“During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal I am prepared to die” (Nelson Mandela)

HINTING AT POST-ELECTION VIOLENCE MAKES FOR ABJECT FAILURE IN POLITICAL AND MORAL LEADERSHIP

And who says either the NDC or the NPP is going to win the upcoming general elections?

Is either the NPP or the NDC in cahoots with the Electoral commission (EC) to rig the elections for one or the other party?

Mac Manu’s rhetorical indiscretions have produced a cascade effect in the person of Godwin Ako Gunn.

That was expected, as we knew his rhetorical indiscretions will trigger a fierce riposte in equal measure from the NDC camp, much like a scholium repeat of Newton’s Third Law of Motion, which is that action and reaction are equal but oppositely directed. Here was Gunn’s response to Mac Manu:

“…when NDC is in power, no party can move NDC out of power. When NDC is tired we leave power but 2016 we are not tired....we are not ready to leave power."

The NDC equally if clearly understands this dog-whistle politics which the likes of Mac Manu preach in Ghana.

This does not however mean we are endorsing the dog-whistle behaviors of the two parties—far from it.

But the NDC response is a natural one as a matter of course. Yet, we also argue that such instances of casus belli should be rejected outright by all peace-loving citizens.

Now, the picture is beginning to get clearer by the day as to why the leadership of the NPP imported Serbian and South African imported into the country and secreted them away in forests, thus in the process blindsiding the nation and the security apparatus when the secret was finally unraveled for all to see.

In the end the negrified ethnocentric bovarists, buffoons, demagogues, and jihadists in the NPP do not own Ghana, neither their counterparts in the NDC.

We believe there is a silent majority that is closely watching both.

The leadership of the NPP should not be haunted by a picture of President Mahama in full military regalia to make unguarded statements bordering on subversion, chaos, and anarchy.

Wearing those uniforms was merely for ceremonial purposes.

It did not signal a creeping dictatorship of sorts into our body politic, for our current constitutional democracy—without the benefits of constitutional reforms aimed at the removal of the Indemnity Clause, for instance—is already an entrenched dictatorship by virtue of its eloquent support for the concept of executive dominance.

It is therefore only a radical constitutional reform that can overthrow this imprimatur.

The leadership of the NPP should not allow the specter of looming electoral defeat to put it in a gridlock of jittery mode.

All that the leadership of the NPP is doing is committing political suicide, to the extent of doing it in at the 2012 general elections with its “All-Die-Be-Die” and “Asantes should slaughter Ewes and Gas” war songs.

This is a dangerous repeat of the party’s non-Pyrrhic victory!

In fact, all that the leadership of the NPP needs to do is to sell a convincing alternative political manifesto to the people and then leave the same people to make their choice of who they desire to represent them in the Flagstaff House and parliament.

This is a matter purely of intellectual and electoral discretion.

No one has any right to force the people to vote for a particular candidate. Popular sovereignty is not subject to political compulsion of any sort. It is rather loosely subject to moral compulsion, personal and collective convictions.

That is to say, popular sovereignty should be based on the principles of rational choice and of the free will of the masses—loosely derived from the basic tenet of ex aequo et bono!

Rather regrettably, both parties appear to be prepping or priming their base voters to reject the outcome of the general elections in the event that it does not go their way.

This is why the electorate should reject both parties—particularly the NPP given Mac Manu’s warlike rhetoric.

Therein lies the potential for civil unrest or anarchy. But Ghana is not Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, or Togo.

Neither is President Mahama Laurent Gbagbo. Plus, the events that brought down the regime of Gbagbo were more complicated than the simplistic position which the NPP is trumpeting.

As of this writing, Alassane Ouattara has introduced new constitutional reform which everyone says is going to entrench his presidency and government.

In the main, according to the BBC, the Ivorian opposition and a significant portion of the voting public boycotted the referendum. The turnout was 42% and 93% of the turnout voted “yes” in favor of the new constitution.

As Joe Bavier puts it: “Some civil society groups “criticized the drafting process as lacking consensus and transparency…Pascal Affi N'Guessan, the head of Gbagbo's FPI party, now the main opposition, criticized the proposed creation of the post of vice-president and a senate, a third of whose members would be appointed by the president.”

Even Human Rights Watch did the not spare Ouattara and his government from criticism.

The new constitution, a document drafted behind closed doors mostly by Ouattara’s party members who constitute a parliamentary majority, was forced on Ivorians without the benefit of public debate. Ivorians therefore had less than three weeks to reject or accept “the proposed 183-artcle charter.”

Our submission is that the dominant narrative among the anti-Nkrumah NPP would have been utterly different were Ouattara Nkrumah. Unfortunately, this is a leader the NPP looks up to! As a matter of fact Ouattara should have been in The Hague with his longtime political nemesis, Gbagbo!

