Opinions of Wednesday, 9 September 2015

Columnist: Okoampa-Ahoofe, Kwame

Could NDC Ever Become a “Democratic” Party? – Part 2

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
Sept. 3, 2015
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

When the immediate post-war Germany, that’s is until 1990, was split into two separate polities, or nations, between the erstwhile Soviet Union and the United States, the communist-influenced half, or the erstwhile East- Germany, was ironically named the German Democratic Republic (GDR). In much the same manner, communist North Korea would be called the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. And so it ought to come as absolutely no surprise, whatsoever, that Ghana’s ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) is unenviably the least democratic among the nation’s legitimately certified and recognized political parties. The decision by Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia to fire the party’s Chief Accountant, for allegedly breaching party protocol, is one that ought to be roundly and unreservedly condemned.

In words accompanying his summary dismissal of the party’s Chief Accountant, his name had not been given at the time of this writing, Mr. Asiedu-Nketia stated pontifically that the evidently crackerjack bean-counter, who is reported to have worked at the party’s headquarters for some 20 years, ought to have known better than to have presumed to play General Mosquito, as Mr. Asiedu-Nketia is popularly known, by issuing presidential nomination forms to Mr. George Boateng in order to enable the Youth Organizer of the party’s Oyarifa Constituency to challenge President John Dramani Mahama for the NDC’s flagbearership in the November 7 presidential primary. Mr. Boateng has described President Mahama as a massive and irredeemable leadership failure. The dismissal of the party’s Chief Accountant is very troubling, because it presupposes the ruling National Democratic Congress’ key operatives to reserve the inviolable right to act like some intransigent monarchical kingmakers. The NDC General-Secretary also disingenuously claims that the party’s Chief Accountant was summarily fired for usurping the administrative powers of General Mosquito; however, in public pronouncements seeking to irreparably damage the image and reputation of Mr. Boateng, the local party Youth Organizer, it is quite obvious that the party’s Chief Accountant was fired primarily because he had dared to issue the party’s presidential nomination forms to the wrong personality.

Some party members and activists have even called for Mr. Boateng to promptly seek psychiatric examination, perhaps because the Oyarifa NDC Youth Organizer has proposed the legal cultivation and export of marijuana on a commercial scale in the country as a means of earning adequate foreign exchange to facilitate the rapid development of the country. What is quite fascinating regards how knowing that Mr. Boateng was mentally unbalanced, nevertheless, leading party executive operatives like Mr. Asiedu-Nketia permitted the self-described Oyarifa freight-forwarder to continue to represent the needs and aspirations of the youths of his constituency in the name of the National Democratic Congress. Needless to say, what we clearly see here is a striking case of the naked bather chasing the clinically certified lunatic for his bath towel and clothing.

One can unarguably be certain that if Mr. Boateng had come out to blindly and rhapsodically throw his weight behind the “unopposed” nomination of President Mahama for Election 2016, like the other moral reprobates and opportunistic rascals, such as Messrs. Ofosu-Ampofo, Asiedu-Nketia and Koku Anyidoho, the admirably bold and confident NDC Youth Organizer would have been thunderously lauded and applauded for being the country’s most astute operative of his kind. He likely would even have been named to the 2016 presidential campaign team of the former Rawlings-tutored Shit-Bomber. As it is presently, though, Mr. Boateng has become a veritable pain in the neck of hard-nosed political schemers and scam-artists like the NDC’s General-Secretary. Even Mr. Anyidoho, who has for most of Mr. Mahama’s presidency been totally ignored and sidelined, has come out taking a swipe at Mr. Boateng, perhaps as an opportune means of regaining the trust and confidence of the man Mr. Anyidoho has been widely accused of bullying and routinely disrespecting while Mr. Mahama served as Vice-President and Mr. Anyidoho was Chief-of-Staff, or some such cabinet top-dog to the now-late President John Evans Atta-Mills.

Mr. Anyidoho has, however, vehemently denied this accusation, for whatever it may be worth; now Mr. Anyodoho says that the bold decision by Mr. Boateng to challenge a bumbling Mr. Mahama for the NDC’s presidential nomination is an “embarrassing development.” Actually, what is embarrassing about the entire leadership apparatus and operatives of the National Democratic Congress is their inexcusably benighted decision to presume to conveniently and “communistically” stage manage the democratic political culture of both the party and the country at large.