By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
August 20, 2014
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

I don't know how Mr. Kwabena Agyarko, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) Member of Parliament for Ayawaso/West-Wuogon came to his rather curious conclusion that Chairman Paul Afoko and General-Secretary Kwabena Agyepong have no Agenda 2020 up their sleeves (See "Afoko; Agyepong Cannot Prosecute Agenda 2020 - Agyarko" MyJoyOnline.com 8/20/14).

Well, if the two top administrators at the NPP headquarters have no Agenda 2020, at least they are not in any way working well and hard enough to disabuse the minds of core party members and supporters who firmly believe that they do. And maybe Mr. Agyarko is familiar with that tired maxim which says that "Perception Is Everything."

I intend to respond to the well-crafted disingenuousness/ disingenuity of the Second Vice-Chairman of the New Patriotic Party to Tuesday, August 19's brawl at the national headquarters of the party in due course. For now, suffice it to observe, at least in passing, that had Messrs. Afoko and Agyepong no secret and personal agenda up their sleeves, these two men would not be petulantly attempting to stampede and silence even Members of Parliament who have openly declared their staunch support for the presidential candidacy of Nana Akufo-Addo for Election 2016.

Not very long ago, for example, Mr. Dominic Nitiwul, the Deputy Parliamentary Minority Leader, was forced to challenge Messrs. Afoko and Agyepong vis-a-vis these two men's rather rude and churlish attempt to de-legitimize the inalienable democratic right of NPP Parliamentarians to publicly express their support for Nana Akufo-Addo. Chairman Afoko even threatened to sanction these MPs to whose mandate both party chiefs had contributed very little or absolutely nothing.

What I am trying to observe here is that Messrs. Afoko and Agyepong are absolute petty monarchs who are not content to manage the affairs of Ghana's largest opposition political party from headquarters. They have illegally attempted to meddle in the affairs of party legislators who, as bona fide members of the third arm (or branch) of government, are decidedly not under the administrative authority of Messrs. Afoko and Agyepong. Then also, gagging party delegates from openly declaring their support for Nana Akufo-Addo, in particular, does not gibe with the liberal democratic tradition of the New Patriotic Party.

It also stands to reason to note that party members and supporters decrying the deliberate and systematic targeting of Akufo-Addo partisans on staff at party headquarters must have observed something flagrantly amiss, and remiss, with the way in which governance is being pursued by Messrs. Afoko and Agyepong, compared to the way in which governance has been done at party headquarters since the beginning of the Fourth Republic.

Now, the protagonists in question may choose to wave such complaints and criticisms off as part of the new "professionalizing" agenda that they have seen meed to bring to bear on the way that twenty-first century political administration ought to be pursued at party headquarters. But the fact of the matter is that the critical mass of aggrieved core NPP supporters could not all be grossly misguided and/or mistaken. They have espied the unusual billowing of victory-stifling smoke emanate from the windows and rooftop of party headquarters, and it would be inexcusably silly to expect these members with the most at stake in the fortunes of the NPP to sit idle, hands clasped in crotches, waiting for our godforsaken Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS) to come to their rescue.

I also don't know that the patent shenanigans of Messrs. Afoko and Agyepong ought to be treated as "internal matters," when these two men are widely known to be partisans of a presidential candidate aspirant who twice made a national issue out of internal party squabbles by adamantly resigning his party membership. Well, Mr. Agyarko may not want to recognize this but, whether he likes it or not, Messrs. Afoko and Agyepong came to town with the set agenda of stampeding party delegates and MPs into toeing their line or have their homes summarily set alight. And, needless to say, the most appropriate response by the unprovokingly besieged is to promptly show them the exit route to whence they came.

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