THE POLITICS OF LIES, VIOLENCE, AND MORAL CONTRADICTIONS

Partisan politics in Ghana has become a means to numb the human mind and to bury the conscience rather than become an end in intellectual and moral refinement. Partisan politics provides a platform for our leaders to prove who is more stupid than the other, who and which political party can steal more than the other, and so on.

Politicians like Mac Manu merely want to use the barrel of the gun, violent rhetoric and political communication, anarchy and war to snatch power not for the exclusive benefit of the country and its citizens but for direct access to the contents of the national coffers.

We have created political space not for men and women of vision and conscience but for men and women who are morally sick beyond recovery. Nation wreckers they all are.

In fact Mac Manu’s party, an ethnocentric party that boasts of intellectuals, is also ironically a party of sophisticated intellectual armed robbers and shifty political criminals. This party was in power for eight straight years and this dispensation which it represented was all about stealing and corruption galore.

The National Democratic Congress (NDC) is in power now and it too, according to the likes of Mac Manu, is all about stealing and corruption galore. A special case of the pot calling the kettle black.

Now, the pang of romantic nostalgia for kleptomaniacal plunder of the national coffers is pushing these intellectual armed robbers and shifty political criminals to usurp political power by any means necessary, while, members of the NDC, their political nemeses, have perfected what has come to be infamously known as “create, loot and share.” Political stealing has become a convenient instantiation of game theory in our body politic.

And who says either Akufo-Addo or President Mahama is a moral leader? Neither!

What will the demagogue Mac Manu and the slippery leadership of the NPP do differently for Ghana and Ghanaians, from the hackneyed planks of President Mahama and ex-President John Kufuor, beyond their vapid political manifesto, martial posture and violent rhetoric?

The answer(s) is what the political effigies within the NPP will have to convincingly sell to a seemingly reluctant electorate!

THE LIES MUST STOP

A statement by Anthony Baah, the Secretary General of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), that Akufo-Addo saved Ghana from doom following the 2012 petition trial, is another convenient revisionist trumpery cooked up to bamboozle unsuspecting Ghanaians including himself.

The naked truth is that Akufo-Addo does not deserve any credit for the relative peace that obtained in the country following the Supreme Court’s verdict. It is rather President Mahama who deserves unqualified encomia for maintaining the relative peace the country enjoys today, on account of his tactical, strategic prudential vision as Commander-In-Chief of the Ghana Armed Forces.

On the contrary, Akufo-Addo had no choice but to accept the outcome of the petition trial in good fate because there was no other viable option for him, save his retirement from active politics and renunciation of his Ghanaian citizenship, whichever he preferred.

All these make for the fact that he has never been and will never be bigger than Ghana. It is also a given that he his forces, if he had any, could not have withstood the fire power of the Ghana Armed Forces and the Ghana Police Service (GPS). Akufo-Addo does not deserve any praise for accepting the verdict. It was in his own best interest, his family, and that of his party. Period!

After all, the petition trial was not necessary. As a matter of fact the leadership of the NPP knew they had lost the general elections, and terribly, but instead chose to keep their supporters grossly misinformed about the true outcome of the elections just so Akufo-Addo will later be presented to the party supporters as a fait accompli, for a third time. Still, Ghana has yet to recover fully from the negative political implications of the petition trial for investor confidence and for other aspects of the country’s macroeconomics.

Finally, members of our security and intelligence outfits should closely work with their colleagues in neighboring countries to forestall any funny move by the desperate opposition which is bent on snatching political power by any means necessary, including through such formulaic techniques as alarmist demagoguery, political ethnocentrism, agitational propaganda, and strategic incompetence.

We shall return with Part 3.

REFERENCES

Jeremy Diamond. (October 20, 2016). “Donald Trump: 'I Will Totally Accept' Election Results 'If I Win.'” Retrieved from http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/20/politics/donald-trump-i-will-totally-accept-election-results-if-i-win/

Ghanaweb. “NDC Not Ready To Relinquish Power—‘Montie Trio’ Member.” October 30, 2016.

Max Fisher. “Read The Most Important Speech Nelson Mandela Gave.” The Washington Post. December 5, 2013.

Ghanaweb. “Akufo-Addo Saved Ghana From Doom—Dr Anthony Baah.” November 1, 2016.

BBC. “Ivory Coast: Yes Campaign Wins Constitutional Vote With 93%.” November 1, 2016.

Joe Bavier. “Ivory Coast President Asks Parliament To 'Turn Page' With New Constitution.” (Reporters: Joe Bavier/Loucoumane Coulibaly; editor: Robin Pomeroy). Reuters. October 5, 2016.

Joe Bavier. “Vote On Ivory Coast's New Constitution May Not Heal Old Wounds.” Reuters. October 27, 2016. (Eds: Tim Cocks and Andrew Roche).