By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
I have said it, time and again, that as long as the key operatives of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) allow themselves to be put on the defensive by paid propagandists of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), they might just as well call it quits. I am, of course, referring to their desperate attempts at bringing their party back into the seat of governance, and the people's business to the forefront of our national affairs.
The latest of such dastardly NDC attempts to perpetually put the NPP on the defensive came in the form of a whole cloth's fabrication of the alleged beating up of Mr. Laud Commey, the former National Organizer of the New Patriotic Party by the bodyguards of the 2008 and 2012 Presidential Candidate of the NPP, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, by the National Democratic Congress-underwritten Daily Post newspaper.
I call the Daily Post a "newspaper" for want of a more accurate description. Personally, I believe the most appropriate description for the Daily Post is a "Scandal Sheet," for that is clearly the purpose for which it appears to have been established. I have also deliberately elected to stay away from the trashy fare of the Michael Dokosi snot of a newspaper, because in the past I had not hesitated to call that dirty rag by its real name, a Trokosi Toilet Tissue.
Well, according to the Daily Post, Mr. Commey had been mercilessly pummeled to near pulp during the Tamale delegates' conference of the New Patriotic Party, because the former NPP National Organizer had either refused or failed to distribute payola money given him by Akufo-Addo operatives and associates. Now, if such a publication is not maliciously libellous, I really don't know what else is. And you would have thought that the Akufo-Addo camp would promptly issue a strongly worded condemnatory statement demanding immediate retraction and an unqualified apology from the editors and publisher of the Daily Post.
Instead, what we got was a lamely worded release from Akufo-Addo press secretary Eugene Arhin denying that any such purported act of savagery had occurred in Tamale. As of this writing (4/27/14), Mr. Commey had reportedly pooh-poohed the Daily Post report as one shamelessly guided by unconscionable falsehood and abject nonsensicality. And, needless to say, such powerful testimony is all that the Akufo-Addo camp needs to head for the civil court in order to ensure that the Trokosi Mafia Boys dearly pay for their hate-filled lies and venom.
Predictably, we have Mr. Arhin's release cavalierly admonishing the general public "not to give any credence to this story." This, clearly, is not the vintage response of a serious political operative, however typically "Akufo-Addo-esque" it may read and sound. And this pretty much explains why this otherwise finest of the country's presidential candidates keeps drawing blanks poll after poll. It is the sort of smugness that eerily and luridly verges on downright arrogance, even while quizzically parading in the guise of refined diplomatic deportment.
Yes, the NDC's so-called Better Ghana Agenda may be "ailing and failing" and be all the other pejorative epithets that the Akufo-Addo camp may think and believe it is; but the fact of the matter is that unless Candidate Akufo-Addo takes himself and his mission seriously, he shouldn't expect any Ghanaian citizen and eligible voter to take him seriously either. Charity ought to begin at home.
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*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Department of English
Nassau Community College of SUNY
Garden City, New York
April 27, 2014
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net
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