishments, vehemently and categorically denying the allegation. And then at a convenient time in the very near future, Nana Akufo-Addo could either visit or accompany Mr. Karbo to the latter’s Lawra constituency to categorically deny that any such act of theft or foul play has been unleashed against the NPP flagbearer at any time by the former party youth leader.
All this must be done fast and furiously, if the victim of such ruinous act of defamation is to be allowed a level playing field to effectively compete against his most formidable political opponents for the Lawra constituency seat of which Mr. Karbo is the official New Patriotic Party’s candidate. I am also a bit cautious here, by the way, because my studious and perennial monitoring of the internal politics of the country’s largest opposition party tells me that such vicious attempt at the personal and political assassination of the character of Mr. Karbo could well be an insider job undertaken with the complicity of some NDC operatives.
Which means that Mr. Karbo ought not to narrow the scope of his investigations to the extent that he loses complete sight of the proverbial big picture. For in the final analysis, or whatever be the outcome of his investigations, he ought to studiously bear in mind the time-tested and proven maxim that “Politics makes for strange bedfellows.” Good luck, big man!
By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph. D.
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
September 3, 2016
E-mail: [email protected]
*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs