By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

By the time that this article is published, Messrs. Kwadwo Owusu-Afriyie - alias Sir John - and Hopeson Adorye would have already appeared before the Atuguba-presided Supreme Court panel hearing the Akufo-Addo/New Patriotic Party (NPP) Election 2012 presidential petition. In this rather brief article, though, I intend to focus on the targeted victim of Justice Atuguba's contempt-of-court judicial toy - call it "dildo" - whose case, naturally, seems to have been all but drowned out of media spotlight by the epic case of Sir John.

Mr. Adorye, whose name I have yet to hear correctly pronounced by an NPP member on the ground, as it were, or in the media (for it is constantly either being variably spelled or misspelled, plus I rarely listen to the veritable cacophony that is the political fare of many a Ghanaian-based Fm-radio station), is "alleged to have threatened to decapitate supporters of the governing National Democratic Congress[,] should the [Atuguba-presided] court rule in President John Mahama's favor" (See "Let the Law Deal with Me - Sir John Tells Supporters" Radioxyzonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 8/13/13).

And so clearly, it could not be that Mr. Adorye, the exuberant Son-of-Hope, is being called to the carpet by the Supreme Court merely because he has dared to use a language which the key operatives of the so-called National Democratic Congress, including Chairman Jerry John Rawlings, have criminally practised with reckless abandon and impunity, but aptly because the Young Patriot, no pun intended here, has so scandalously presumed to second-guess the moral integrity of the Atuguba-presided court.

Now, this is quite interesting because Justice Atuguba had notoriously conducted himself, during the course of the petition hearings, in ways that had clearly dented the panel president's integrity in the eyes and opinions of many an NPP partisan and sympathizer, as well as even non-partisan and neutral observers of the trial.

At any rate, if I were Justice Atuguba and/or any of his eight esteemed associates hearing the Election 2012 presidential petition, I would be convulsed with laughter and be moved to privately jubilate at least over the fact that the petitioners have among their rank-and-file membership, bold and courageous and fair-minded young men, and I hope also women, who are willing to let the unconscionably murderous apparatchiks of the so-called National Democratic Congress savor a vintage taste of their own medicine. The unmistakable reference here, of course, is to the June 30, 1982 brutal ethnic-cleansing assassination of the three Akan-descended members of the Accra High Court.

To-date, and going into the homestretch lap that is the verdict of the Supreme Court on Election 2012, the key operatives of the NDC continue to thumb their bloody noses at the members of our august Supreme Court, and even attempt the brazen application of the not-so-subtle methods of judicial intimidation and nullification of the verdict of the Atuguba Court. Which is precisely why even brazen scofflaws like Mr. Samuel Okudzeto-Ablakwa, one of the two urchins who obscenely defied the Supreme Court in the Obetsebi-Lamptey real-estate and landed-property case, has just publicly declared that he simply cannot wait for the Atuguba-presided Supreme Court to hand down its verdict on Election 2012 in barely a fortnight from hence.

If I were Sir John, I would not publicly decry the planned march of the Young Patriots on the Supreme Court Building; for what is good for the goose is definitely hunky-dory for the gander. Besides, haven't we witnessed Chairman Rawlings and his flunkey, the now-late President John Evans Atta-Mills, recklessly and shamelessly march into Justice Harriet Abban's court with the express purpose of intimidating the heck out of the now-retired great woman of courage, with Tsatsu "The Thief" Tsikata screaming unprintable obscenities at the person of his moral and intellectual superior?

You see, securing an LLB or LLM from Oxford does not necessarily a genius make; oh no, not by any remarkable stretch of the imagination. Rather, that which makes for a genius material is common sense; and then character, qualities that are woefully lacking in the counsel for the third respondent in the Election 2012 presidential petition.

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*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Department of English
Nassau Community College of SUNY
Garden City, New York
August 13, 2013
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net
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