It is my well-considered conclusion that the New Patriotic Party is being driven by the pipe dreams of an overly conceited octagenarian who is ready to tout or flaunt his self- acclaimed democratic credentials yet ill-prepared to brook any dissent !
Ostensibly , the posturing , utterances, actions, inactions and demeanor of Nana Akuffo Addo are antithetical to the core ideals and tenets of an avowed or authentic democrat ! And therefore he is simply anti-Presidential? Indeed , one of the inimitable attributes of an unpretentious democrat is not only his respect for due processes and procedures but most germanely his ability to countenance dissenting views. The intramural conflict between Nana Akuffo Addo and Mr Paul Afoko has brought to the fore, rather forcefully, the type of Presidency Ghanaians should expect in the most unlikely event that Nana Addo becomes President.
Yes, his ,would be a presidency marked by vendetta,indiscipline ,corruption and disregard for the rule of Law. Perhaps a further expatiation of this point would drum home the gravamen of my argument. We should all be conversant ,by now, of the fact that, prior to the assumption of Mr Paul Afoko into office as the National Chairman of the NPP, the largest opposition Party had only about 96 cedis or less in its coffers and, several Party accounts were operated by unauthorized persons on behalf of the Party.
This was certainly a conduit for siphoning ,embezzlement and misappropriation. In clear terms, members of the Party were being shortchanged by a puppet few put in charge of the Party’s funds by Nana Addo regardless of the fact that they had no locus standing within the NPP. As a national chairman who is worth his Sault ,Mr Paul Afoko was bent on rectifying this invidious set up but Nana Addo, the pseudo Democrat ,was neither enthused nor amused . He prefers the stinking and corruption-riddled status quo that fed into his ambitions of controlling the lot with his ill-gotten financial clout , to the transparency and fiscal discipline Afoko wanted to inject.
That was the casus belli !
From thereon Nana Akuffo Addo contrived covertly to give the Dog a bad name in order to hang him. Given to Machiavellian machinations, Nana Addo summoned, albeit surreptitiously, his Yesmen and hangers-on within the Council of elders, NEC, Disciplinary committee and many other henchmen at the National, Regional and constituency level to raise a great hue and cry against Afoko – this would eventually culminate into his illegal expulsion from the Party he is committed to and has invested so heavily in . Pejorative nomenclatures like mole and infiltrator were in vogue in the description of Paul Afoko . The Afoko whose munificence and magnanimity towards the NPP is common knowledge :whose Pick-ups were used by Nana Addo to prosecute his 2012 futile attempt at the Presidency has become an infiltrator overnight for daring to advocate financial accountability.
The alleged involvement of the younger brother of Paul Afoko, Gregory Afoko in the acid-bath of Mr Adams was the last straw that broke the Camel’s back! To Akuffo Addo ,this was an apropos opportunity to consign Paul Afoko to the status of a persona non grata by labelling him as an agent provocateur of the Devil. I am still trying to fathom how a Lawyer of no mean repute came to the ludicrous conclusion that the alleged sins of a younger brother must be visited on an elder brother .At the behest of Nana Addo some constituency and regional executives unconstitutionally passed a vote of no confidence in Afoko. When the nullity in the processes used to arrive at this decision was pointed out a plan B became inevitable.
Eventually, with the support of highly respected party elders of the NPP like CK Tedam, who preferred not to draw the ire of Nana Addo , Paul Afoko was relieved of his job. In a nutshell, a mammoth miscarriage of justice or if you like a monstrous travesty of justice transpired ,spearheaded by a so-called legal luminary.
From the foregoing therefore it stands to reason that Nana Addo has no modicum of regard for laid down processes and procedures and would stop at nothing to establish his supremacy. He is not a team player and his holier-than-thou attitude does not augur well for the unity and integrity of the group. In fact,information reaching me indicates that Akuffo Addo paid death ears to the attempts by President Kufour and the venerated Asantehene to arrange a negotiated settlement between him and Afoko. His attitude towards them,I understand, to say the least ,was standoffish.
It would be a perilous enterprise for a nation to invest so much power in a person who has shown so little responsibility towards the handling and management of the very limited power of his Party! Failure to pay heed to the timeless and profound words of Lord Acton would be to our own detriment. ” All power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Perhaps Shakespeare had us in mind when he warned that “coming misfortunes cast their shadows before them.” Could Nana Addo be a coming misfortune? A man who often incites or instigates his followers with bloodcurdling and bloodletting phrases like ” All die be die” is capable of anything !
It is vitally significant at this moment for me to add that Nana Addo’s senility- induced attitude is a lighter cross to carry compared with those highly placed persons within the NPP who allow themselves to be made a Circus Show of ,in their bid to curry favour with Nana Addo! Anytime I have the misfortune of listening to Mr Peter Mac Manu and some other NPP big shots Iike Freddie Blay I get nauseous .
If Mr Peter Mac Manu, a former National Chairman of the NPP, could sound so puerile by declaiming that the NPP would declare their own results, then what else ,apart from bollocks and balderdash, can we expect from the NPP youth like Sammy Awuku and Anthony Karbo? When the Presidential Candidate of the NPP himself has gone berserk by promising Ghanaians a nirvana of Factories and Dams in each District and Village, why won’t Anthony Karbo defend these moonshine promises by saying the NPP would put up Dog and Cat meat factories respectively in the Upper East and Volta Regions? What denigratory insult ! Since the Presidential candidate of the NPP himself is trotting around the Country with nothing more worthwhile than a tall list of utopian promises, what more can we expect from his coterie of youthful opportunist like Sammy Awuku who are being fattened by the contributions of ordinary NPP members.
Ladies and gentlemen, when the issue of the Ford gift arose I was one of those who held the conviction that the NPP was merely blowing hot air and over flogging the issue because they were message drought. With needless pomp and ceremony the NPP held a press conference which was addressed by the unelected national Chairman, Freddie Blay, in which they sought to suggest that the Ford gift was a bribe. Many are still wondering why a press conference has not yet been organized to unearth their manifesto!
Today, with the benefit of hindsight I have been vindicated. CHRAJ has cleared the president of all the flimsy charges of bribery brought against him and has accordingly dismissed the suit. However, what is still causing me heart palpitations is how the minority MP’s were poised to trade their birth rights to attract a nod of approval from a desperado of a Presidential hopeful. Although they had no qualms about the fact that the Ford Expedition was a gift they deliberately gave Ghanaians the impression that they were exploring options to get the president impeached, merely to satiate the inordinate demands of Nana Addo.
Mention has to be made of the fact that the NPP has mutated into bunch of despondent nitpickers who seize every opportunity to do the President in, including employing the services of expatriates to undermine the presidency of Ghana. If the NPP leadership would be humble enough to come under my tutelage , I Would school them on the fact that certain utterances, actions and concocted lies do not only damage the reputation of Mr John Mahama as a person but most significantly it subjects the presidency to international opprobrium. In fact, in their bid to belittle John Mahama ,for the sake of political expediency, what the NPP is doing is tantamount in effect to sabotage and State undermining . The insanely looking scallywag of Lebanese extraction, who made wild and unprintable allegations against the President and who was egged on by the NPP, is a case in point. What stunned me to speechlessness was their insistence that the BNI shouldn’t have picked the Numbskull for interrogation!
No one can blink the inescapable fact that the NPP has become a reflection of the desperation inherent in their Presidential candidate!
In conclusion, if president Nkrumah has been immortalized and eulogized for investing heavily in infrastructure, President Mahama can share that glory for treading in Nkrumah’s footsteps.
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