By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
I almost toppled over my chair while reading a news item titled “Over[-]bloating [sic] of Voter Register to Dominate Discussions at IPAC Meeting” (Modernghana.com 3/3/08). IPAC, of course, refers to the Inter-Party Advisory Committee that primarily deals with matters pertaining to electoral protocol.
What piqued my interest and wracked me with uncontrollable laughter, though, was the fact of some cynical operatives of the so-called National Democratic Congress (NDC) pretending as if their being massively voted out of power, some eight years ago, had anything to do with voter fraud, rather than unpardonable political knavery.
In essence, the NDC is claiming, rather vacuously, that the most extortionate and dictatorial political party in postcolonial Ghanaian history lost the 2004 general election largely because, somehow, Dr. Afari-Gyan’s Electoral Commission (EC) deliberately caused the “over-bloating”[sic] of the voters’ register in some constituencies around the country.
Before we proceed any further with this discussion, we ought to significantly recall the fact that Dr. Afari-Gyan was originally appointed by former President Jeremiah John Rawlings. What this partially implies is that any attempt to stake the kind of hyperbolical claim which the NDC operatives are assaying would, perforce, require a thorough revisiting of Ghana’s Fourth-Republican voters’ register since 1992, in order to credibly substantiate the patently dangerous, if also outright treacherous and treasonous, implication that, somehow, the bane of electoral fraud was invented by the Kufuor Administration of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP). I bet if the latter investigation is ever conducted, it would put the cynical and megalomaniacal likes of Professor Atta-Mills to shame; and the latter is assuming that, indeed, the perennial NDC presidential candidate was capable of feeling a sense of shame.
What is also quite intriguing is the former Legon law lecturer’s claim that the voters’ register in at least 13 constituencies in the Asante Region are “over[-]bloated” [sic]. Quite intriguing because the Asante Region is the region, historically, least likely to remarkably throw its massive electoral support behind Prof. Atta-Mills, as had been more than amply demonstrated during the last two general elections. In fact, not even the Central Region, where he was born and raised, has demonstrated any remarkable enthusiasm for the presidential candidacy of Prof. Atta-Mills, even as the Volta Region, sarcastically dubbed “The NDC World Bank,” blindly and massively threw its electoral support behind Dzelukope’s Flt.-Lt. Jeremiah John Rawlings.
And so it would be quite interesting to learn of just what electoral gains, or inroads, Prof. Atta-Mills and his NDC make in those unspecified 13 constituencies in the Asante Region, where the NDC flagbearer claims the “over[-]bloating”[sic] of the voters’ register occurred and may well have precipitated his landslide electoral loss to President Kufuor.
Needless to say, theoretically speaking, it would have made far better sense for Prof. Atta-Mills to have staked his nescient claim in the Volta Region, or any part of the three northern regions. But, of course, logic is a prohibitive commodity among the mentally indisposed and megalomaniacal.
The preceding Atta-Mills challenge irrationally presumes that the good people of those 13 constituencies in the Asante Region, where the voters’ register was supposedly “over[-]bloated”[sic], would be so alienated and morally irresponsible as to cast their ballots and, in effect, surrender their sacred mandate to the reprobate operatives of a pseudo-political party that meticulously and systematically supervised the brutal murder and expropriation of more Asantes than any other regime or illegitimate government in the history of modern Ghana.
In sum, his patently heretical claim “not to accept the results [of Election 2008] if the matter [of alleged “over[-]bloating” of the voters’ register in 13 constituencies in the Asante Region [is] not properly investigated,” is a thinly-veiled threat of war by Prof. Atta-Mills and his so-called National Democratic Congress, and the ruling New Patriotic Party had better seriously prepare for war. And in so doing, perhaps the NPP needs to enter into a bilateral security arrangement with the South African government of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), in order to guarantee the effective inability of Prof. Atta-Mills to conflagrate Ghana and then flee into exile and a safe haven in the country that Nelson Mandela both democratized and unified.
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