Alan's Selfishness Cost NPP Two Elections

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

Had he any remarkable sense of shame or dignity, Alan John Kwadwo "Quitman" Kyerematen would not be advising the leaders of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) to do some "soul-searching" and hard questioning regarding why the party consecutively lost Elections 2008 and 2012 (See "Nana's Popularity Won't Guarantee Victory for NPP - Alan" Citifmonline / Ghanaweb.com 4/16/14).

Mr. Kyerematen has every right to presume his faction of NPP supporters and sympathizers to be entirely composed of twerps and clinical idiots. Unfortunately, the rest of us forward-looking Danquah-Busia-Dombo scions do not have that luxury. Then also, "Alan Cash," as he is popularly known, ought to wise up and become emotionally mature enough to appreciate the fact that never having contested and won any election on either the local or national level, he has absolutely no moral capital or authority to lecture our party stalwarts on the most effective mode or strategy for winning elections.

The fact of the matter is that you just do not resign your party membership and vilely collaborate with political opponents, by default, to defeat your own party at the polls simply because you have been fairly and squarely trounced in a presidential primary. As the immortalized Mr. Joe daRocha pointedly observed, this kind of callow, or immature, behavior is called "Selfishness." And there is no gainsaying the fact that Alan Kyerematen is the most self-centered key political operative among the membership of the New Patriotic Party today.

Indeed, Nana Akufo-Addo may not be the most winsome candidate, or even the most attractive leader among the top-echelon membership of the New Patriotic Party, but he definitely has at least two proverbial legs up on Mr. Kyerematen when it comes to gauging the kind and caliber of temperament and level of emotional maturity that constitute the hallmarks of a good leader.

We need to also observe, at least in passing, that as a Trade and Industry Minister under President Kufuor, Mr. Kyerematen is not known to have any particularly distinguished himself, even as party stalwarts like Mr. Paul Collins Appiah-Ofori have critically and objectively reminded us in the recent past. What happened, for instance, to the cassava industrial venture, or project, that Alan Cash was charged with making a success story of by former President John Agyekum-Kufuor, the man who is widely regarded as Mr. Kyerematen's chief patron and political promoter?

In other words, Mr. Kyerematen has quite a bit of questions to answer about his own leadership skills and capabilities; and any cheap and mischievous attempt to divert public attention from the same will be fiercely and pointedly met with the truth and reality. We have already dealt amply with the purportedly humongous "spiritual contributions" which "Mr. Cash" claims to have made towards the 2012 Akufo-Addo Presidential Campaign and so do not find it necessary to rehash the same at this time. Suffice it, nonetheless, to conclude this write-up by observing that political campaigns are not mere "spiritual affairs"conducted from geographically remote locations; they squarely involve the full physical body of flesh-and-blood human personalities positioned on the frontlines.

In sum, a brazen political AWOL like Mr. Kyerematen cannot so cavalierly presume to be smarter than the rest of his party colleagues and associates. This is the one case in which the baboon has absolutely no right to enjoy the sweat and toil of the monkey.

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

Department of English

Nassau Community College of SUNY

Garden City, New York

April 16, 2014

E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

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