A 13-Member Panel to investigate the obvious?

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

That is what dyed-in-the-wool communists do… pretend as if everybody is a nincompoop like themselves, in order to conveniently investigate the obvious. The fact of the matter is that the government of the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress (NDC) lost Election 2016 because even as the party’s own longtime General-Secretary, Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia, publicly acknowledged, the NDC never won the 2012 general election.

The presidential election was an even more egregious mess that strikingly verged on the patently criminal. In the end, it was the Atuguba-presided nine-, or so, member panel of the Supreme Court that rubber-stamped the victory so shamelessly concocted for Little Dramani by Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, the long-jaded and thoroughgoing pathologically partisan Electoral Commissioner.

The former nondescript University of Ghana political science lecturer and former roommate of Nana Akufo-Addo’s would be handsomely rewarded with a national-merit honor award. I believe it was called the Order of the Volta.

Somebody appears to have forgotten to tell Mr. Mahama that, their convulsive infighting and all, the members and operatives of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) are people who learn fast not to be bitten twice.

Which explains why Little Dramani, on the electioneering campaign trail, would mock his main political opponents to the effect that they had already conceded defeat and were fervidly preparing to launch another lawsuit in the Wood Supreme Court. The fact that petitioning the effectively defanged Supreme Court was never an option going into Election 2016 clearly appeared to have been lost on unarguably the most underqualified Ghanaian to deck the mantle of the presidency.

Flt.-Lt. Jerry John Rawlings had been a remarkable genius for promptly recognizing this fact on his turn, thus his all-too-popular decision to assume the title of “Chairman.” He would promptly relinquish power only to find Dr. Hilla “Babini” Limann make an epic mess of the same. Limann would convince the Sogakope waif that being one of the best educated Ghanaians, even in the field of government, did not a great politician make.

The good news is that “Chairman” Rawlings would spend a decade grooming himself for the more substantive designation of “President.” The bad news is that his widely purported “charisma” and all, Chairman Rawlings does not appear to have fully graduated into the mature role required of an occupant of the presidency.

But what brought me this way was the columnist who writes the MyJoyOnline-sponsored column titled “Live from the Woods,” a bloke by the name of Austin Brakopowers, who recently published a piece captioned “Akufo-Addo’s ‘Dirty Little Secret’ that Got Him President.” I suppose what Mr. Brakopowers meant was what got Nana Akufo-Addo the “presidency,” not president.

I knew almost immediately upon reading the last sentence of the column that the writer was a diehard member or at least an ardent sympathizer of the National Democratic Congress. It is about the only way by which any writer or columnist could comfortably come up with such asinine poppycock as staunch supporters of the NDC having massively boycotted the polls.

The fact of the matter is that the expert likes of Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia were not jiving, when the Vice-President-Elect bitterly complained, in the wake of Election 2012, that the National Voters’ Register (NVR) was bloated well beyond acceptable standards. The “Live from the Woods” columnist also faulted the apparent flat refusal of Togolese nationals to cross into Ghana to vote with their fellow NDC World Bankers. Indeed, so clinical was Mr. Brakopowers in writing about this portion of the widely expected and all-too-delectable defeat of the NDC that the critical reader came off with the impression that so “legalized” had become this patently criminal practice that the real test of criminality here was the apparent failure or refusal by these hitherto handsomely bribed Togolese citizens to re-contaminate the integrity of Ghana’s electoral process.

Ultimately, it is only a bunch of rascals and congenital liars in shameless denial of their gross administrative incompetence who can look their ardent supporters in the eye and lie the way Mrs. Joyce Bawa Mogtari, the Mahama campaign spokeswoman and Deputy Transport Minister, did by claiming that Little Dramani was “comfortably ahead” of Nana Akufo-Addo when, in reality, Akufo-Addo was at least one-million votes ahead of the pack.

Now, the outgoing Sports Minister, Mr. Edwin Nii Lante Vanderpuije, says that he and his associates systematically and “strategically” lied because telling their constituents and party followers the naked truth, even as the results of Election 2016 hurtled to a close, would have caused many a traumatized and dazed diehard NDC supporter to commit suicide. (See “ ‘Comfortable Lead’ was to Minimize Frustration of NDC Supporters – Vanderpuije” Ghonetv.com 12/29/16).

Actually, the problem here was that having hoodwinked their blind and fanatical supporters into believing that the average Ghanaian voter was too daft to look towards his/her best interests, the NDC movers and shakers found it simply too dangerous to inform these vulnerable souls the inescapable truth. Which was that the secret perennial game of NDC highway robbery at the polls was up. We shall come back to the quixotic story of the NDC’s “outdooring” of its 13-Member Defeat-Probing Committee in due course. For now, dear reader, Happy New Year!