By Dr. Michael J.K. Bokor

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Then, Sekou shifted political grounds again, rushing to align with the NPP and vowing to do all he can to ensure an electoral victory for Akufo-Addo. The NPP is his new-found home now. In this flitting from one political family to the other, he has thrown caution to the wind.

What makes him pitiable is that all these political families that he has flirted with or is now in an unholy alliance with are all diametrically opposed to each other in many ways—ideologically, especially.

How can one person fit into these strictly different ideological modes to function effectively? Why will a sane person willingly turn himself into a pawn to be manipulated in a political game of the sort being played in Ghana? Is Sekou really normal or does he enjoy the pain of manipulation?
Indeed, until now, I thought it’s only Nature that is inscrutable. Surely, Sekou is one inscrutable lot of a human being. Where are the psychologists and neurologists to help us?

Probably, Sekou himself has answers to the instability he faces. We needn’t go any further. In his novel, A Fatherless Child (RoseDog Books, 2011), he provides glimpses. This 70-page paperback starts as a love story and then goes deeper into a search for identity and the values that a man can hold onto in this life.
A brief description by the publishers says that this novel is also a narration of the author’s long struggle with depression after his return to his homeland, as he tries to adjust to a new environment and cope with the breakup of his first marriage and the departure of his son.

Even the birth of his second child, his daughter, does not seem to lift his depressed mood. Then he falls in love with Tara. Can she change his fortunes? Can her strong religious beliefs change the course of his journey through life and beyond?

I have already written an article describing him as the “straw-man of Ghana politics,” but want to reiterate that his recourse to unwarranted personal attacks on President Mills seems to be his trump-card for doing negative politics in Ghana.

To all intents and purposes, such an approach to doing politics in Ghana won’t enhance his status or help him regain his balance. It may suit the propaganda agenda of his new-found political lovers in the NPP but its long-term repercussions aren’t likely to restore him to any long-lasting glory in Ghana politics.
Having come across as politically unstable—and, therefore, being a rolling stone gathering no moss in Ghana politics—he is at a dead-end all too soon. The NPP will definitely use him to serve its purposes only to discard him at the end of the political battle; that is, if they succeed in regaining political power from the NDC. Sekou will be the most shortsighted and self-destructive politician if he deceives himself that he will remain an ally of the NPP forever.

In the first place, the NPP (“Mate Me Ho”) political family is not his home. If he is truly a product of Nkrumah and, therefore, a person imbued with the CPP spirit, then, where he is now is not his political home. He may continue to deceive himself that he will achieve his political ambitions in that political family but at the end of the road, he will see clearly how wretched he is.
This marriage of convenience (only in the sense of seeing the NDC as the target to hit out of contention) is not rooted in anything ideologically or politically convincing to continue to endure after the 2012 elections.

To that end, then, Sekou stands tall as a narrow-minded person who doesn’t even know what to do to make himself a force to reckon with in Ghana politics. He is participating in the political process but just drifting along with the tide. I can guess that his political demise is not far off, and it will be an unpleasant end. In his case, then, his self-destruction is likely to be the upshot of miscalculation, shortsightedness, and mischief. No one will pity such a sore loser.
Samia may be seen as the victim of unfortunate circumstances somehow beyond her control even though her own lack of administrative acumen may account for the crisis now defining (or constraining) her chairmanship of the CPP. Indeed, the turmoil in which she is now embroiled has been simmering in the CPP over the years; it is just unfortunate for it to reach its head only under her watch.
As Paa Kwesi Nduom’s exit and formation of the Progressive People’s Party continues to jolt the CPP under her, it remains to be seen what her team can do to keep the CPP from collapsing. If it does , it will be the worst mishap, which will reduce her father’s political legacy to rubble and reduce her father’s hard work to absurdity.

From what has transpired so far, we can tell that these two children who entered Ghana politics to revamp their father’s political work are caught up in a whirlwind that is fast sweeping away the father’s legacy. Although Samia remains an MP, which means that she still can make her presence felt even if she can’t use her chairmanship of the CPP to do so, the situation may turn for the worse if the CPP loses grounds to the PPP and its followers defect to other parties.
In that sense, then, she will earn the unenviable crown as the destroyer of her father’s political legacy.

Despite the challenges facing her in her management of the affairs of the CPP, Samia stands tall above Sekou. Give me the option and I will go for her someone who is in a kind of vortex or web that she didn’t spin for herself unlike Sekou who clearly comes across as not only politically wayward but also as morally reprehensible.

He seems to bite only after being kicked out of the office he had held but couldn’t turn into anything productive for the benefit of the youth and the country. He has refused to lick his wounds and is on a mission to wreak verbal vengeance. Probably, the irresistible tendency occasioned by a pathological case of depression?

Sekou is not positioned anywhere to defend anything politically feasible. Whatever he does or says is based on his own skewed personal misjudgement. He has nothing to gain or lose where he is now, obeying the wind. He is just a political scarecrow in respectable circumstances by virtue of his association with credible political giants such as the NDC and NPP. Take him out of these political circles and he is nothing at all to enthuse over.
His drifting about has earned him more scorn than respect and he will not pass off as anybody worth anybody’s bother. He may choose to continue pouring venom on President Mills but it won’t salve his conscience (whatever is left of it at this stage) or win him anything creditable in Ghana politics.

All in all, then, these two children of the Great Osagyefo have gradually brought themselves face-to-face with forces that will make or break their political aspirations. As of now, they are noteworthy only as “outsiders” who can’t fit into the pattern that they thought they could use to enhance their father’s legacy or make a name for themselves.

Unfortunately for them, they may see some light at the end of the political tunnel; but that light may turn out to be that of an onrushing train. It won’t illuminate their path but eliminate them altogether from that path so those who know how to do Ghana politics will move on to chart that path to success!
From their attitude to politics in Ghana, one wonders how much of their father’s hard work they know of or have read about to know how to defend his legacy. They haven’t chosen the appropriate strategies for defending that legacy or for carving a niche for themselves in Ghanaian politics.

At this point then, they have turned their father’s hard work into a lamentable legacy and reduced their own political lives to a mere rubble. Samia still has the opportunity to rebuild hers but Sekou is at a dead-end. Who will believe him anymore to confide in and collaborate with for the benefit of the country? What a pity!

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