When the leaders of the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), led by their deliriously desperate and megalomaniacal pontiff, former President John Dramani Mahama, mischievously charged against last December 17’s scheduled nationwide Referendum to deepen Ghana’s democratic culture by having local government executive operatives, such as Metropolitan, Municipal and District Chief Executives (MMDCEs) directly elected by the very people they are designated to govern, I warned these pathologically reprobate NDC operatives that their devious decision to sabotage the December 17 Referendum would come back to haunt them with time. Now, true to our prediction, the poisonous effects of the December 17 Referendum Boycott have come back to haunt the National Democratic Congress’ Member of Parliament for Akatsi-South Constituency and District, in the Volta Region, Mr. Bernard Ahiafo ( See “Akatsi-South DCE Fights Opposition MP Over Who Should Distribute Veronica Buckets” Modernghana.com 3/28/20).

In the Akatsi-South’s impasse between the NDC-sponsored parliamentarian and the Akufo-Addo-appointed District Chief Executive Officer (DCE), Mr. Leo Nelson Adzidogah, the bone-of-contention revolves around something called “Veronica Buckets,” a sanitary receptacle or washbasin whose provision for use is aimed at stemming the fast-rising tide of the Chinese-originated Coronavirus Pandemic. What is at issue here, according to news reports, is that the Akatsi-South’s MP, Mr. Ahiafo, has his portraits either printed or embossed on the aforesaid Veronica Buckets which, by the way, is his constitutionally permitted prerogative, although these sanitary buckets were purchased or underwritten by the Ghanaian taxpayer.

You see, what I am unmistakably driving at here is the fact that if the leaders of the National Democratic Congress had not so unwisely and nihilistically caused the scuttling of the December 17, 2019 Referendum, the Akatsi-South Constituency, located in the Ewe-dominated traditional NDC stronghold of the Volta Region, the District Chief Executive might also have very likely been a legitimately elected bona fide operative of the National Democratic Congress; and the Akatsi-South constituents would not be needlessly suffering the avoidable after-effects of the inadvisably scuttled December 17 Referendum. You see, the main thrust and/or objective of the December 17 Referendum was to ensure the healthy reduction of the much-maligned purportedly excessive powers of the Presidency. Thus, in deciding to shrewdly and pragmatically cede some of his executive powers of appointments to the local government sector, President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo was unprecedently ensuring the fair and relatively equitable sharing of democratic power or the popular mandate.

This was the kind of healthy power-sharing democratic culture that globally influential public figures and leaders like the late Mr. Kofi Annan, Ghana’s legendary and immortalized Secretary-General of the United Nations Organization (UN), had been actively advocating since the inception of the country’s Fourth-Republican dispensation in 1992 or 1993, or thereabouts. And on the latter count, it is very significant to note that President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, Ghana’s fifth Fourth-Republican leader, is also the very first of his kind to actively attempt to pragmatize the Kofi Annan Theory of Democratic Power-Sharing. Another equally significant fact that is worthy of note is that each and every one of the three living former Presidents of Ghana, namely, Chairman Jerry John Rawlings, Mr. John Agyekum-Kufuor and Mr. John Dramani Mahama, joined cause and forces with both the leaders of the National Democratic Congress and the fanatically pro-NDC President of the Ghana National House of Chiefs, namely, Togbe Afede, XIV, to effectively sabotage this civically foresighted and morally enriching political culture.

Back in either November or December 2019, I also, in retrospect, perspicuously observed that whichever way the results of the December 17 Referendum turned out to have gone, nevertheless, the one great winner was likely to be none other than, you guessed right, President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo. Well, it is not clear to me what the intent of Mr. John Kobby Agbanavor, described as the NDC’s Communications Officer for Mr. Ahiafo, the Akatsi-South’s Member of Parliament, in releasing a press statement in which Mr. Agbanavor pretended that the contribution of the leaders of the country’s main opposition party towards fighting off the Coronavirus Pandemic was being deliberately and maliciously stalled by the local executive operatives of the ruling New Patriotic Party, who are dead-set against having Mr. Ahiafo cheaply make hay for the Mahama Posse on their parade grounds.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau Garden City, New York

E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net