Opinions of Friday, 9 March 2007

Columnist: Kwamena, Ato

Cry Babies

Friend, imagine you had had a baby 27 years ago and that baby, that child, still wears diapers; still requires you to feed him with baby formula; still demands his feeding bottle. What would you do, friend, if that ‘baby’ still refuses to be weaned off his mother’s breast even after 27 good years of suckling? There comes a time in life when man has to step up and say to that 27-year old baby, “Oooh-ho! Aden? Wobenyini a nyini! Wobewu nso a wu!” Such is the state of the NDC Party. A party that gradually is becoming our Cry Babies. Today ‘this’, tomorrow ‘that’. They are becoming unbecoming – to use a popular Ghanaian phrase. All that they contribute to national discourse are insults and complaints upon complaints.

Ghana is celebrating her 50 years anniversary and Bagbin and his NDC says “the National Democratic Congress (NDC) has not been invited to take part in the forthcoming Golden Jubilee of the country’s independence… no formal invitation in the form of a letter or correspondence in any other form had been extended to the party by the government.” – Daily Guide.

Friend, the problem with the NDC is that they think everything is political. And so they must politicize every national event. Look at the de-worming exercise that has been ongoing in our schools. Such an exercise instead of receiving support from every citizen rather was seen as a means to make the government more unpopular in the Volta Region. So the NDC held a meeting in Keta along with some chiefs, and fetish priests where it was decided that they would inform the citizens there that President Kufuor was trying to kill their children via this deworming exercise; that the medication being administered to the kids was actually a toxic drug meant to kill them. So the whole deworming exercise was thrown into a state of pandemonium in the Ho area, as worried parents invaded schools to withdraw their kids from classes, take them home and save them from Kufuor’s poison. And this pandemonium eventually spread to other parts of the country – Joy Online. Imagine that!

So even this 50th Anniversary Celebration has to be politicized. Initially our Cry Babies cried out loud that they were not being represented in the Ghana @ 50 committee. They cried out that the NPP was controlling the planning of the anniversary. But friend, you and I know that when we put a government in power it is in charge of all such national programs or projects. The government does not own the program, but it performs its duty on behalf of the citizenry, for it would be impossible for 22 million Ghanaians to sit on a planning committee, and that is why we elect governments. When the NPP government builds a road, that road is for all Ghanaians, not for the NPP Party. After all, the coffer from which such an enterprise was financed from belongs to ALL Ghanaians. The Kufuor Administration needs not invite NDC members in order for them to use a completed road. When Dr. Kwame Nkrumah built the Akosombo Dam, did the opposition party at the time, the UP, demand to be invited in order to turn on their switches so they can also enjoy electric power? They didn’t. Why? Because Akosombo Dam belongs to ALL Ghanaians. Akosombo is not the property of the CPP.

I’ve said it here numerous times that the NDC is an Animal Farm party. They think in terms of “WE” and “THEM”. They have no sense of nationalism. They can only think of themselves and members of their ilk. Members who have made a blood-pact to worship the man Jerry Rawlings. And it is this tight blood-oath they have amongst themselves that made them resistant to forgoing the celebration of June 4th – a day when they unleashed terror, torture, murder and assassinations on Ghanaians – even when the Supreme Court had ruled that it was an unconstitutional event for which there should be no national holiday. Any Ghanaian who thinks the NDC is a political party has not scrutinized them or is refusing to see and believe. The NDC is a cult. A collection of people whose allegiance is to Rawlings and their own selfish interests. The origins of that party started of as the Dzelukope Mafia, and then when they succeeded in overthrowing the Acheampong regime they became the AFRC, then the PNDC, and now the NDC. Hence they cannot think as Ghanaians. They can only think as members of a Rawlings’ cult.

You see, Friend, there are other opposition parties in our country besides the NDC. We have the CPP, PNC, DPP, etc. None of these parties are demanding a letter of invitation from the government of our Republic in order to join in the celebration of OUR anniversary. None of them is! And that is because, the members of the CPP, PNC, DPP, etc know that they are Ghanaians, and so need no invitation to join their fellow Ghanaians to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Ghana. Only the NDC wants a letter of invitation. Why? Because their god sees this as an opportunity to divide the country. In unity there is strength. Unity will make us impregnable to the whims and caprices of any one man. But if he could manage to set brother against brother, sister against sister; if he could manage to cause tension to rise in this country, then there’s hope that that Divide-and-Rule tactics which worked so effectively for him in the past will work again. Therefore he must keep tensions boiling high. "From a tactical point of view, I would not be so stupid as to give them the opportunity to enjoy a so-called reconciliation with Rawlings," Rawlings said in a February 7th interview with Reuters. So everything is about tactics. And all tactics, whether in the interest of Ghana or not, should work in favor of Rawlings. If The NDC were to be reconciled with the rest of the country, Rawlings will be a dejected man. He would be lonely. No one would recognize him as the god that he strongly believes he is. Bagbin, Ayariga, Doe Adjaho, Kumbuor, and even that poodle would all stop paying obeisance to him. Therefore “from a tactical point of view” he must work overtime to divide this country, whip up the animalistic instincts of his NDC members, so that forever and ever Ghana would be a “House Divided”. And as Christ said (which Abraham Lincoln paraphrased), “A house divided against itself cannot stand”

Now friend, you know for sure that Ghana does not belong to only members of the NDC and the NPP. Ghana does not even belong to only members of the political parties. A significant number of Ghanaians are not members of any of these parties. So do you think it would be practical for the government of the Republic of Ghana to send out invitations to every single grouping of Ghanaians in the country – whether they be political or not – in order for them to join in the celebration of Ghana’s own independence anniversary? Does one need an invitation to go to their own house? Aren’t strangers or friends of Ghana who we should be inviting? If for example (God forbid), your father dies, do you need a formal letter of invitation from the Abusuapanyin before you partake in the funeral rites? What sort of country does the NDC want Ghana to become? Ask them; whether they ever sent out invitations to Ghanaians in order to make them join in the celebration of our own independence, when they were in power. Why are they such Cry Babies?

People are getting tired of this their non-stop churning of nonsense upon nonsense. They ought to grow up! For how long should we continue to noise of your cries, Cry Babies? “Oooh-ho! Aden? Mobenyini a monyini! Mobewu nso a monwu! Aba!”

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