How often do these New Patriotic Party (NPP) operatives, both on state side and abroad, need to be told that playing defensive against the politically desperate propagandists of Ghana’s main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) is the surest bet to being effectively driven into opposition, in spite of the glaring fact that in just under three years, or three-quarters of a single term in office, the Akufo-Addo-led government of the New Patriotic Party has far and away outperformed the previous Mills-Mahama-led regime of the National Democratic Congress? You see, lamely playing defensive was what the UK Chapter or Branch of the ruling New Patriotic Party’s executive operatives did when they wrote and published a rejoinder captioned “Re: ‘Akufo-Addo Appoints Convicted Corrupt Secretary of NPP UK to Head Ghana Health Promotion Division at GHS Headquarters.’ And ‘You Came to Fight Corruption Indeed’ – NPP UK Fires Akufo-Addo” (Modernghana.com 12/26/19).

First of all, it ought to be obvious to the operatives of the NPP-UK’s Communications Directorate, by now, that such defamatory propagandistic tripe came from a deft orchestration by both the NPP’s own internal diehard detractors and the latter’s collaborators among the ranks of the desperate operatives of the country’s main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC). Make no mistake, there are still paid NDC moles within the ranks of the NPP who are in bed with impudent internal detractors of President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, who are hell-bent on seeing the most thoroughgoing corrupt albeit unprosecuted and yet-to-be-convicted criminal political operative return to Jubilee House, come January 7, 2021, so as to open up another season of the naked and wanton plundering of the collective resources – both fiscal and natural – of the Ghanaian taxpayer and the citizenry at large.

And you simply don’t fight back such reckless and unconscionable political bandits by putting yourself on the defensive. You see, the most apt caption for the rejoinder put out by the NPP-UK Communications Directorate ought to have been the one that constitutes the caption of the present column. Indeed, an even better caption for a rejoinder of this kind ought to have been composed as follows: “Abuga Pele Is Not a Member of Team Akufo-Addo.”

It is also absolutely inadequate for the unsigned NPP-UK’s rejoinder to have lamely noted that “No secretary has been convicted of any crime[;] and neither has the President appointed an indicted [NPP-UK] member or secretary. A convict is one who has served a custodial sentence in society.”

There are at least two big problems with the rejoinder under discussion. For starters, it woefully lacks authenticity because it is unsigned with either the name or signature of any readily recognizable executive operative or even a regular member of the NPP-UK’s Communications Directorate; which means that it seriously lacks professionalism and could presumably just as well have been written by Mr. and/or Ms. Anonymous, the provision of the phone numbers of the Directorate at the tail end of the aforesaid rejoinder notwithstanding.

There is absolutely no good reason for any critical thinker or reader to casually suppose that this unsigned rejoinder is not susceptible to the possibility of being promptly and flatly denied by the officially known operatives of the NPP-UK Communications Directorate. I also don’t find the descriptive label of “Directorate” to be necessarily creative or appropriate for a non-military political party or establishment, but I shall reserve any further comments at this time for a more appropriate and detailed discussion in due course, as I shall deem the same to be timely or opportune.

It is also significantly problematic for anybody to state in a rejoinder of this gravity or nature that “A convict is [only] one who has served a custodial sentence in society.” If, indeed, the alleged Akufo-Addo appointee, to wit, Dr. DaCosta Aboagye, who, I understand, is the current Head of the Ghana Health Promotion Division at the Headquarters of the Ghana Health Services (GHS), has ever been convicted of any crimes or misdemeanors and was subjected to any form of judicial sanctions or sentencing, be it custodial or noncustodial, Ghanaians have a right to be apprised of what such sentencing entailed. Its merely being a “noncustodial” sentence or sentencing in of itself does not tell us, the general public, much.

It may just be very well that Dr. DaCosta Aboagye has been convicted of a serious crime or a felony but was smart enough to have plea-bargained his way out of what could very well have been a custodial sentencing or a prison sentencing to be significantly reduced to a noncustodial or even a suspended custodial sentencing.

The NPP’s communications operatives had better learn the language of “Boot-for-Boot” politics and stop annoyingly behaving like some political neophytes and novices. Politics is the business of those capable of communicating strategically and effectively on their feet. The NPP-UK communications operatives need to fill their coffee mugs to the brim, stay up all night and do some more serious thinking.

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs