By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

As of this writing (12/30/08) and in the wake of Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan’s announcement that until the people of the Tain Constituency, in the Brong-Ahafo Region, have been allowed to vote in the grave bid to determining who gets to pilot the proverbial Ghanaian ship of state for the next four years, the perennially imposed presidential candidate of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) issued a statement prematurely and presumptuously declaring himself Ghana’s President-Elect and winner of Election 2008. Prof. John Evans Atta-Mills also warned that he and his party would not accept the comprehensive results of the 2008 presidential run-off, if both deemed such results to have been doctored by the Electoral Commission.

Regarding the preceding, we find two disturbing problems which are, nonetheless, hardly surprising, because this is actually the intransigent position maintained by the former University of Ghana law school associate professor, since his third and last electoral defeat in the 2004 presidential election. And as we noted several days ago, in the wake of his 2004 handsome trouncing at the polls by sitting president John Agyekum-Kufuor (by 52.5% to 44.6%), Prof. Atta-Mills promptly conceded defeat. Curiously, however, during the course of the last three years, or so, the Rawlings presidential appointee has roamed the length and breadth of the country vehemently protesting that President Kufuor has, somehow, been ruling the country without an electoral mandate. Prof. Atta-Mills and some leading members of the so-called National Democratic Congress (NDC) have even sought to get the results of several constituencies, nationwide, proscribed by a court of law. And so, it is not quite clear precisely what he means when the NDC flagbearer vows not to accept any “fraudulent” run-off results from the Electoral Commission.

On the latter score, Prof. Atta-Mills appears to be insulting the professional integrity and intelligence of Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, himself a former political scientist at the University of Ghana and the man who has continuously organized and supervised all major national elections since 1992, with the landmark inauguration of Ghana’s Fourth Republic. And on the latter score also, it bears recalling for the benefit of our readers that Dr. Afari-Gyan was Ghana’s Electoral Commissioner for at least four years before Prof. Atta-Mills succeeded to the Vice-Presidency, in the wake of the brutal physical mauling of the late Mr. Ekow Nkensen-Arkaah by then-President Rawlings. In sum, our convicted contention here is that in terms of professional and managerial experience, Prof. Atta-Mills is no peer of Dr. Afari-Gyan’s. The latter is also widely acknowledged as, perhaps, the foremost Electoral Commissioner or expert on the conduct of elections on the entire African continent, with his sterling services constantly sought by many a fledgling African democracy.

In view of the foregoing, it appears that when Prof. Atta-Mills vows not to accept any “fraudulent” presidential run-off results, Mr. Rawlings’ handpicked candidate for President of Ghana implies, rather erratically, that the only results that he and his party toughs are bound to deem legitimate and valid are only results that favor them. If so, then no single individual or group of party hacks could have insulted the intelligence and moral integrity of the Ghanaian electorate more than Prof. Atta-Mills and his NDC party apparatchiks appear to have done.

The preceding is not all too surprising, since the very foundations of the so-called National Democratic Congress were dictatorially and bloodily laid on the backs of well-meaning and unsuspecting Ghanaians. And since then, the NDC, chaperoned by their patron saint, Flt.-Lt. Jeremiah John Rawlings, has been cavalierly lording it over peace-loving and longsuffering Ghanaians for some three decades now.

Even relegated to the theoretical margins of Ghanaian opposition politics, the NDC and their fanatical and criminally prone supporters and sympathizers have managed to seriously undermine the integrity of Election 2008.When not pontifically preaching the primitive politics of ethnic chauvinism and tribalism – as Prof. Atta-Mills had occasion to do with Fante fishermen, recently, by falsely claiming that President Kufuor was insensitive to the plight of these fisher-folk because the Kumasi-born sitting Ghanaian premier was more attuned to the needs of “Ahaban mu fo” or forest denizens – Prof. Atta-Mills and his NDC cronies have hired armed ballot box-snatching thugs and bullies to prevent legitimately registered Ghanaian voters from exercising their constitutional franchise, as was widely reported in parts of the Upper West, Eastern and Volta regions of the country.

In the Volta Region, dubbed the World Bank of the NDC and also the ethnic origins of former President Rawlings, himself a notorious tribal nationalist, anonymous death threats were issued to supporters and members of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), vowing to physically eliminate every single one of them who dared to exercise his or her franchise. The flagrantly shocking result was that even in the lone Nkwanta-North Constituency of Central Volta which had been carried by both the parliamentary and presidential candidates of the ruling New Patriotic Party during the December 7 general election, the NPP mysteriously and massively lost in the presidential run-off.

As of this writing (12/30/08), Dr. Afari-Gyan and the Electoral Commission were in the process of investigating the Nkwanta-North conundrum, among several others, with a view to promptly rectifying any irregularities that might have occurred there. This may, of course, imply a re-running of the presidential run-off in the Nkwanta-North Constituency altogether. As to whether Prof. Atta-Mills and his NDC Abongo Boys will be humble and fair-minded enough to accept the verdict of the Electoral Commission is pretty much any well-meaning Ghanaian citizen’s good guess. And so, it is quite obvious that Prof. Atta-Mills entered the Election 2008 presidential fray with anything but good faith.

It is also not clear precisely what Prof. Atta-Mills means by the following assertion: “I am not going to accept any fraudulent results from the Electoral Commission. It is very important that we respect the will of the people and not try to impose anybody to govern Ghanaians” (see “Mills: We’ll Not Accept Doctored Results” Ghanaweb.com 12/30/08). Needless to say, about the only candidate that was imposed on party members and thus, by extension, the Ghanaian electorate at large, is none other than Prof. John Evans Atta-Mills himself! And if he is entertaining any scandalous notions of having his boss and NDC founding-proprietor, ex-President Rawlings, once again impose Prof. Atta-Mills on Ghanaians, a la the infamous Swedru Declaration, then the perennial NDC flagbearer is in for the rudest awakening of his life, since the historic overthrow of President Kwame Nkrumah!

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is the author of “Ghanaian Politics Today” (Atumpan Publications/lulu.com, 2008). E-mail: okoampaahoofe@aol.com.