By Dr. Michael J.K. Bokor

Thursday, December 20, 2012

As if unable to overcome the shocking defeat that he suffered at the 2012 polls, the NPP’s Akufo-Addo has chosen to chart a path that is remarkable only as a temporary respite and not the solution to his distress. He is using this path to seek sympathy and how to deal with the aftershocks of Election 2012.

I wonder if that’s the appropriate move to make. He seems to be on a new campaign for what he might have in his mind only. Instead of wasting time and energy retracing his steps, it will be better for him to take his case where the NPP has already told us is the ultimate quarters—the Supreme Court!

Nothing else will add anything new to his fate, which is already sealed and continues to be concretized each passing day that the hanky-pankying goes on. The path that Nana Akufo-Addo is charting is ridiculous. He is going round seeking audience with identifiable institutions to repeat what is already known: that his party was defeated at the elections but won’t accept the results. Then, he will repeat the tired intention to proceed to the Supreme Court to seek redress.

But more than two weeks after declaring that intention, he is still playing hide-and-seek with Ghanaians. Why not go to court and state your arguments instead of doing so before institutions that cannot solve the problem? This kind of misplaced priority will compound his problem all the more.

Probably, he thinks that some soothing moralizing rhetoric can calm his nerves to help him regain his composure and state of mind for the court appearance if the NPP eventually succeeds in filing its case.

Too much beating about the bush!! Too many diversionary measures!!

His talk of using the occasion to appeal for calm among his followers is a lie. They have already done much havoc to annoy the majority who rejected him at the polls. Is he himself calm enough to know how to behave as a loser?

We are being told that he will meet with the leadership of various religious associations today to explain to them why the party has decided not to accept the results of the 2012 elections. He will also use the opportunity to inform them about the measures the party is taking to address its grievances regarding the election results.

Do we all not already know this issue? Or, what is particularly new about the NPP’s stance at this stage that Akufo-Addo should be telling these religious associations? Or he is going to seek another vision? After snuggling close to them and indulging in self-glorification for the elections, nothing beneficial resulted. Despite the machinations against the NDC, using the auspices of internal collaborators in such associations, all his efforts came to naught as the Ghanaian electorate rejected him. Hasn’t Akufo-Addo yet had that epiphanic experience not to mock God through all the guises that those religious associations and their leaders took him through?

His meeting with these associations won’t yield anything to change the equation for him and his party. He seems not to have come to terms with reality at this stage to know that the elections are over and that Ghanaians know their chosen leader and are prepared to move on to the next stage. They want to see what the NPP wants to do at the Supreme Court, not to listen to trite, tired, and unproductive statements justifying the riotous behaviour of the NPP functionaries.

Yesterday, he met with the leadership of the Trades Union Congress, explaining that evidence available to the party shows the results put out by the Electoral Commission are not a true reflection of the votes cast on December 7. No amount of hob-nobbing with all these associations and their leaders will solve any problem for him. Go to Court, Akufo-Addo!!

Akufo-Addo’s place-holding manouevres add more fun to the “Concert Party” performance, led by the chief comedian himself, Kwadwo Owusu Afriyie, General Secretary of the NPP.

We saw him in his true element when he spoke at the Abbey Park, Kumasi, last Tuesday and “summoned Afari-Gyan, the Electoral Commission (EC) boss before God” for allegedly, rigging the polls in favour of the ruling NNDC. He noted that Dr. Afari-Gyan’s name would forever be attached to rigging in Ghana politics following his decision to stoop low to rig the 2012 polls in favour of the NDC.

To raise the “Concert Party” rendition to its highest level of absurdity, he said the NDC rigged the polls across the country, including areas that were deemed as NPP strongholds. He claimed that the NDC managed to rig the polls at Manhyia Constituency in Kumasi, a stronghold of the NPP, saying “the NDCs figure of 96 at a certain polling station was changed to whopping 996.”

He said if the NDC was able to rig the polls and change figures at areas perceived as NPP strongholds then “what would happen to the votes that the NDC would get in the Volta Region which is the ruling party’s stronghold?”

Do these claims not warrant a speedy recourse to the Supreme Court instead of this “lorgorligi” snail’s pace in dealing with the matter? Does it not rule out any search for moralization or pontification as Akufo-Addo has chosen to do? If he thinks that going round repeating these worn-out accusations will get him back into the groove, he is deceived. Ghanaians have already made their choice and will only laugh him to scorn if he returns to them in this mood, behaving as if he is still on the electioneering campaign trail. Or is he already dreaming of 2016? He had better think twice because the tsunami that swept him off his feet at Election 2012 hasn’t subsided yet.

The more he encourages his followers to cause trouble here and there as he himself digs in, the more likely it is that the NPP will not choose him for the 2016 elections. At this point, his political sun has set and he should accept his fate in earnest. The painful truth for him is that the Supreme Court will not solve his problem either. His fate is sealed, water/air-tight and he needs go no further than the Supreme Court to be told where he lies.

I shall return…

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