By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
We knew it all along that the purported “over-bloating” [sic] of the Voters’ Register in some 13 constituencies in the Asante Region, as wildly alleged by the perennial Presidential Candidate of the so-called Provisional National Democratic Congress (P/NDC) and his cohorts, was an immitigably depraved ploy aimed at derailing the country’s fledgling, albeit firm and healthy, culture of democratic governance. We knew this because, even as we emphatically stated back then, the P/NDC has no enviable track-record on democratic governance; the latter observation is staunchly and verifiably buttressed by Chairman-Proprietor Rawlings’ own public expression of abject disdain for the deliberate process of democratic protocol, principles and tenets on the august floor of Ghana’s National Assembly. Now, all-too-predictably, a panel of expert investigators has reached the very same conclusions that we reached prior to both the setting up of the panel and the latter’s setting out on course in its working terms of reference. And the conclusion is that Prof. Atta-Mills’ wild allegations are simply that, wild and unconscionable allegations!
We have also been quite amused by Prof. Atta-Mills’ evidently habitual fault-finding and incessant caviling of the Electoral Commission in the wake of the democratic assumption of Ghana’s reins of governance by President John Agyekum-Kufuor’s New Patriotic Party (NPP). And on the latter score must also be registered the fact that it was, indeed, the P/NDC that supervised, albeit grudgingly, the establishment of Ghana’s Electoral Commission, as well as the appointment of Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan as the substantive Electoral Commissioner. And, needless to say, so professionally authoritative has Dr. Afari-Gyan’s conduct been that Ghana’s incumbent Electoral Commissioner has had his opinion on the effective conduct of elections solicited from all corners of the African continent.
And so for Prof. Atta-Mills to have deviously scripted and publicly orchestrated a palpably treasonous political drama, desperately seeking to both impugn the professional integrity of Dr. Afari-Gyan as well as throw the nation’s democratic culture into utter confusion, with the plausible intent of, perhaps, staging another JUNE 4TH REVOLUTION, for that appears to be the only way for the P/NDC to re-capture the nation’s seat of governance, deserves our prompt and unreserved condemnation. Prof. Atta-Mills also needs to be promptly invited by both the Speaker of Ghana’s Parliament and President Kufuor to publicly apologize to the deeply offended Ghanaian people.
Of course, we also recognize the likely attempt by the P/NDC Presidential Candidate to cheaply and shamelessly hide behind the Electoral Commission’s admirably honest admission of the fact of human error having created a statistical discrepancy between the actual electoral figures in the secured database of the EC and the hardcopy submitted to the P/NDC headquarters, at the official request of the latter. But even on the latter score, Prof. Atta-Mills has no legs, whatsoever, to boost any devious attempt at a subterfuge. More so, because he has been widely acknowledged as a “scholar” and a “legal luminary” who deeply appreciates the fundamental significance of meticulous and systematic research and analytical deliberation, traits widely acknowledged as constituting the indispensable hallmark of any scholar and/or intellectual worthy of such enviable designation.
Instead, what did well-meaning Ghanaians get from this much-vaunted so-called Asomdwoehene, or Peacemaker, but a rabid and deviously hasty attempt to impugn the validity of Election 2008, even long before the very first ballot paper would be cast. Of course, we also clearly recognize the fact that Prof. Atta-Mills has been in a perennial panic mode for sometime now, having lost two-straight Presidential Elections, three, by some accounts. Still, such purely personal phobia, or blight, should not occasion the treasonable attempt to summarily abrogating Ghanaian democracy.
We also recall that in the wake of widespread NPP protests against President Kufuor’s publicly announced intention to bestowing Prof. Atta-Mills with our highest national civilian merit award, the Order of the Star of Ghana (“Companion Division,” whatever that means), officials on the staff of the Presidency attempted to validate the President’s otherwise noble gesture by observing Prof. Atta-Mills’ long service as a faculty member of both the University of Ghana’s Department of Law and the Ghana Law School, particularly the fact of Prof. Atta-Mills having educated an impressive bevy of brilliant Ghanaian lawyers and other intellectuals. This is, admittedly, quite remarkable, except that as an achievement worthy of the highest national accolade, it is also, paradoxically, patently pedestrian. For there exist hundreds of Ghanaian educators, from the kindergarten level to Legon who can also quite legitimately and justifiably stake the same claim.
On the other hand, if Prof. Atta-Mills is merely being offered the rather quaint accolade of Companion of the Star of Ghana because, having twice mercilessly trounced the P/NDC Presidential Candidate at the polls, President Kufuor feels utterly sorry for Prof. Atta-Mills, and so Mr. Kufuor is just attempting to show the charitable aspect of his mercurial temperament, then, of course, this is quite understandable. Even so, the President ought to have also publicly noted the fact that he was disconsolately sorry for the brutal punishment (a Sissyphian punishment, in fact) which Chairman Rawlings appears to have permanently imposed on the failed P/NDC Economic Management wonk, thus the President’s magnanimous reaching out to the putatively bumbling ex-Tax Commissioner. Indeed, the latter motive may yet be largely the reason why Mr. Kufuor is widely reported to have felt acutely hurt, even traumatized, by the massively negative reaction from members of his own New Patriotic Party (NPP), in the wake of his epic Atta-Mills faux-pas.
Then again Mr. Mpiani, or any one of those legion presidential operatives, ought to have at least politely suggested to his boss, the quite well-known fact of it being anathema (in the olden Tweneboa Kodua days, even punishable by ritual suicide), among our people, to superlatively reward staunch and criminally silent collaborators of clinical nation-wreckers. And, golly, did we go or did we come?!
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