By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
Nov. 4, 2015
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

The alleged burning of a copy of the Biometric Voters’ Register (BVR) belonging to the National Democratic Congress (NDC) in the Ledzokuku Constituency, in the Greater-Accra Region, ought to serve as an eye-opener to Electoral Commissioner Charlotte Kesson-Smith Osei (See “Report NPP Members on NDC Register – Asiedu-Nketia” Citifmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 11/3/15). According to those NDC operatives who torched the party’s BVR, they had credible evidence indicating that some parliamentary aspirants had packed the names of a remarkable percentage of non-NDC members onto the Ledzokuku voters’ register.

What is quite predictably fascinating here is that rather than submit their purported evidence to the party’s managerial hierarchy, the aggrieved plaintiffs decided to first savagely set the entire voters’ register alight before officially registering their grievances. And yet the members of this party of Paleolithic vandals would have the rest of the nation believe that it is the key operatives of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) who are the violent ones. I am not holding my breath in expectation of any disciplinary measures being meted the culprits. We know this is highly unlikely to happen because, already, the General-Secretary of the NDC, Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia has apologetically justified this patent act of criminality on grounds that the vandals were bereft of adequate information to enable them to act responsibly and in a civilized manner.

I also pity those NPP anti-Akufo-Addo factionalists who believe that Election 2016 is apt to be a contest between “chaos and incompetence.” Nana Akufo-Addo, to the asinine likes of Messrs. McNasty and McMole, not to leave out the celebrated Idiot-of-Irmo, South Carolina, is supposed to represent the chaotic aspect of Ghanaian politics, while President John Dramani Mahama epitomizes incompetence. The reality of the Ledzokuku Contretemps is that in the National Democratic Congress, Ghanaians have a Siamese and/or identical twinship between “chaos” and “incompetence.” Dr. McNasty recently wrote an article in which he shamelessly declared his unstinted support for incompetence. And so you know which side of the political divide he prefers to throw his leaden weight and support behind. Not that it matters anyhow.

But what is also instructive about the Ledzokuku Contretemps is the glaring failure of the stentorian and rambunctious Mr. Asiedu-Nketia and his associates and minions at party headquarters to ferret out the names of the non-NDC members whose names were packed onto that constituency’s NDC Biometric Voters’ Register. There is also something farcical about Mr. Asiedu-Nketia’s widely reported presumption that the alleged non-NDC members whose names have been packed onto Ledzokuku’s Biometric Voters’ are, perforce, members of the New Patriotic Party. Upon what authority does General Mosquito – as Mr. Asiedu-Nketia is popularly called – base his accusation? I mean, these are fighting words; more so because Ghana is a multi-party democracy and not a two-party state, the dominance of the National Democratic Congress and the New Patriotic Party notwithstanding.

What is quite a bit disturbing to me is the fact that none of the major leaders of the New Patriotic Party have as yet publicly responded to such preposterous accusation. It well appears to me that if some parliamentary aspirants from the NDC camp registered these apparently known non-members of the party, as most of the media reports indicate, then it is these internal scam-artists upon whom the anger and/or frustration of Mr. Asiedu-Nketia ought to be directed. Attempting to antagonize and fault the leaders of the New Patriotic Party for a purely NDC electoral scam-artistry, is very much in synch with the NDC politics of criminal scapegoating. The good news is that it is highly unlikely to work this time around. But even more significantly, it vindicates Team Bawumia and the other key New Patriotic Party leaders that the Ketu-South massive voters’ register scam is very NDC.