- Don’t Build Your Campaign Around Lies

Last week, members and sympathizers of the NPP had not even returned to their homes after the Tamale Congress, when Mr. Alan Kyeremanteng launched a media offensive ostensibly meant at creating a psychological boost to his long running campaign to be NPP flagbearer based on what he wanted us to perceive as a favorable outcome in Tamale.

This media offensive, during which he made very clear his intentions to try for the third time to be flagbearer after two very abysmal attempts in 2007 and 2010, saw him make several comments about his role in the NPP, his views on happenings in the party and the future.

In these interviews Mr. Alan Kyeremanteng, at his divisive best, sought to create the impression that he had been sidelined in the past and had even been victimized by the current leadership of the party. He attempted to use these excuses to heap blame on Nana Akufo-Addo, indirectly, for his (Alan) unwillingness to help the Party’s campaign efforts since his desperate unsuccessful effort to emerge as Party leader in 2007.
Speaking on Metro TV, Mr. Alan Kyeremanteng was asked about his low participation in the NPP’s Campaign efforts in 2012, which had become a source of much discussion within the Party and even outside the Party. In response, Mr. Alan Kyeremanteng disclosed that he didn’t contribute to the Campaign effort meaningfully because he wasn’t given any role to play.
In most parties, this statement would have ended his ambitions to be leader forever, and indeed I trust the NPP delegates to do exactly this in the coming months and years. That someone claiming to love a party so much and seeking the top job of the party to openly confess that he will not play a significant role in the campaign if he’s not handed a role officially is tragic, to say the least.
One can only wonder if the millions of NPP sympathizers who take it upon themselves to campaign for the Party in their neighbourhoods, in trotros, on Radio and who do everything to encourage people to vote on election day and try to protect the integrity of the ballots at their polling stations, are officially assigned those roles by the Party. We can again only wonder if all thousands of the leading members of the Party were assigned any roles by the Campaign and what will happen if in any election Campaign every party member waits to be assigned an official role before he or she will help the Party and contribute to the effort.
Aside his attempted justification being unfortunate to say the least, it has turned out that the excuse was after all, a lie. Mr. Boakye Agyarko, Campaign Manager for the 2012 Campaign has subsequently come out with the truth of how Alan Kyeremanteng deliberately refused to play a significant role in the 2012 Campaign.
According to Mr. Agyarko, in February 2012, he called Alan Kyeremanteng at the instance of Nana Akufo-Addo to discuss the role Mr. Kyeremanteng would want to play in the campaign. True to his nature, Mr. Kyeremanteng asked that he should be left to concentrate on his job in Addis Ababa but that he will return to Ghana in April 2012 to pick up a significant role in the campaign.
Alas, April 2012 came and ended with no sign of Mr. Alan Kyeremanteng in Ghana. Several calls were made to his Addis Ababa location to clarify the situation but interestingly, Mr. Kyeremanteng picked none of these calls according to the 2012 Campaign Manager.
This is the reason why as usual, after contesting for the flagbearership of the Party, Mr. Alan Kyeremanteng was missing from the campaign and the work done to bring the party back to power. Even though any truly loyal member of the party does not need a role to play before he becomes active in the party, Mr. Kyeremanteng was given the rare privilege of being asked to help in the campaign effort, but he refused to return to Ghana to take up any role or even pick his calls for further discussions on his inability to return – it is that simple.
Again, when asked on Adom FM about his diminished role in the Party during the campaign season and while the Party was in court, Mr. Kyeremanteng told another obvious untruth as we now know from Mr. Agyarko’s account.
Mr. Kyeremanteng in explaining himself mentioned that he was denied accreditation to the Supreme Court on the verdict day and it was some good Samaritans who helped him to get inside the courtroom. But obviously from what we know now, there was no way Mr. Kyeremanteng could have been denied accreditation by the Party or petitioners in the case.
The NPP in its entirety, during the court case, was only given 25 accreditation cards which was to be shared amongst the following: security personne;, the technical people who worked on the pink sheets and data, Minority MPs, Party executives, leading members of the Party etc.
So in this situation, how Mr. Alan Kyeremanteng was expecting to be reserved an accreditation even though he was outside the country should beat everyone’s imagination especially when other leading members who were present, including the campaign manager, never got accreditation cards of their own throughout the case.
Alan’s campaign has obviously kicked off on a wrong note with these exposures of the untruths he peddled. For me, I don’t wish he succeeds in his ambition and I will not hide that, but my honest advise to him is that even though he is desperate to make himself look good in the eyes of the NPP family, he should not resort to lies because when the truth eventually comes out as it has, it will only make him look worse.

Yaw Ofori-Berko