.... Rather Than Court The Attention Of Chiefs?

By Otchere Darko

The recent accusation against the Omanhene of Oguaa traditional area by the NPP over the alleged “slighting of Nana Akuffo-Addo” during the Fetu Afashe Festival is both unnecessary and unfortunate.

Article 276 of our current constitution says “a chief shall not take part in active party politics”. Even though the constitution does not define what it means by “active party politics”, it is obvious that if any chief is seen to be involved with some “partisan agenda” of any Ghanaian party in particular or of Ghanaian parties generally, such involvement could, and should amount to a contravention of the provisions of Article 276. Despite this fact, politicians of all parties, but most especially those of NDC and NPP, constantly court the attention and affection of chiefs in ways that openly draw traditional rulers directly or indirectly into partisanship. As a result, it is becoming easy for political analysts in Ghana to tell what parties some local chiefs back. This, though, is wrong and dangerous.

During the recent NPP Presidential primaries, the five candidates concerned went round the country from one community to another community and everywhere they arrived, Nana Addo and some others visited the palaces of the kings or chiefs of those places to introduce themselves to these traditional leaders who, in fact, were not members of the NPP; who had no votes and no say in the elections; and who, therefore, had no role to play in the primaries; not to mention the crucial fact that chiefs are banned by the constitution from involvement in “active party politics”. Again, as soon as he won the election, Nana Akuffo-Addo went back to some Regions to thank some chiefs, as if they played a part in his election as the NPP flag-bearer. I have to stress that it is not only Nana Akufo-Addo who does this curious and constitutionally contradictory thing. Ghanaian politicians of all parties do that in varying degrees. Why should any politician turn himself into a “political devil” and induce the “Adam” in any chief to do something that he, the chief, is forbidden from doing? Chiefs know that they are prohibited from participation in the form of “active party politics” that they constantly find themselves drawn into by these “exploitative” Ghanaian politicians. However, because they have had all their powers taken from them by the modern State, traditional rulers intuitively become positively responsive in one way or the other to this political inducement from the flirtations and courtships of politicians, in the same way that vulnerable women and school girls from poor backgrounds automatically become positively responsive to flirtations, courtships, and inducements by men of wealth and power.

What surprised me about the recent Fetu Afashe incidence involving Nana Addo and the Omanhene of Oguaa is the seeming politicisation of the whole festival by politicians. Even though I was not at the festival myself, the picture that was published in the papers showing Nana Akuffo-Addo at the function told fully the story of the politicisation of the festival. If he was invited by the Omanhene, did Nana Addo have to go there with his NPP entourage when the occasion was not political? Or, supposing he went on his own, did he and other invited NPP members have to group themselves together in a way that made them stand out as an “NPP group”? Or, when he wanted to go and greet President Mills and other Government Dignitaries at the function, [perhaps as a sign of respect which is both understandable and laudable], did Nana Akuffo-Addo have to go with “his entourage” of NPP members? And when “Nii Lantey Vanderpuije prevented the NPP leader and his entourage from greeting the President and other Government Dignitaries” for whatever reason, [perhaps acting on the instructions of the President], did the Oguaa Paramount Chief, Osabarima Kwesi Atta II, have anything to do with it?

On the specific accusation that Osabarima Kwesi Atta II failed to acknowledge the presence of Nana Akufo-Addo at the festival in his address and accordingly slighted the NPP Presidential Candidate, one may say that even if the Omanhene did that deliberately, he was right not to mention Nana Addo’s name, in my opinion. It would be difficult for the Omanhene to do that in his speech without addressing Nana Akufo-Addo in his capacity as the 2012 NPP Presidential Candidate and, thus, being seen to be falling into the trap of indirectly helping to sell the latter ahead of the 2012 presidential campaign. Doing that would certainly mean or infer that the Omanhene was promoting the “political agenda” of the NPP ahead of time to the disadvantage of other parties, which was the main reason why the NPP chose its leader two years before the elections. And if the Omanhene had acknowledged Nana Akufo-Addo by introducing him as the 2008 NPP Presidential Candidate to avoid implicating himself in the “out of season” electioneering of Nana Addo, that would suggest that Osabarima Kwesi Atta’s acknowledgement was out of tune with the new status of the NPP Presidential Candidate and that would also be protested by the NPP.

In my opinion, the right thing for the Omanhene to do is what he did.....which was to exclude the name of the 2012 NPP Presidential Candidate from his address to avoid being seen to be promoting the “electioneering activity” of Nana Akufo-Addo in the presence of dignitaries of other parties and, thus, be seen to be playing “active party politics”. At Festivals like that, dignitaries who hold various public offices are acknowledged in the address of the Chairperson. It was important and natural, therefore, for the Omanhene to acknowledge the presence of the sitting President and other Government Dignitaries who had come there in their roles as members of the government, and not as officials of their party. It was also important that Members of Parliament, Members of the International Diplomatic Corps, former Ghanaian International Diplomats, like Kofi Annan if he was there, and any former Government Dignitaries, like the two former Presidents, etc, who were present had to be acknowledged. Nana Akufo-Addo, on the other hand, was not holding any public office. He was merely holding a partisan office which was [even] not “in season” yet. Apart from being addressed in his current position of being the 2012 NPP Presidential Candidate, which would have amounted to promoting the NPP’s “electioneering agenda”, what else could the Omanhene say Nana Addo was, which would not have meant that he, the Omanhene, was promoting the “political agenda” of the NPP’s next presidential candidate? Was he to have addressed him as “a distinguished lawyer”, or merely as “a Ghanaian dignitary”? Either way, the NPP would have protested. The Omanhene therefore did not, in my opinion, breach any protocol by not mentioning the name of the 2012 NPP Presidential Candidate in his address at the Afashe Festival, irrespective of whether he actually saw Nana Akufo-Addo or not. And not mentioning Nana Addo’s name, to me, did not mean that the Omanhene was slighting him. Neither could it be said that the Omanhene was part of anything that happened between Nana Addo and President Mills concerning the prevention of the NPP flag-bearer and his entourage from greeting the President and other Government Dignitaries.

