, Not Self-Centered Politicians

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

Mr. Kwabena Appiah-Pinkrah’s suggestion that a “father figure” be appointed to facilitate the speedy resolution of conflicts among factions within the New Patriotic Party (NPP) would be quite ideal if, indeed, the NPP parliamentarian for Akrofuom had also proposed the most suitable candidate for such a decidedly thankless, albeit morally prestigious, position. It would have been an ideal proposal because the ongoing personality feud within the party, largely based on “ancient” rivalries and other petty squabbles and personal vendettas, threatens to disintegrate this institutional vehicle for the promotion of the Danquah-Busia Tradition.

Unfortunately, it does sadly appear that Mr. Appiah-Pinkrah’s suggested ideal candidate is far more predicated on the fact of Mr. John Agyekum-Kufuor’s having served as a two-term president of Fourth-Republican Ghana than any remarkable demonstration of statesmanship on the part of the suggested candidate. For surprisingly, what most of his staunch partisans woefully fail to recognize, wittingly or unwittingly, is the fact that the timing of his premiership had far more to do with the widely perceived success of the suggested candidate than either his own proven managerial skills or his perceived a bility to readily reach out to his internal political opponents.

Simply put Mr. Kufuor, who had earlier on served under the Rawlings-led Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) junta, in the wake of the unconstitutional overthrow of the Limann-led People’s National Party (PNP), became president following two decades of virtual economic wreckage sophomorically unleashed on longsuffering Ghanaians by the Rawlings Gang in the name of “revolution.” What actually transpired within those two decades, however, has almost invariably been characterized by avid students of postcolonial Ghanaian politics as a “devolution,” a clinically degenerative process by which the entire functioning statal apparatus had effectively been ground to a standstill. This is what many a Kufuorian opponent, largely members and sympathizers of the so-called National Democratic Congress (NDC), has facilely described as “the goodwill of the international community,” coupled with sound financial backing, particularly among wealthy foreign governments and other individuals who always hoped for a democratically functioning polity along ideological lines prescribed by Dr. J. B. Danquah, the putative doyen of Gold Coast and Ghanaian politics, and former Prime Minister K. A. Busia, among others.

Those who have carefully and systematically observed the Ghanaian political scene are apt to point out that Mr. Kufuor’s sub-ethnic background, as an Asante from the Kumasi royal family, did in no way negatively impact on his vaulting presidential ambitions. For until very recently, ex-President Kufuor had always been perceived as a vintage “Asante Politician,” and then as veritably a “Kumasi Politician.” And there is, needless to say, some validity to such observation. For having acted as both executive chairman of the Kumasi City Council (now Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly) and the Asante Kotoko Football Club (he would later be relieved of the latter post for alleged financial impropriety), and then as a Member of Parliament for the rural Asante agricultural community of Atwima-Nwabiagya, Mr. Kufuor’s labeling as a quintessential Asante politician was almost impeccable. And while geographically he appears to have far transcended his status of a “local politico,” having also deliberately morphed himself into a globe-trotting Ghanaian premier, psychologically, the Oxbridge-educated lawyer-economist has yet to demonstrate beyond doubt to many a non-Asante member and sympathizer of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) that, indeed, he is a statesman on the order of Drs. Danquah and Busia.

Unlike the foregoing who have been erroneously perceived to be elitist, primarily the result of fairly successful, albeit tawdry, Nkrumaist campaign of personal destruction, at best, Mr. Kufuor has been perceived as “an astute politician,” a felinely clever and self-serving tactician, rather than as one who comfortably sports the materially self-sacrificing hallmark of a statesman. In fact, in terms of his personal lifestyle, Mr.Kufuor appears to be dead-set against the word “modesty.” Witness, for example, his alleged demand for six chauffeur-driven cars and two fully-furnished mansions at the end of his tenure, in the name of “gratuity” in a country that ranks among the bottom-third of the world’s most impoverished nations, and the personality image of the man begins to look suspiciously sinister.

Mr. Kufuor’s blatant nepotism is also very well known, particularly as regards the allotment of cabinet and diplomatic positions during his tenure. In the end, it largely appears as if the “Gentle Giant” was tolerated more because Ghanaians preferred his laidback and relatively more liberal style of governance, as opposed to the pseudo-socialist and populist tyranny of the so-called National Democratic Congress (NDC). Even so, by the end of his eight-year tenure, either by deliberate acts of deviousness or plain mischief, or even sheer clinical senility, Uncle Kofi Diawuo had begun to capriciously unravel many of the cardinal policies that made his administration tolerable and the man himself even beloved at the start of his tenure – the latter entailed, of course, the promiscuous use of executive authority to reverse significant judicial verdicts, as well as the deliberate omission of the names of his perceived political rivals or foes from national honor rolls. In fact, the deftly orchestrated failure of his NPP successor to clinch the presidency in the 2008 general election has been chalked to such idiosyncratic policy reversals.

What the NPP sorely lacks vis-à-vis a viable mechanism for speedily and effectively resolving internal squabbles and conflicts are not easily recognizable personalities among the ranks of its general membership. Rather, what the NPP direly needs going into Election 2012 are independent institutional structures ably managed by credible and respectable opinion leaders. It is in this direction that well-meaning party stalwarts like Mr. Appiah-Pinkrah ought to focus their attention.

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is a Governing Board Member of the Accra-based Danquah Institute (DI), the pro-democracy think tank, and author of 21 books, including “Ghanaian Politics Today” (Atumpan Publications/Lulu.com, 2008). E-mail: okoampaahoofe@aol.com. ###