"Make me first Fante President"

Reports picked up by The Statesman indicate that Alan Kyerematen continues to make campaign capital for his presidential candidacy bid on his 'tribal' attributes. In soliciting votes in the Central Region last week, he charged the people to make him the first President from the Central Region.

Accra"s Joy FM and Cape Coast’s Radio Central reported at the weekend that he is on course to being the first Fante to be elected President. Ironically, the Central Region is most noted for not voting on ethnic or regional lines. John Evans Ata Mills, a full-blooded Fante has twice lost the Central Region to John Agyekum Kufuor.

On Prof Mills’ old message that ‘Adze wo fie eye’ (charity begins at home), Michael Ampong, one of Mr Kyerematen’s spokesmen, believes Alan represents a better charity quality: ‘Adze papa wofie oye’. Comparing the NDC flagbearer to the NPP aspirant, Mr Ampong said Alan’s quality is in what he can do to uplift the people.

"We don’t want to play the ethnic card at all,” Mr Ampong stated.

Mr Kyerematen has made his ‘mixed ethnic heritage’ an essential part of his campaign, a situation which has invited calls of ‘hypocrisy’ from the Aliu Mahama camp.

He is on record as saying that ethnicity will be a “major issue” in the 2008 general elections and that his candidacy presents the NPP the antidote for it.

Spokesman for the Vice President, Yaw Buabeng-Asamoah has pointed out an apparent double-standard approach in last week’s call by the General Secretary of the New Patriotic Party that Alhaji Aliu Mahama should bring his chief advisor Amoako Tufuor to order for campaigning on a ‘tribal card.’

The Vice President’s aide wondered why Nana Ohene Ntow has not come down against candidates who claim that “because of where they come from and where their spouses also come from they can win votes for the party from what they regard as the party’s ‘World Bank’.”

But, Alan’s spokesman insists that their campaign does not dwell on ethnicity and that Mr Kyerematen will win the nomination contest on December 22 not because of his ethnic background but because of his attributes as a performer.

On his campaign rounds in most parts of the country, Mr Kyerematen, a royal of Ejisu, speaks of his ability to draw votes for the NPP from the Ashanti Region, which he calls the NPP’s electoral ‘World Bank,’ because of his Asante lineage.

Speaking to his publicist, Charles Sam on Vibe FM and Metro TV in July, Alan Kyerematen said one of his strengths in the contest for the next presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party was his “ethnic balance.”

Marketing himself on Metro TV’s current affairs programme, Good Evening Ghana, at the time, Mr Kyerematen said his “mixed heritage” offered him an advantage in countering any negative ethnocentric charge against the NPP. Alan explained that he has both Ashanti and Fante ancestry. His wife also has a mixed background, from Kwahu and Akyem, both in the Eastern Region.

Though, Ghana is not of an Akan homogeneity, according to the 2000 population census, 49.3 percent of the population are Akans. 16.6% of Ghanaians are of the sub-Akan group of Fantes.

Alan’s father, the late A A Y Kyerematen hailed from Patase, Kumasi and Bompata, Asante Akyem. Alan’s mother Victoria Kyerematen (nee Welsing) is an Ejisu royal. Alan’s maternal grandfather was from Elmina.

Dr Amoako Tuffuor was roundly criticised for speaking, what Harruna Attah, Aliu’s Comunications Director, describes as the “inconvenient truth.” Dr Amoako Tuffuor warns the NPP against electing another Akan as presidential candidate after Messrs Kufuor, Adu Boahen and others before them.

He is urging the party to nominate the Vice President, a Moslem from Dagbon as flagbearer to neutralise opposition propaganda, which tags the governing party as Akan. Critics of ‘tribal politics’ have urged competing politicians to campaign on their merits but not on their ethnicity and related sensitive backgrounds.

Before his appointment in 2001 as President Kufuor’s first Ambassador to the United States, Mr Kyerematen was the founding Regional Director of UNDP’s Enterprise Africa, for private sector and entrepreneurship development in Africa.

Before that, in 1990, he was responsible for establishing the EMPRETEC Programme in Ghana, sponsored by the United Nations Development Programme and Barclays Bank Ghana Ltd.

In his campaign message, Alan makes this very wide claim: “It is conservatively estimated that 70% of Ghana’s high flying entrepreneurs are products of Mr Kyerematen’s successful Empretec programme in Ghana.”

Mr Kyerematen is a graduate in Economics from the University of Ghana, and is also a qualified lawyer.

In addition, he was a Hubert Humphrey Fellow at the School of Management of the University of Minnesota, under the United States Fulbright Fellowship Program. He entered Adisadel College at the record age of 9 years, and thereafter attended Achimota School for his sixth form education.

Mr Ampong stated that the campaign message of Alan has been that the country needs a business-oriented leader who can emancipate and create the enabling environment for the business community to thrive. He boasted that Alan’s campaign message has been well received and expressed the hope that he would win ‘one touch ’by seventy percent.