Efforts by Nana Akufo-Addo and his party to bring Osabarima Kwesi Atta II into the nasty partisan clash that developed between the NDC government dignitaries led by the sitting President and the NPP entourage led by their 2012 Presidential Candidate and also the NPP’s attempts to make capital out of Osabarima’s failure to mention Nana Addo in his address amount to knowingly or unknowingly drawing the Oguaa Paramount Chief into “active party politics” in contravention of Article 276 of the 1992 Constitution. The equally unnecessary and politically rooted snubbing of Nana Addo by President Mills, who ought to have shown a more dignifying Presidential attitude, is believed to be a tit for tat replica of a similar incidence that took place in 2008 between the then sitting President, Mr Kufuor, and Professor Mills who was then the NDC Presidential Candidate. This partisan tit for tat demonstrates the ugly face of the kind of party politics that has been allowed to develop between the NDC and NPP. This hostility between the “two political giants” is already doing a lot of socio-economic harm to this country and this makes it crucial that the two parties do not unwittingly draw the institution of chieftaincy into their feud to complicate and exacerbate matters further.

I could theoretically say that if the 2012 presidential election were to be brought forward to take place tomorrow, Nana Akufo-Addo would be the winner because of the fact that he is the only candidate who has so far been elected for this contest, [which is more than two years away, though]. The BIG QUESTION, then, is........ .......

*Between now and the time the 2012 election-campaign gets started officially, should Nana Akufo-Addo be trooping around the country as “invitee”; from funeral to funeral, durbar to durbar, and other public function to other public function; parading and flagging himself wherever he goes; led in front, and tailed behind by an entourage of party lieutenants and commandos; posturing and peacocking like the showy King Mansa Musa of the defunct old Ghana Empire; and, occasionally, using such moments to make political-capital out of, and partisan statements on events that are non-political? Or is Nana Addo going to do something more positive and more politically rewarding during this long interim?

*If I were Nana Akufo-Addo, apart from healing “the smelly wounds” and patching “the defacing image dents” of the NPP, I would use this long gestation period available to him to travel through the length and breadth of the country, from one deprived community to another deprived community, to engage in community-related development projects, collaborating the efforts of friendly NGOs and liaising with village and town opinion leaders here and there to construct bore-holes , for example, at Gambaga and Bole in the North; or to construct classroom blocks at Nkwankwanua and Amanfrom in Ashanti and the Eastern Region; or to clean open gutters choked with piles of filth and breeding billions of mosquitoes at Nima and Madina in Ghana’s capital city. Using his comparatively advantageous long pre-election time positively in this way would help Nana Akufo-Addo to improve his own personality and his party’s image more, and stand him in a better stead to sell himself to the Ghanaian electorate than just popping around the country like he is doing now and attending festivals, durbars, funerals and other social functions and wanting to be introduced everywhere, at a time when no other party has elected its presidential candidate, nor has the Electoral Commissioner officially set in motion the processes that indicate that the season for the 2012 general and presidential election campaigns has officially taken off.

Contemporary Ghanaian politicians, especially those of the two main parties, should refrain from unnecessary political confrontations and other negative forms of party politics. Instead, they should follow newer, better, friendlier and more positive-image building approaches to party politics, such as engaging in community development projects and services to improve the lives of people in deprived communities, rather than engaging in their usual opportunistic habits of just going round the country and bombarding chiefs and local people with flips of cosmetic, self-aggrandising and negative electioneering visits. They should also create calmer and more dignified political atmospheres among themselves, just as it happens in many progressive advanced countries, including places where there are no dominant parties and where elections are hard to win outright and, thus, making good inter-party relationships a political sine qua none. Contemporary Ghanaian politicians should, in fact, not repeat the mistakes of our predecessors and “boot” and “hit” each other like “enemies” on a battlefield. *The recent warning to Ghanaians by Justice Emile Short may sound too apocalyptic in the ears of some of us, but judging by the way NDC and NPP are going about with their kind of negative party politics, Mr Short’s warning cannot be more concise, timely, and prophetic. GHANAIANS OUGHT TO BE TOLD LOUDLY THAT “SUSTAINED CLOUDS ARE THE FORERUNNERS OF STORMS”.

Source: Otchere Darko. [This writer is a centrist, semi-liberalist, pragmatist, an advocate for “inter-ethnic cooperation and unity” and a community-based development protagonist. He opposes the negative, corrupt and domineering politics of NDC and NPP and actively campaigns for the development and strengthening of “Third Parties” in Ghana.]