NPP Presidential Race Getting Dirty?

The Wikipedia defines it this way: Negative campaigning is trying to win an advantage by referring to negative aspects of an opponent or of a policy rather than emphasising one's own positive attributes or preferred policies. The negative effects of negative campaigning were brought electorally to the fore when Dr Spio-Garbrah managed less than 9 percent in his rather optimistic challenge to Prof Mills for the NDC leadership. Smear campaigns are aimed at a candidate"s most precious asset: his reputation. The truth is, there is no politician, indeed no person, including the 'men of God’, on whom one cannot rake some dirt for the market.

Every seasoned politician must know that the name of the game is not about having all publicity about you churned out through your own impetuous vortex. Learn to take the hard with the smooth. And, try as much as possible to smoothen the hard to ensure your survival and growth. Or else, you would spend all your precious energy fighting against being chewed up by the Lens, Palaver and the Democrats of our violently polarised politics.

The plain truth is this: don’t think about becoming president if you don’t have the intestinal fortitude to metabolically process mud and stones. The presidency is not for the faint-hearted. If in doubt, ask the likes of Messrs Kufuor and Mills. The truth is that the more serious a contender you are, the more the hawks and vultures will attack you.

Those contesting the NPP flagbearership may also take a more contemporary cue from their own rival, Akufo-Addo, on how he deals with the barrage of negative publications and utterances about and around him. His view is that you cannot contest for the highest office of the land and expect all to be nice to you. His response has been to ignore those he considers diversionary and deal with those he considers deserving of comment, even if it means being selective about the kind of audience you explain matters to. Yaw Osafo-Maafo has been doing that brilliantly and effectively in explaining CNTCI, IFC, Macmillan to his party executives during his nationwide tours.

Last week, some negative publications about Alan Kyerematen (see April 25-27 edition of Ghanaian Observer) came out in the papers. Immediately, some camps of other aspirants were being blamed, either privately or in the newspapers. Some even suggested that Egbert Faibille, whose paper broke the story of a complaint being filed at CHRAJ against the Trade Minister, was in Akufo-Addo’s camp. Thus, Akufo-Addo could be behind the publication on Alan. Their reason: his paper once exposed Kofi Coomson on the CHRAJ probe against PV Obeng. With that publication and Egbert’s radio exchanges with the Chronicle publisher, the young lawyer had laid to rest the old charge by Mr Coomson that Nana Addo impressed upon his junior at his law firm, Yoni Kulendi, to stop representing Mr Coomson against the former NDC de facto prime minister. Perhaps, some within the NPP were genuinely unhappy with Egbert’s ‘rescue’ job for their party stalwart, and has since tagged him as a Nana’s man.

Fingers are pointing at the Chief of Staff, too. Kwadwo Mpiani’s only sin must be that he’s known to be not at all in favour of Alan’s bid for the flagbearership. His office is said to be the main engine behind Paapa Owusu-Ankomah’s bid. But, it’s rather silly for anybody to suggest that the man in charge of the Presidency would leak a seemingly damning handing over notes of an old board to a new board about a sitting minister when the obvious charge would be what has the Office of Accountability done about it?

Dan Botwe has also been blamed. The charge is that Kwesi Arthur, a former board member of the Export Development and Investment Fund, who is the complainant, is allegedly steep in the Dan Botwe camp and there’s still no love lost between Dan and Alan. No one has bothered to ask the question where was Dan and Nana when these highly disputed allegations were virtually contained in the handing over notes of the sacked board of directors of EDIF more than a year ago.

But, we cannot dismiss Alan’s concern that Arthur - one of the only two contestants for the position of NPP National Treasurer in 2005, and a former regional treasurer of the party – is the complainant. "If there is no political motive or advantage to be gained, then why?” is the Minister’s public query. But, as is typical with the NPP, Qanawu would be surprise to hear NPP members publicly coming to the Minister’s rescue. A serious contender such as Alan must be given all the support he needs to tackle this matter and hopefully put it behind him.

Qanawu’s advice to the Minister is to let the new board come out early to explain how they dealt with the concerns raised in the handing over notes of the old board, as disclosed by Frank Agyekum on Metro TV last Friday. Alan has started well by offering some general explanations in his press statement. The Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice should also act quickly. It should be very sensitive about what is at stake – the hard-earned reputation of a person who is potentially Ghana’s next president.

This matter cannot be allowed to drag on – certainly not until September when nominations for the NPP presidential candidate race are expected to be opened. Alan deserves nothing less than expediency on this matter. CHRAJ must act fast if indeed there is a petition before it. It should quickly undertake preliminary investigation and come out with its findings in the earliest possible time. This is a straight forward matter, where, as Alan indicated, “Fortunately, all the issues raised in the allegations refer to transactions that are evidenced in the form of documents which are subject to full disclosure.”

Allegations, in the words of Alan, “inspired by ill-will, political treachery and deceit, calculated to tarnish,” ones reputation, credibility and public image, especially at this crucial juncture of ones political investment should not be allowed to linger. It may be as empty as Qanawu is being made to believe, but that fact must be made sternly and early enough.

It is, perhaps, only in politics that dirt is highly priced and has ‘real’ value to the consumer. Political scientist Rick Farmer of the University of Akron in Ohio, US, has found that negative publicity is more memorable than positive publicity when it reinforces a pre-existing belief and is relevant to the central issues of a marketing campaign. In Alan’s case he’s been dubbed Alan ‘Cash,’ so allegations of financial “impropriety” may seem like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Yet, nobody appears to care to know, and appreciate, how he came about putting in place such ruthlessly effective campaign machinery. Rather than seeing it as perhaps a model to be emulated, our propensity for the negative (‘you have a flash car you must be a coke dealer’ mentality) has taken over in typical fashion and a man’s reputation is out for hang.

