Champaign-socialism is a system where the infinitesimal ruling class chooses to enjoy full-blown capitalist life-style behind closed-doors but come into the open to prescribe the purest form of Marxism for their unemployed fooled-soldiers. So for example, these NDC champaign-socialists demonized the concept of property-ownership and portrayed themselves as prospective dwellers of ‘Sodom-Gomorrah’. But what are we currently seeing?
NPP’s agenda 2012
Now, one major contributory factor that sent the NPP into opposition after performing so well in government and pioneering some of the most comprehensive social interventions in our nation’s history was the party’s chronic inability to either defend itself from vile propaganda or properly articulate its good works.
The party, after the 2008 electoral defeat, put in-place a mechanism to ascertain what contributed to its fortunes and to map-out a strategy with which to tackle the 2012 elections. Some reforms have been effected following this process, and in my view, the parliamentary primaries have been smooth. This parliamentary primary process, in 2008, was characterized by so much acrimony which resulted in some aspirants contesting as independent candidates.
Now, with peace haven prevailed in the process this time round, all those constituencies lost to the NDC as a result of intra-party squabbles are already in the bag. I am therefore very much hopeful about the fortunes of the party in 2012 and I doff my hat to all party executives from the polling station level to national.
Tackling NDC vile propaganda
My worry however, is when it comes to the area of mapping out an effective communication strategy to either sell the good works of the party or counter the lies of the NDC, the NPP party in my view, has always been woefully inadequate.
When Nana Addo made the ‘all die be die’ exhortation to party supporters in Koforidua, the NDC as usual, put their evil propaganda machinery in motion and with help from their legion of stomach ‘koliko’ radio presenters, ‘nkwan deewa’ militant and tongue-twisting socialists, juvenile-delinquent commentators, fouled-mouth father-beating and wife-pummeling sycophants to paint him as a violent person in the eyes of Ghanaians.
And to appropriately deal with such unintelligent NDC propaganda, I expected communicators of the NPP to have simply posed these questions to them:
1. What will be the reaction of the NDC if Nana Addo should go to the Eastern Region (his home region) to tell them not to vote for Atta-Mills because he (Mills) doesn’t come from the region, as the latter did in the Central Region against Kufuor and the NPP in 2008?
2. If in the thinking of the NPP, the result of 2012 does not reflect the reality on the ground and members of the party smuggle themselves into an NPP-jaundiced radio station and call on their supporters to besiege the electoral commission with murder weapons, what will be the reaction of the NDC and on what level of alert will Atta-Mills put our security services?
3. What will the NDC ask the current police service to do as regards our now notorious fear-and-panic law if in the heat of the 2012 elections, Daniel Nii Quartei Titus-Glover announces on the air-waves of ‘Oman FM’ that all our nation’s boarders have been closed and that people have been mobilized to take-over as and when appropriate, as Okudzeto-Ablakwa did in the studios of Radio Gold during the 2008 elections?
My point here is that; effective way to counter the devilish propaganda of the NDC is to simply play back to them, their own stinky records and murderous deeds. However, the communicators of the NPP have rather taken the path of always trying to explain, over and over, what Nana Addo actually meant and forgetting that these NDC people perfectly understands exactly what Nana Addo sought to put across.
Indeed, these people have deliberately decided to take the path of lunatic-reasoning and have vowed never to avail themselves to truth and decency. Therefore, the best way of dealing with such group of people is to simply remind them of their own hypocrisy.
Acquisition vrs amassing of wealth
Unashamedly,Allotey Jacobs and Hannah Bissiw, who are practicing the purest form of champaign-socialism and haven been caught in acts of massive property-grabbing, were on the 2nd March,2011 edition of ‘kokrokoo’ on Peace-FM trying desperately to rationalize their insatiable lust for lavishness by saying there is a vast “difference between acquisition of property and amassing of wealth”.Today,because these hypocrites have become dogs and are frantically eating back their own vomits, they are now saying it is unfair “to tag a person as corrupt” when there has not been any “credible evidence” to that effect.
Now, Kwesi Pratt, during the Kufuor administration, always poured insults on CPP and NDC officials who had anything positive to say about government policies. And his problem was that if opposition elements praise the NPP, then they were not committed to ensuring the politico-electoral fortunes of their own political parties.
Ignore kuffuor’s record
Kwesi Pratt maintained that saying positive things about Kufuor was tantamount to accepting the fact that right things were being done, and that , the NPP must be kept in power. In his view, every citizen who did not support the NPP was not justified to see anything good about the Kufuor administration. It was during that period that the likes of Raymond Archer, A.B.A Fuseini, Tony Aido, Alhaji Bature and Alhassan Suhiyini were constantly branding media practitioners who had positive things to say about the Kufuor administration as “stomach-journalists” and plain-faced “nation wreckers”.
They maintained that patriotic journalists are suppose to concern themselves only with the problems confronting the ordinary Ghanaian and that it is highly un-ethical for members of the ‘fourth estate of the realm’, tasked with the duty of watching-over those controlling the nation’s kitty to be “singing the praises of the government”.
Today, these people have completely departed from all ‘virtues' they were vigorously espousing just a little over 24-months ago and are being rewarded with frivolous foreign trips and other massive freebies. Yet, NPP communicators sit aloof for these shameless mouth-twisting hypocrites to continue criticizing the party while NDC government appointees and party officials are frantically grabbing multi-million dollar properties with both hands and feet.
On the issue of bringing our compatriots back home from Libya, we were constantly being told by Okudzato-Ablakwa that “our people” were “not in danger” and that “the situation” was “closely being monitored”. They kept on telling us ‘kweku ananse’ tales without putting in-place any contingency plan for evacuation. All what we were treated to on our TV-screens was this nauseating spectacle of superfluous government appointees standing on the airport tarmac and opening their stinky mouths before a handful of returnees brought home by the benevolence of a Turkish company and other international relief agencies.
And to make matters more sickening, Baba ‘jihad’ Jamal said their failure to evacuate our compatriots on schedule, “is as a result of the collapse of Ghana Airways” and that if “we had a national Air-line”, they could have “swiftly gone in” to plug-out our citizens from the grips of Gaddafi, just like how the State of Israel managed to whisk the Ethiopian-Jews out of the hands of Menghistu at the height of Ethiopia’s civil war (‘yepe ehu’, Happy FM, 2/3/11).
The Trojan horse
Ironically, Kwesi Pratt who said it was an abomination to speak well of a ruling government during the Kufuor administration, was praising Nana Akomea for issuing a statement to ‘praise’ the efforts being made by the government in bringing home our compatriots caught up the Libyan crisis (Hot-FM, 2/3/11).Personally, I thought it was a bit pre-mature for Nana Akomea to have issued that congratulatory statement.
And my reason is simple: Kwesi Pratt, who I consider as an archetypical champaign-socialist, is an individual who is highly allergic to anything with an NPP insignia. Indeed; it has been his voracious desire to, pepertually, see the party in the political wilderness. Therefore, any praise from such a character to any person within the NPP at any point in time, must be seen as a GARGANTUAN Trojan.
Justice Abeeku Newton-Offei
E-mail: justnoff@yahoo.com