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

I would rather stay out and far, far away from the rancorous verbal fisticuffs allegedly raging between the supporters of Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and Mr. Alan John Kwadwo "Quitman" Kyerematen, but for the sake of letting the unvarnished truth be the guide of New Patriotic Party (NPP) delegates preparing to elect the party's presidential candidate in the lead-up to Election 2016.

The first incontrovertible truth which party delegates and Ghanaian voters, at large, have to bear in mind is that Mr. Kyerematen is unhealthily self-centered and thus not a leader who can be trusted to deliver when the going gets tough. Alan Cash, as Mr. Kyerematen is popularly known, is also grossly immature for a 60-year-old man. For instance, Mr. Cash finds it too difficult, if not downright impossible, to accept defeat, even as he scandalously demonstrated in the wake of the party's 2007 presidential primary.

Furthermore, with just four months to Election 2008, Mr. Cash threw the party into an electioneering-campaign crisis from which the NPP has yet to recover. Needless to say, so immitigably arrogant was Mr. Kyerematen that he, literally, rode roughshod over both the personalities and advice of distinguished party stalwarts like the immortalized Mr. B. J. DaRocha. And so whence come us by such arrant nonsense as Mr. Kyerematen's being "charismatic, competent, gentle, appealing, calm and peaceful" being recklessly bandied about by that group of desperate opportunists and cut-throat hustlers calling themselves GAKE (Get Alan Kyerematen Elected)?

For starters, isn't it an inexcusable insult to the intelligence of party delegates and Ghanaian voters at large for anybody to promote the vaulting presidential aspirations of a candidate who consecutively and consistently refuses to vote for any NPP flagbearer other than himself? That Mr. Kyerematen in all likelihood voted for the now-late President John Evans Atta-Mills in 2008, when he also officially resigned from the NPP, ought to inform core and staunch NPP voters and supporters of the fact that Alan Cash is anybody's presidential candidate except their own.

Mr. Cash would also spend most of the Election 2012 campaign period hob-nobbing with President John Dramani Mahama, in hopes of getting the latter to help secure him the cozy and well-paid job of CEO of the World Trade Organization, instead of assisting the New Patriotic Party gain access to the Flagstaff House in order to appreciably better the lives of hardworking but woefully underprivileged Ghanaian citizens. Mr. Kyerematen also knows very well that he cannot fool anybody except, of course, his fleering fan fools of the so-called GAKE Internet make-believe organization.

Yes, Mr. Cash knows that he has twice disrespected and rudely abandoned party members and supporters, and that he is, practically speaking, a politician with a party. And this is why he has been screaming his lungs out over his purportedly superior traction with "swing" or "floating" voters. The fact of the matter, as yours truly has had occasion to point out now and again, is that no significant party or democratic organization can exist, much less survive, on the strength of uncommitted voters. This goes to show you, my dear reader, the pathologically warped logic of Mr. Cash.

The man is also not particularly known to have served in government with any remarkable modicum of distinction, first, as Ghana's Ambassador to the United States, and then as a Trade and Industry Minister. In the former position, Mr. Cash is alleged to have put up a Ghana government-owned real-estate property for sale under dubious circumstance. Couple the preceding with his scandalous bungling up of a Presidential Special Initiative (PSI) while Mr. Kyerematen served as Trade and Industry Minister under President Kufuor, and you pretty much get a striking picture of anything but a competent leader.

The man woefully failed to facilitate the upgrading of subsistence cassava farming into a lucrative commercial enterprise, even as retired NPP-MP for Asikuma-Odoben-Brakwa Mr. Paul Collins Appiah-Ofori is quick to point out. And precisely what sort and level of competence are these GAKERS talking about? You see, of all insults the most depraved and vicious is that which cavalierly underestimates the intelligence of its audience. And this is the kind of caveman's insult with which his morally bankrupt fanatics and supporters hope to capitalize on in order to get their badly wounded horse to lift up the winner's cup. Come again, Mr. Narcissus!

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*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Department of English
Nassau Community College of SUNY
Garden City, New York
Board Member, The Nassau Review
May 29, 2014
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net
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