Alan Has Not Changed His Mind

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

Ever since Akufo-Addo's Campaign Manager, Mr. Boakye-Agyarko, questioned my credibility and sanity in the matter of Mr. Steve Mallory's widely publicized character assassination of the 2008 and 2012 presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), I have never felt comfortable writing about any issue which involves my assailant. There are, of course, other aspects of this matter which I intend to detail in due course, in order to thoroughly disabuse the minds of those who firmly believe they have a tangible cause to suspect that I am hell-bent on campaigning for the success of any particular one candidate gunning for the NPP's Election 2016 presidential nomination campaign.

I have decided to reprise the Kyerematen faux-pas because a Ghanaian resident in Pretoria, South Africa, recently wrote a comment to one of my columns in which the writer rehashed the tired maxim about fools being the only humans who do not periodically and experientially change their minds and attitudes, particularly thoughts and attitudes that do not redound to the collective good.

Well, even as the writer by the name of Yaw Ofori-Berko had occasion to recently observe fairly at length, six years after he pulled a fast and mischievous one on Nana Akufo-Addo and the rest of the membership of the New Patriotic Party, Alan Cash, as Mr. Alan John Kwadwo "Quitman" Kyerematen is popularly known, continues to create rancor and acrimony among the rank-and-file membership of Ghana's largest political party. The NPP is, of course, Ghana's largest political party, because it is also the most widely acknowledged party of the country's ethnic majority.

What is quite curious, however, is the fact that the morbidly anti-Akan ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) continues to draw remarkable numbers of Akans onto its voters' roll. Such feat, of course, has been achieved largely through bribery and effectively divisive political propaganda. For those interested in a quick and concise appreciation of the formidable threat than Alan Cash poses to the fighting chance of the New Patriotic Party at Election 2016, the title of Mr. Yaw Ofori-Berko's article is as follows: "6 Years After Resigning, Alan Remains Disruptive, Disloyal And Uncommitted to the NPP" (Modernghana.com 4/17/14).

Our well-considered contention here is that for the New Patriotic Party to have a fighting chance at Election 2016, the Kyerematen menace has to be promptly and decisively gotten rid off while there is relatively ample time to repair the damage, before this pathologically destructive man gets another even more devastating opportunity to pull another fast and apocalyptic one on the party and the destiny of the overwhelming majority of Ghanaians clamoring for a healthy change of leadership and a remarkable quality-of-life improvement. This, in essence, is what our sustained media battle is squarely about.

What is direly at stake here is a battle for the geopolitical soul of the Ghanaian Personality (our profuse apologies to Edward Wilmot Blyden). It is not a contest of personalities here, else I would have long since vacated my post in the academy and headed for the proverbial Ground Zero in order to personally throw my hat into the fray. In brief, what I am unmistakably suggesting here is that I am nobody's donkey or beast of burden. And should the immutable occasion and/or choice arise, I would rather choose to serve as a dromedary of truth.

Messrs. Ofori-Berko and Boakye-Agyarko (See "Boakye-Agyarko Debunks Alan Kyerematen's 'False' Claims" Adomonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 4/18/14) convincingly demonstrate the fact that Alan Cash continues to staunchly, inexorably and hermetically match theory with practice, with eerily deft inimitability.

In sum, having clearly articulated to the NPP's Committee of Elders, as far back as 2008, that he is hell-bent on fulfilling the greater good and interests of a trans-partisan Ghana, as Mr. Boakye-Agyarko clinically articulates in his Asempa-Fm interview and rejoinder to Mr. Kyerematen's claim of having been deliberately sidelined by Nana Akufo-Addo's 2012 Presidential Campaign, Mr. Cash continues to put himself far out of the reach of the sort of partisan heavy-lifting that invariably culminates with the voting of a well-organized and cohesive political party into government and the Flagstaff House.

Which is why Akufo-Addo spokesman Mustapha Hamid cannot, in any way whatsoever, be faulted for wisely counseling Mr. Kyerematen to promptly ease himself out of the New Patriotic Party and either found his own political party or run for President as an independent candidate.

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

Department of English

Nassau Community College of SUNY

Garden City, New York

April 18, 2014

E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

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