I read with a genuine but small dose of angst an article by one Gameli Hoedoafia of Croydon, Surrey, UK (togbegh@gmail.com), titled: RE: Does Ghana need to buy 5 aircraft now? The hypocrisy of Gabby & the NPP.

May I restrict this rejoinder to the first couple of paragraphs of his piece as reproduced below:

He wrote, “I read with angst Gabby’s submissions in his article of the 25th of July which was published on the 26th July. Gabby’s attempt to present himself and the Danquah Institute as a respectable non-aligned voice of reason was frankly pathetic. We all know that Gabby and the Danquah institute are nothing like the paragraph below asserts, but underscores the cacophony in his and the NPP submissions:

“Otchere Darko; [This writer, {who is not the same as Gabby Otchere_Darko} is a centrist, semi-liberalist, pragmatist, and an advocate for “inter-ethnic cooperation and unity”. He is an anti-corruption campaigner 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”. He is against “a two-party only” system of democracy {in Ghana}....... which, in practice, is what we have today.”]

One would have thought that the concluding details of the author of the original article which sparked off Mr Hoedoafia’s rejoinder were clear enough on the identity of the writer. The writer, who goes by the name Otchere Darko, had (as it is usual with all his articles) gone to extra lengths to show that he IS NOT Asare “Gabby” Otchere-Darko.

I wish to tell Mr Hoedoafia that I do not hold any antonymous right to the name Otchere Darko. I have no exclusive proprietary entitlement to a name which my dad (Dr Joseph Felix Otchere-Darko) gave me and my other siblings, which we have also passed on to our children. Not even my dad can claim autochthonous ownership to that name.

The writer, who signs off as Otchere Darko, a centrist, semi-liberalist, etc, advocating for a third party in Ghana, is a regular contributor to current affairs issues in Ghana, who always signs of with that detailed description of who he is. He signs off with Otchere as his first name, presumably, and certainly, not Gabby.

Mr Hoedoafia has every right to criticize me, whether fairly or unfairly, so long as he is expressing his own opinion, whether informed or not. But, I plead with him to try next time to refrain from giving me credit for opinions I have not expressed only to use that as a basis to give his opinion about me.

Asare Otchere-Darko, aka Gabby. gabby@danquahinstitute.org