(Part 1)

The opposition New Patriotic Party, completely bereft of any credible policy alternatives for the development of the country, has in recent times resorted to the release of harshly- worded statements aimed at denigrating the President of the Republic of Ghana, President John Evans Atta Mills.

Hardly a day passes without some cacophony coming from the direction of the NPP. If it is not their rambunctious but lackluster Minority in Parliament led by the overly verbose Kyei Mensah Bonsu who mistakes malapropism for good leadership, then it is their illiterate- sounding General Secretary pouring some vitriol on the Government.

The latest in the series of ill-conceived statements was issued last Friday in which they heaped insults on the person of the President. Obviously rankled by the snow-white image of the President and the sincerity and humility that he exudes - traits that are visibly missing in their cocaine tainted flagbearer-the NPP has sought to create the impression that the President is indecisive and not in charge of the affairs of the nation.
Among other risible claims, they allege in the calumny- laden statement, that he is a “malignant hypocrite”, a “confused disciple of Nkrumah” and accuse him of doing nothing to halt the carnage on our roads. Of course these insipid charges will be offhandishly dismissed by all right thinking Ghanaians because they will see that it is not worth the paper on which it is written.
However, the mediocrity of opposition that the NPP has foisted on the unsuspecting people of Ghana has reached such abysmal depths that a robust, bare-nuckled response is required and that is precisely what this write up sets out to do.

That these statements are signed by the crude - mannered Sir John is a reflection of the thought processes that go into their writing, because a cursory perusal of the statements will reveal such shallow thinking, dishonesty, plain idiocy and a complete lack of understanding of the issues.

First the NPP would have us believe that until President Mills took the reins of government there had not being accidents on our roads and that the President’s exhortation to drivers to exercise caution on our roads to forestall the needless accidents, is a call on the security services not to enforce road traffic regulations. They claim that the President has not introduced new laws to curb road accidents-as if we don’t have enough laws to regulate road use in the country. Such hogwash can only emanate from the camp of a clueless opposition under the direction of an uninitiated General Secretary.
Their idea of new policies to curb accidents of course is making drivers bathe corpses at the 37 Military mortuary for minor traffic offences like it happened under their tenure and because the President has not sanctioned such a reckless violation of the human rights of the citizens of Ghana, the NPP thinks he has done nothing about accidents. If they were so concerned about curbing indiscipline on our roads, why did they rush to repeal laws they had been enacted ostensibly to rein in errant drivers after their shambolic performance in the first round of the 2008 elections? Sure it was a gimmick designed at getting drivers to vote for them in the second round but most importantly it provided insight into their true character as a party; they care more about votes than lives that are lost on our roads so they cannot now claim otherwise.
In case they have forgotten, the President summoned his security Chiefs early last year and directed them to rigorously enforce road traffic laws as a way of stemming the tide of accidents and to a large extent, it helped reduce the spate of accidents until the latest incidents. Calling on drivers to be cautious on our roads is an admonishment in the right direction as everyone knows that most of the accidents on our roads are due to human error.

The NPP cites the IOC ban on Ghana as evidence that the Mills government has been incompetent. They go on to allege that the ban is as a result of vindictiveness on the part of the President in that he wants to get rid of all persons not appointed by him or appointed under the NPP. First, the NPP fails to adduce a shred of evidence to back this ridiculous claim and for their information the GOC impasse arose in the first place because persons who have been at the helm for almost two decades refused to accept the outcome of duly held elections to draft in new leaders.
As far as evidence goes however, we in the NDC have evidence that the NPP is a very vindictive and ethnocentric party. Why, the case of Kojo Hodare Okine has not been forgotten. A mere errand boy at the castle, Asamoah Boateng on account of a suspicion, false as it was ,that Mr Hodare Okine was an NDC sympathizer instigated his unlawful dismissal. A court order instructing the President to reinstate Mr. Okine was treated with indescribable contempt by J.A. Kufour and yet the NPP has the temerity to accuse President Mills of being vindictive. They can’t possibly think that we have forgotten that they were so petty as to even get the University of Ghana to withdraw the MPhil Degree awarded to Hon. Haruna Idrissu on trumped up charges of plagiarism because he was such a thorn in their flesh with his brilliant assailment of their daft policies, can they?

The astounding charge of being a “talented, malignant hypocrite” is leveled at the President because of his principled, firm stance on the Ivorian stand-off. According the impetuous NPP, they find the President’s wise decision not to commit Ghanaian troops, who are already overstretched both home and abroad, to a poorly conceived ECOWAS move to invade Ivory Coast to oust Laurent Gbagbo as devaluing Ghana’s image in International Circles. I have in a previous note on this platform, exposed the shameful hypocrisy of the NPP with regards to their stance on the Ivorian situation.
Here is a party that when in power tried every trick in the book to do what Laurent Gbagbo has done in the 2008 elections and yet thinks that Gbagbo must be removed. They stuffed ballot boxes to inflate electoral figures in the Ashanti Region, in a bid to steal the people’s mandate and when that failed, the infamous “Atta Akyea corpses plot” was hatched just so they could use the judiciary to overturn the results of the elections. Sounds to me like the same thing Laurent Gbagbo did with the constitutional court in Ivory Coast. Again you have a political party that hobnobbed with one of the most brutal dictators in Africa’s history , Gnassingbe Eyadema pontificating about the need for democracy in Ivory Coast.

Not a whimper was heard from them when soldiers carried away ballot boxes in broad daylight during elections in Togo. Also they did not see anything wrong when in Nigeria, their benefactor and ally Olusegun Obasanjo supervised the most fraudulent elections in that country’s history. Worst still, this same party actively supported the Apartheid regime in South Africa who subjected indigenes of that country to the most inhuman treatment imaginable on account of their skin colour. When almost all nations of the world were urging military action against that obnoxious regime, they proposed dialogue as an alternative way of resolving the South African problem, the same suggestion they are berating President Mills for in the Ivorian matter.

It should be clear from the foregoing who the real “talented, malignant hypocrites” are except that theirs is tinged with a large dose of foolishness in thinking that Ghanaians have lost sight of this historical context. Even more exasperating, is their insinuation in the same statement that the President has taken this far-seeing stance on Ivory Coast because of “personal” and “partisan” benefits. They again failed to produce the necessary evidence to back this obvious lie.
While we in the NDC can state authoritatively that our modest but effective campaign was not funded by external sources, it is an incontrovertible fact that the NPP who staged the most lavish and ostentatious campaign in this country’s history in 2008 did so from the tax payers money and through sponsorship from drug barons whose illicit trade flourished under their government as exposed by the US diplomatic cables released by wiki-leaks.

They dipped their sticky fingers into the TOR debt recovery levy which Ghanaians paid to help amortize the crippling TOR debt and took out a colossal GH¢15 Billion cedis to share among unscrupulous journalists to help mount their electioneering campaign. Similar amounts were taken out of GETFUND and the HIPC relief monies for the same purpose. Of course in the disbursement of those moneys too their legendary corruption was brought to bear as the man put in charge of this diabolical scheme, Asamoah Boateng-who prior to becoming a Minster in Kufour’s government had been a taxi driver abroad, around the same time put up a palatial mansion at Komansti near Anomabo in the Central Region and bought a fleet of luxurious cars worth tens of thousands of dollars, expenditure his salary as a Minister could not have supported.