A legitimate argument for negative political campaigns is that the public needs to know about the person they are being asked to vote for, even if it is bad. In other words, if a candidate’s opponent is a crook or a bad person, then he or she should be able to tell the public about it.

As was noted in this column a while back, perhaps what is more worrying here is that the politicians themselves are suspected to be hiding their faces behind shields, remotely slinging insults, manufacturing bullets, taking cheap shots at each other and taking cover behind their ‘friends’ in the mass media, including serial callers.

Dirty campaign within the internal competitive arena of politics carries a potential collateral damage threat that can engulf the collective against the common adversary.

President Kufuor, Chairman Mac Manu, Senior J H Mensah and several others have warned the NPP against allowing their crowded race to choose their next flagbearer fall and roll through the self-disserving mud of smear campaign. It has been observed in this column about five months ago that there’s a lot of wisdom in the message by the three leading members of the New Patriotic Party. Indeed, last month The Statesman, reporting on the Ashanti Regional tour of Nana Akufo-Addo chose the headline, “Don’t Vote for a Novice, says Akufo-Addo.” This was an innocent interpretation of the Foreign Minister’s words (spoken in twi) to constituency executives in the Ashanti Region, where he advised them to vote for, among other things, experience, loyalty, vision, and a unifier.

Although, no direct quote about “novice” politicians was attributed to Akufo-Addo, The Statesman had reasoned that urging people to vote for experience was tantamount to warning them against voting for a novice! But, the Minister, who was out of the country was MOST unhappy about this twist in our publication. His point was that our twist went against the philosophy of his campaign. Which is to talk about his strengths, address concerns, listen to party issues and advise them on what they should look for in a candidate and why he thinks he’s that candidate. The significant distinction, he pointed out, was that he does not focus on what not to vote for but what to vote for. The former, in his thinking, is negative and does not reflect the mindset of a unifier, which he believes he is.

Going by the January NPP annual conference theme - Moving Forward in Unity - the highest priority of the NPP is uniting the party in the battle to retain power in December 2008.

A presidential candidate who would be a uniter and not a divider knows that cheap-shot politics can only further rend his party and weaken his own ability to lead.

This is at least the third time Qanawu is addressing the topic of dirty campaigning within the NPP flagbearership race within the last 8 months. In the first such publications on August 28, 2006, Qanawu pleaded with men “with little faith in the NPP [to] stop linking Nana Akufo-Addo to everything ‘suspect’,” published in The Statesman.

This column argued then, “This paper may have a softer spot for the son of its founder, who is also its former publisher, who happens to be related to the Editor-in-Chief and publisher, who happens to be among the favourites to win over the doubters in December 2008. But, the clear evidence in the race to succeed President Kufuor is that this paper and the people associated with it are politically decent and responsibly matured enough to know that this is after all an internal battle…

“Qanawu can give the assurance that dirty campaigning, which this paper could even be faulted in the past, is not one that any NPP aspirant can lose sleep over as part of this paper’s arsenal to get one candidate elected over others. Well, we may have a little acceptable dig, near the waistline now and then. Only those who have little faith in the Danquah-Busia tradition can think that evil of The Statesman. At least, grant us little credit for the role that we have played to get the party and the country this far. Capable, we certainly are in hitting back. But, never to cause serious damage to the tradition we believe has the programme to move this nation forward.”

On January 15, 2007, Qanawu revisited the topic with the headline “Negative Campaign is Legitimate but…” That article began, “There is a certain heart-wrenching sense of queasiness and nervousness creeping into our politics today. Politicians, especially the ambitious ones, wake up to tune in to newspaper reviews on radio and television more in hope that there is nothing negative written about them.

“The, possibly, anything between 8 months to 11 months to the election of the NPP flagbearer for 2008, the campaigns are in a perpetual state of high dudgeon, with sensitivity alert buttons on a constant blink. Every publication in the newspapers is superficially scrutinised to see which candidate may be behind it.”

Qanawu continued, “At play are two extreme forces of opposing sentiments. On one hand, there are publications and utterances predictably and nauseatingly made and stretched to damage one candidate or the other. On the other hand, too, some candidates and their followers have become so hyper-sensitive that if their concerns are to be observed no word of critique may be written or said about any of the aspirants. This situation, from whichever politacanoculars you see it, is simply not on.”

Qanawu shall repeat his earlier call here on checking dirty campaign: “The focus rightly must be on the media, as they have the capacity to let the news travel afar. They have to do more than ‘he said/he said’ reporting.”

If the charges don’t hold up, they don’t hold up! We must maintain a conscience where the desperate politician may be prepared to suspend his. This is more a test for the media than even the politician, arguably. We cannot simply be bystanders in this fascinating and ugly development in our nation’s politics. But, we should also not run the risk of exaggerating the effect and underrating the positive aspect of negative campaigning.

The ambitious politicians must accept that every campaign has its share of hard-ball political tactics. But, they can take a common stance against smear campaigns because nothing is more discomforting than that, and every single one of them is not beyond the reach of the spray can.

The message, especially in internal politics is this: be nice, be civil, stay clean, be positive, don’t hurt others, don’t get personal, and don’t scare people.