By Dr. Michael J.K. Bokor
Monday, May 2, 2016
Folks, there is no gainsaying the fact that Akufo-Addo lost Elections 2008 and 2012, not because he didn’t have any message for Ghanaians to hang on to but because he lacked the personal appeal that the voters needed to assuage all doubts and apprehensions that he would provide a better administration of affairs to make Ghana habitable by them. In effect Akufo-Addo’s approach to politics scared the voters more than needed. No amount of massaging of feelings after-the-fact could save him from electoral doom.
Thus, he lost Election 2008 in the run-off, clearly because those why were expected top partner with him saw through the veil and thought otherwise. None of the mushroom anti-NDC parties that partnered Kufuor to win the 2000 run-off joined arms with him even though he had a slight edge of 49 point something per cent over the late Atta Mills.
Thereafter, events didn’t work well for him. The consequences? Election 2012 saw him in the ditch again on account of his lack of appeal and many other factors that worked well for President Mahama. All that whiloe4, he was riding on the crest of the NPP’s strategic choice of Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia (a northerner and Muslim) to relive the Alhaji Aliu Mahama memory. Truth be told, Dr. Bawumia had little to offer the NPP. He still has little to do so even after re-engineering himself as the political-opponent-in-chief of a fellow Northerner in the person of President John Dramani Mahama.
In his bid to paint President Mahama as bad for Northern Ghana, Dr. Bawumia is burning steam and unwittingly playing himself into the hands of Fate. He has said a lot to damn the Mahama-led administration that has turned out to have a boomerang effect on his own integrity and to jeopardize the very cause for which he is being used. The vicissitudes of the useless petition hearing that continue to haunt him are glaring.
He played a yeoman’s role that hasn’t redounded to his own political quests of those of the Akufo-Addo hiding in the shadows to manipulate him just because he claims to be an economist and was the former Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana (under whom the Kufuor government did surreptitious things, including the redenomination of the Ghanaians Cedi, which is one of the major contentions dogging him. How much the government spent on that exercise i9s still being kept secret while the rush to sentimentalism about the slumping of the Cedi is has become the NPP’s anti-Mahama gig. In this sense, Dr. Bawumia hasn’t yet passed the credibility test, which pegs him on a horrible pedestal when it comes to truthfulness in national affairs. Is such a person really worthy of being entrusted with the affairs of state?).
To worsen his credibility problem, he is going around the country, especially the northern sector, playing the tribal card. As already known, he is on record as having urged his “siblings” and others of the Great Naa Gbewaa origin to root for him against President Mahama because he is also a northerner. This recourse to the tribal card goes against the grain that Ms. Dzifa Ativor of the NDC is accused of sowing. She is on record as urging the electorate of the Volta Region (Ewes) to retain the Mahama-led NDC administration in power if she is not to be jailed by an Akufo-Addo-led NPP government. Forget about the narrow-selfish personal interest behind her appeal to concentrate on larger-level issues of tribal politics, which brings in Dr. Bawumia too. He has made two terribly spurious moves that constitute nothing but a drawback on the Akufo-Addo move. Here they are:
1. Speaking at Nyohini, in the Tamale South Constituency, Dr. Bawumia said many things wrapped around tribal politics, even if he set out to undermine President Mahama as a failure. Here are his own words:
“My elders, my brothers, my sisters, in 2008 and 2012, we were told by the NDC that because John Mahama was a Northerner, we should vote for him. Indeed, John Mahama himself asked the people of the North to vote for him because he was from the North… My elders and siblings, if John Mahama is claiming that you should vote for him because he is a northerner, then I would like to remind you that I am also from the North as a grandson of Na Gbewaa and I am asking for you to vote for Nana Akufo-Addo and myself…” (See http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/Mahama-has-failed-Bawumia-435227).
2. Addressing supporters of the New Patriotic Party in the Sissala East district of the Upper West region Dr. Bawumia stated that the Presidency is religiously skewed against Muslims, which does not adequately reflect one part of the two dominant religious groupings in the country. He, therefore, urged the residents to vote for the NPP in the upcoming elections in order to bring religious balance to the presidency.(See http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/Flagstaff-House-religiously-skewed-Bawumia-435154).
Abject political mediocrity and dishonesty to the truth! Complete childishness. Is Ghana a theocracy to warrant this kind of nonsense? By going this way, Dr. Bawumia is charting a path to be wary of. Records reveal that all Ghanaians of all religious faiths are doing government business all over the country, not only at the Flagstaff House because Ghana is a secular state. President Mahama has on several occasions made it clear that Ghana’s secular stateness won’t permit it to do anything to favour any particular sect. Dr. Bawumia should have known better than going this way. So, what is he doing, after all? Playing the religious card in addition to the tribal one that he has played in Tamale? And claims to be a grandson of the Naa Gbewaa?
Truly, with characters like him, any crisis emanating from ethnic or religious conflicts/misunderstandings cannot be resolved as long as they pull strings. And to say that he was on a pilgrimage last year to seek the face of Allah is a farce. Allah upholds peace among all nations, contrary to what Dr. Bawumia upholds in his political quests. A bad omen already!!
Folks, we can say with all confidence that what has been unleashed by Dr. Bawumia at this point in his electioneering campaign bid raises more worries than he and Akufo-Addo can contain. He has added more woes to the plate and should be prepared for the consequences. Before the NPP power brokers even step in to question him on his choice of political mobilization strategy, suffice it for me to conclude that he has done nothing but add more spokes to Akufo-Addo’s wheel. The man himself is still struggling to solve his personal credibility problems. Why add more from a weider dimension to it?
I shall return…
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