By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
April 25, 2015
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

The decision by the Akufo-Addo-led Election 2016 New Patriotic Party (NPP) to target some 30-percent of eligible voters in the Volta Region is quite laudable and even realistic and can even be exceeded on the ground, or in the polling booth, as it were (See "NPP 30 Percent Vote Ambition In Volta Unrealistic - NDC" MyJoyOnline.com / Ghanaweb.com 4/25/15). Nonetheless, if history has any lessons to teach yesteryear's posterity who are today's scions of the Danquah-Busia-Dombo Tradition, then their best bet is to study the political dynamics at play at the time that, for instance, enabled the Victor Owusu-led Popular-Front Party (PFP) to clinch 4 of the 16 parliamentary seats contested in the Volta Region in 1979.

In that election, the PFP won 42 parliamentary seats out of the grand total of 140 parliamentary seats, with the lion's share of 71 seats going to the Dr. Hilla (Babini) Limann-led People's National Party (PNP) and 13 seats going to the William "Paa Willie" Ofori-Atta-led United National Convention (UNC). NPP pundits also need to study the socioeconomic, cultural and political factors at play then, and objectively juxtapose these factors with the political dynamics and forces at play presently. Then also, these pundits need to study the dynamics of the 1969 general election, as well as all the five elections so far conducted under the dispensation of Ghana's Fourth Republic since 1992, with special emphasis or attention focused on the political culture and climate and the electioneering campaign strategies used by their predecessors and themselves in recent years. The personalities involved need to be studied as well, especially vis-a-vis their individual strengths and flaws, and the factors either leading to their successes or failures. This study must be conducted both at the national and local levels as well as, of course, the regional level.

The preceding will also necessitate the drawing up of the profiles of the players involved, both then and now. What, for instance, made Dr. Kofi Abrefa Busia tick, as it were, which Nana Akufo-Addo may do himself great good by taking good note of and even emulating? The same objective or clinical picture could be drawn of Mr. John Agyekum-Kufuor. The foibles of these remarkable leaders will also need to be clearly articulated and dispassionately studied and learned from. Then, also, the policy platforms of these leaders must be studied, critically analyzed and learned from. Needless to say, the profiles and policies of the opponents of these leaders will also have to be accorded even more significant amount of study time. Merely and facilely coming public and gushing exuberantly, if also not naively, about the electoral wishes and targets of the New Patriotic Party won't cut it, as it were. It is not even very intelligent to do so prior to having taken adequate time to conduct serious studies on strategic outcomes and liabilities.

Let's face it, fellows, ours is far and away a talking political culture than a reflective one, which is why our leaders are having such a difficult time coming up and out with any meaningfully progressive ideas for our national development these days. In the Volta Region, though, the problem facing the NPP is one of timidity and diffidence. You see, the Trokosi Hawks have had it long figured out that their main political opponents are not as committed and determined to wrestle for power and actually be willing to die in order to keep it. And now my profuse apologies to our mothers, sisters, wives and daughters, but the uncomfortable fact of the matter is that many an NPP leader or key operative prefers to have "ready-made" power gently dropped into their laps like a high-priced prostitute or many a stentorian but gun-shy cross-dressing NDC scribe. And until they learn the hard way of fighting for power and being prepared to die in order to keep the same, the NPP operatives will continue to be bullied into submission by the clinical political basket cases that are the key operatives of the so-called National Democratic Congress.

One great strength of the NDC leadership is their ability to put their most formidable political opponents on the defensive, perennially, thus making otherwise quite savvy politicians like Nana Akufo-Addo feel curiously and ironically guilty for boldly and courageously standing up to the swashbuckling thugs that constitute the apex of the NDC leadership. In other words, the NDC operatives have suavely and enviably learned to do the real killing - and here, of course, I have none other than the King-of-Peace in mind - only to have Nana Akufo-Addo bear the gratuitous and patently absurd burden of being inexcusably guilty of the promotion of violence as a prime political campaign strategy.

What is even more pathetic, and tragic as well, is to have some disgruntled failed former political associates of his actually go to bat for the NDC thugs, even while vehemently insisting against common sense that they are doing their own party - of which they dubiously claim to "founding members" - yeomanly service by working hard to ensure that it languishes on the margins of opposition politics. At any rate, short of street-to-street, house-to-house and hand-to-hand combat with their NDC bull-dog counterparts, I really don't see the NPP winning even 10-percent of the Volta votes. And if as Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia recently declared, the New Patriotic Party is determined to be envisaged as "the party of all Ghanaians," then it had better put its proverbial money where its mouth is.

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