2012 Is Both Far And Near

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

The shifting sands of the political terrain, it has been observed time and again, is very labile. What this means is that even a fortnight on the campaign trail can make a heck of a lot of difference, in terms of the astute campaigner’s ability to sway the opinions of voters, both diehard ideologues and the undecided.

I make this observation in direct reference to Mr. Yaw Osafo-Maafo’s recent assertion that the dismal performance of the ruling National Democratic Congress “makes it palpably clear that the New Patriotic Party will win the 2012 elections” (See “Osafo-Maafo: Ghanaians Regretted Voting NDC” Ghanaweb.com 8/10/10).

The former Finance minister may be quite right insofar as the political pulse at the moment indicates. What with a comprehensive National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) being literally allowed to go down the proverbial drain? The catch here is the incredible ability of the now-President John Evans Atta-Mills to suavely hoodwink Ghanaians into believing that the scheme could, somehow, be effectively managed over the long haul by a one-time premium payment!

Of course, you cannot blame an economically vulnerable and downright desperate electorate for wanting to have the easy way out, as it were. The much more complex problem here is the grim fact that Ghanaians had had two decades of abject economic depredation, and degradation, callously characterized by a “Cash-and-Carry” regime of Social Darwinism to contend with; and so, properly speaking, there was absolutely no reason for Ghanaian voters to have so soon forgotten those protracted days in hell.

What makes Mr. Osafo-Maafo’s prediction of an NPP victory in Election 2012 quite credible, however, is partly evinced by the fact that rather than vigorously prosecute an economic development agenda, the Atta-Mills government seems to be hell-bent on frittering the country’s meager resources on committees of inquiry with the vindictive purview of finding former top NPP executive operatives guilty of the crime of causing financial loss to the state. And this act of infantile vindictiveness comes almost two years into the mandated four-year Atta-Mills term of governance.

The salutary upshot of the preceding state of affairs is that it has swiftly galvanized an otherwise traditionally more democratic but less disciplined New Patriotic Party around a single formidable candidate with the greatest potentiality of radically turning things around for the betterment of Ghanaians, irrespective of ideological suasion. In such an understandably bitter atmosphere, the critical question of “swing” or “floating” voters is readily rendered otiose. For the rank managerial incompetence of the Atta-Mills government of the so-called National Democratic Congress (NDC), has effectively ensured that there would be virtually no middle ground or a moderate political outlook vis-à-vis the destiny of our proverbial Ghanaian ship of state.

To be certain, at this stage of the national political ping-pong, it hardly makes any remarkable difference which personality the NPP fielded for Election 2012. The swing of the pendulum becomes more dependent on the coherence of the disparate agendas propagated by the two major parties and, in particular, the record of their respective achievements notched on the national socioeconomic and cultural landscape.

What the foregoing means is that whoever emerges triumphant in Election 2012 would pretty much depend on the soundness of campaign narrative and the relevance of references to palpable achievements registered, or etched, in both the average public and private Ghanaian imagination.

In other words, going forth into Election 2012 is apt to entail a vigorous contest of policy-shaping ideas and the proven ability of the contestants to actualizing those ideas within the context of a mandated electoral term. Consequently, it is time for the New Patriotic Party campaign strategists to begin enumerating the landmark policy achievements of the party, and where such achievements appear to have lacked the requisite steam and sheen, suggest a pragmatic remediation of the same.

The foregoing also logically necessitates a plausible explanation for such policy failure, what has been learned in the period between former governance and life on the margins of political opposition.

That the NDC government under Messrs. Atta-Mills and Dramani Mahama does not seem to have learned much that is administratively meaningful, is, in fact, apt to define the epic electioneering contest in the lead-up to Election 2012. For now, there is still time on both sides to dramatically alter the electoral cartography.

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is a Governing Board Member of the Accra-based Danquah Institute (DI) and the author of 21 books, including “Sounds of Sirens: Essays in African Politics and Culture” (iUniverse.com, 2004). E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net.

###