“Ex-Convicts Can Join Presidential Campaign”

Sir John Insists

News Desk Report

The General Secretary of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), Mr. Kwadwo Owusu Afriyie, aka Sir John, has insisted that ex-convicts can join presidential campaign team.

Wading into the debate over whether or not it’s morally rewarding for ex-convicts, who have one time or more been caged over serious offences like hard-drug trafficking, usage and money laundering, the NPP chief scribe was all for it.

People, including those in the NPP have in recent time expressed utmost disgust; and were condemning the inclusion of certain questionable characters in the NPP flagbearer Nana Addo-Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s presidential campaign team.

Totally rubbishing concerns that such bad persons around the NPP Flagbearer will bring about a huge drawbacks with regards to the electoral fortunes of the NPP, Kwadwo Owusu Afriyie thinks otherwise.

In his call for an inclusive campaign, the NPP general secretary in interview with Africawatch Magazine, opines that the likes of Messrs Yaw Amfo-Kwakye and Nana Poku Ofori-Atta, who are all on record to have been convicted and gaoled for various criminal offenses, but are playing key roles in the Akufo Addo campaign team, will have no catastrophic effect on the Flagbearer, let alone the party.

According to him, he does not see why Mr. Yaw Amfo-Kwakye, convicted for drug trafficking as well as Akufo-Addo’s cousin, Nana Poku Ofori-Atta, jailed for money laundering as Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko would make us believe, should create problem in presidential campaign.

Sounding unconvincing to many political pundits, who express diverse opinions all questioning the locus of moral high-ground about the above-mentioned persons cliquing around the NPP Flagbearer, Kwadwo Owusu Afriyie argued, that it’s baseless to conclude that the presence of such personalities is improper and abominable in politics.

“If you are looking at people who follow or work closely with presidential aspirants having had criminal convictions, for me; if the person has served his time long ago, why not? He can join”, he categorically told the Africawatch magazine.

Unfortunately on his part, Kwadwo Owusu Afriyie claims, the NPP as a party, has not been confronted with such a problem, and says, if there is any such problem, he would be glad if his attention is drawn to it.

“Are we saying that if someone serves a 10-year jail term for drugs, he can’t later become a top executive of a (business) company? It is not so”, he queried.

Somersaulting in his rather weird analysis, he acknowledges that the inclusion of convicted criminals in a presidential campaign team, like his Flagbearer has chosen to do, gives room for unnecessary mockery, and suggested that, it is important to balance the act, though he did not explain what he means by that and also did not know who advises in this matter.

However, some political observers and renowned consultants including Mr. Yaw Adu Gyamfi share different opinions and at different wavelength with the assertions offered by Kwadwo Owusu Afriyie in his desperation to safeguard the image of his party and particularly, that of the Flagbearer, who gains international recognition for his involvement in clandestine activities and drug use.

“There is a limit to which people with tainted past should be allowed, or become part of a presidential campaign”, Yaw Ansah Bekoe, a political scientist said. “If a party would want to have such people with traits of that nature to occupy key positions, that is entirely up to them”, he pointed out.

On his part, Mr. Yaw Adu-Gyamfi, a consultant on governance and sustainable development, indicated that the issue presents ethical, moral, and socio-political implications, depending on how it is looked at by individual of groups.

According to him, the religious bodies completely frown on such issues, and therefore, see everything wrong about drug use and people’s involvement in the narcotic-business due to the high risk of corruption involved; hence reconciliation can’t be made for convicted drug dealers and their involvement in politics.

On the socio-political aspects, he continued; we need to ask ourselves explicitly, on what the law spells out as he holds the view that convicted drug dealers with political and executive power could easily influence the weak system to satisfy an intrinsic need, likely to work against the larger socio-economic development of the country.

It is, therefore, based on all the classical implications offered above, and how generations can be destroyed, why those of us working on The Informer disagree with the NPP general secretary, and would advise that if he will prescribe for adoption, what the NPP flagbearer’s campaign team is currently made up of, that certainly should exclusively be his party, no other political party in this country.