By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
Jan. 24, 2016
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

Whoever he thinks and takes himself to be, Mr. Michael Ampong has absolutely no business presuming to lecture the President of the Ghana Conference of Catholic Bishops on how to address the concerns of the Church and Ghanaian citizens at large vis-à-vis the unilateral decision by President John Dramani Mahama to resettle two high-risk former Guantanamo Bay prison inmates in the country (See “Gitmo Two ‘Catholic Bishops Must Apologize to Mahama’” Starrfmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 1/24/16).

I am glad that the executive operatives of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) decided to get rid of the former spokesman of the Greater-Accra Branch of the party when they did quite a while back. Very likely, Mr. Ampong has been collecting charitable crumbs from the dining table of the Chief Resident of the Flagstaff House, thus his early morning madness.

Needless to say, what Mr. Ampong clearly does not seem to appreciate, or perhaps adamantly refuses to accept, is the fact that Bishop Joseph Osei-Bonsu would advise Mr. Mahama to seasonably balance “compassion with common sense” vis-à-vis his rather reckless, to speak much less about his thoughtless, decision to consent to using Ghana as a cesspit for the disposal of Arab terrorists captured on the killing fields in America’s War-on-Terror against Al-Qaeda and Taliban and the institutional associates of these Islamist and Jihadist terrorist networks.

Indeed, President Mahama direly deserved the sort of morally sobering and chastening language used by Bishop Osei-Bonsu. I personally would have used harsher language than the one attributed to the Catholic prelate. And if he were capable of deep thought, Mr. Ampong would rather be more worried about the insufferably disrespectful decision by Mr. Mahama to so facilely consent to using the lives of some 25 million-plus Ghanaian citizens as cannon fodder for the war games between the United States and its allies, on the one hand, and the Al-Qaeda, Taliban and ISIL jihadist corporate networks, on the other.

If the failed New Patriotic Party National Youth Organizer aspirant really believes that Bishop Osei-Bonsu was “very insensitive in his comments” on President Mahama’s patently unwise decision to have the Gitmo Two resettled in Ghana, then he had better promptly seek out the services of a licensed psychiatrist. For it goes without saying that what President Mahama has done is tantamount to treacherously launching a war with foreign collaborators against the very people who unsuspectingly, in retrospect, offered him their political mandate.

In a way, the proverbial handwriting-on-the wall was quite glaring from the beginning, but most especially so recently when Mr. Mahama told a visibly flabbergasted Ghanaian citizenry and voters that only former Presidents Jerry John Rawlings and John Agyekum-Kufuor had a right to criticize his administrative performance, because it was only these two retired Ghanaian premiers who appreciated what it meant to be president of Ghana, since Messrs. Rawlings and Kufuor, in American popular cultural parlance, were the only two living Ghanaian citizens “who had been there and done that.”

In other words, for Citizen Mahama, short of “Kawukudiing” their votes to him periodically, Ghanaian citizens, especially eligible voters, had absolutely no say in how he chose to govern the country or administer their affairs. Most of all, Mr. Mahama was of the conviction that Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, the Oxbridge-educated former Deputy-Governor of the Bank of Ghana and three-time Vice-Presidential Candidate of the New Patriotic Party, was the least qualified Ghanaian citizen to critique, or evaluate, the performance of his National Democratic Congress government.

If Mr. Ampong thinks that Bishop Osei-Bonsu’s indisputably edifying admonishment to President Mahama was in “bad taste,” then he had better tell the rest of us precisely how “tasteful” and “becoming” was Mr. Mahama’s intemperate tell-off to the very people who offered him the mandate or the presidency that, somehow, they woefully lacked the requisite qualifications and judgmental faculties to evaluate his job performance.

Bishop Osei-Bonsu’s critic may also be too lightheaded to appreciate the serious implications of the foregoing, and so some levelheaded Son-of-a-Gun like yours truly ought to charitably apprise Mr. Ampong of the fact that what President Mahama meant by the preceding paraphrased statement is that those Ghanaian citizens who voted to elect him President in 2012 were congenital buffoons who ought to have known better what to do with their ballot papers and/or thumb-prints.

Is this the sort of person or moral reprobate that Mr. Ampong would have Bishop Osei-Bonsu apologize to for doing the enviable yeomanly bit of setting aright? Come on, Mr. Ampong, put on your thinking cap! That is, if you actually own one.

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