By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
Jan. 13, 2015
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

I am writing this article at nearly midnight. I am dog-tired, but I think Mr. Eric Ametor Quarmyne, the so-called NDC Communicator, deserves a swift, sharp and prompt response. In his latest invariably pathetic attempt to prove that he is worth the sinecures paid him both as a brazen Mahama shill, and something called a Consultant for the Kufuor-minted National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA), Mr. Quarmyne is calling on all Ghanaian private motorists aggrieved by the decision of the National Petroleum Authority (NPA) not to adjust the prices of ex-pump gas, to synch with the drastically reduced price of a barrel of crude oil on the global market, to park their vehicles and bike to work (See "Ride Bicycles to Work If You Cannot Afford Fuel - Ametor Quarmyne" Adomonline.com 1/13/15).

The chap strikingly reminds me of Ms. Anita D'Souza, the former National Women's Organizer of the National Democratic Congress. The couple may just well be clones or even identical twins. Ideologically, of course, Mr. Quarmyne and Ms. D'Souza are an undoubted siamese twins. Not long ago, for instance, the NADMO Deputy Capo told Ghanaians decrying the perennially erratic supply of electricity to go back to the days of the hurricane lamp. Well, I don't find it to be savvy to respond to hardworking citizens demanding value to be at parity with their fiscal investment by curtly advising them to go back to life as it existed in the age of the Neanderthal because, somehow, the gross administrative incompetence that seems to have become the hallmark of the present regime is here to say, and so they had better gotten the hang of it.

You see, what we are talking about here is a commodity that belongs to the entire citizenry of the country. In brief, Ghana's petroleum does not belong to the Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress or any particular political party that happens to wield the reins of governance, for that matter. Rather, it belongs to the entire country and the people appointed by an incumbent president to manage the same have a bounden obligation to serve the people responsibly. In other words, is Mr. Quarmyne hereby implying that the Mahama government has the right to arbitrarily price this most essential commodity at whim and only expect servile complicity from the people?

Needless to say, for a reprobate breed of Ghanaian citizens who rode to power under the aegis of "revolutionary justice," it is rather amazing how people like Mr. Quarmyne and Ms. D'Souza are able to live with their ill-gotten wealth, knowing what the overwhelming majority of Ghanaians know about their familial and economic backgrounds. Nobody is trolling the streets of Accra, or any of the other Ghanaian towns and cities, hat in hand, asking for a handout or charity. We are fighting for our just desert. And I hope the cynical likes of Ms. D'Souza and Mr. Quarmyne understand and appreciate this much.

Is Mr. Quarmyne also saying that riding bicycle is cheaper than driving automobiles, in terms of the expenditure of time, comfort and efficiency in the weight and volume of burden/load carried? How about the vagaries of the weather? And is he going to recommend that the Mahama-For-2016 Presidential Campaign contract and consent to making free bicycles available to all Ghanaian motorists who are willing to take up his challenge? Come again, Mr. Quarmyne.

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