If Bawumia is a ‘serial caller’, then Kwesi Pratt is a ‘kayaye’ (1)

The 2008 electioneering campaign was characterized by insults and character assassinations from the camp of then opposition NDC.Matters bordering on bread and butter issues which are germane to the livelihood of ordinary taxpaying Ghanaian were shamefully put aside and in its place, was the flag of personal attacks and character assassinations of NPP candidate hoisted. Allegations of every wrong-doing one can ever think of was expertly sown into a 3-piece suit and forced unto Nana Addo.

A nation that had seen monumental growth in almost all sectors of the economy was christened “a failed state” and put on the same socio-economic pedestal as a war-ravaged Rwanda. This vile propaganda drive was embarked upon with an expressed purpose of deceiving the ordinary Ghanaian into believing that Ghana could have been a much better place if it was under the care of candidate saint Atta-Mills.
Pseudo-socialist oriented pressure groups
Many pseudo-socialist oriented pressure groups were born at the, all with the vision of doing whatever they could to paint the legacy of Kufuor in a terribly bad light and to make people angry towards anything that has to do with NPP.
Now, proponents of this hatred against NPP in 2008 even had their venom extended to all world leaders who had good working relation with Ghana as a nation, and not Kufuor in his personal capacity as president. and here, the former president of America, George Walker Bush jnr became the ‘chewing stick’ these fictitious socialists in our midsts.The man was literarily torn apart in the studios of Ghana radio Rwanda(radio gold) during their abuse-laden ‘alhaji-alhaji’ programme on Saturdays. Bush was described as an imperialist demon that had absolutely nothing good to offer Ghana but was rather seeking to come and ‘steal’ our entire nation’s newly discovered oil.
Everything that has to do with the western world was described as imperialistic, demonic, retrogressive and highly dangerous to the well-being of Africa and therefore must be treated as a contagious disease. it was this hard-line stands and highly reckless pronouncements taken by these fictitious socialists that incensed president bush jnr to make his famous “BALONY” declaration which has now become the regular refrain of the vice president John Mahama,when addressing members of the opposition these days.
A double-agent
Strangely, at the time a personality as Kwesi Pratt was at the fore-front of this anti American crusade, he was also dabbling as a great friend of these very same Americans, at the blind side of all Ghanaians.Effectively,he would sit on radio and condemn everything American, tell Ghanaians that we can develop to standards of these industrialized nations on our own, and then sneak under the cover of darkness to these very same Americans and say all kinds of foolish things about those he ironically describe as “best friends”.
A similar venture is said to have been embarked upon by this very same Kwesi Pratt at the time a couple of brave citizens of our dear nation decided to put their lives on the line to curtail the rule of the gun in the early 80’s.there have even been cases where some of these double agents are said to have willingly offered themselves to be thrown into jail just so they could spy on activities of their very own compatriots in the prisons, and the information passed on to the authorities.
An intriguing track record
I have followed the exploits of Kwesi Pratt on our Ghanaian political scene for some time now and I find something very much intriguing; he vehemently opposed Rawlings’ 1979 coup (at-least that was the impression some of us got) and was happy when Dr Hilla Liman, as head of an Nkrumaist party, won the general elections of 1980.But just a little over 12months into Liman’s administration, Kwesi fell out with him (president Liman) and started criticizing him vehemently.
In the end, Liman was overthrown in the 31st December coup and here again; some form of double faced resistance was mounted by Kwesi Pratt against the return of Rawlings on our nation’s political scene. This resistance continued for a while and when it became clear that Rawlings had really come to stay, a scheme was devised by Kwesi Pratt to fall in-line with the revolution by leaking information about his very own colleagues to the authorities.
However, the resistance to Rawlings was so resolute that activities of a double agent couldn’t overcome the true determination of forces in favour of democratic governance and this culminated in restoration of democracy in 1992.Kwesi Pratt went into hibernation after that period and resurfaced only when it became clear that Ghanaians were desirous of change in the year 2000.
Kwesi Pratt then switched camp to the NPP and vigorously campaigned not only to ensure the termination of Rawlings’ grip on Ghana’s political destiny, but also to deprive Atta-Mills of the presidency because he(Kwesi) obviously saw nothing good in mills and therefore described him a feature article that “mills is something”. In our Ghanaian parlance, when we say a person is “something”, then we are basically trying to say that the said individual is weird in all he/she does.Effectively,Atta-Mills was extremely weird by the standards of Kwesi Pratt’s personality assessment barometer.
Dining with the enemy
In the end, NPP won and Kufuor became the president and in years that followed, Kwesi Pratt had a very good personal relationship with Kufuor.As a matter of fact, Kwesi used to drive to the castle every afternoon to wine and dine with Kufuor over extremely sumptuous meals. The relationship continued till somewhere during the second term of Kufuor’s administration, when we all woke up one early morning to find Kwesi Pratt singing from a different angle of his mouth and vehemently condemning Kufuor and describing him as a president with intelligent quotient(IQ) of a 6year old and the most useless leader Ghana has ever had.
Here, Kwesi Pratt went back into alliance, once again, with Rawlings just so Kufuor could be demonized and NPP voted out. Those were the times Kwesi Pratt became the mouth-piece of the Rawlingses and ably defended them to the hilt. When Rawlings was asked to be moderate in his pronouncements against then sitting president, Kufuor, Kwesi Pratt came out with all guns blazing to describe a personality as archbishop palmer-buckle who was a signatory to that pastoral letter, as a damn-right devil whose pronouncements are worse than that of the Satan himself.
Justice Abeeku Newton-Offei
E-mail: justnoff@yahoo.com