As the NPP’s woes deepen

…. And Akufo-Addo digs in… (Part I)

By Dr. Michael J.K. Bokor

Friday, December 14, 2012

As the NPP leaders and followers continue to create the impression that the results of the just-ended elections were tampered with by the media, the Electoral Commission, and the NDC to crown President Mahama as winner, they leave me wondering whether they really know the true nature of the Ghanaian voters. Or whether they know where they are pushing themselves to.

Despite the reports by local and international election observers confirming that the elections were free, fair, and transparent (not only at the level of balloting but also in the collection, collation, tallying, and transmission of the results), the NPP leaders still think otherwise. They are nursing hopes that the Supreme Court will reverse the outcome to install their Akufo-Addo in power.

I laugh them to scorn because what has been done and sealed cannot be undone and torn apart at their prompting. World leaders have already stepped forward to acknowledge the winner of the elections and Ghanaians are going about their normal activities, putting the elections behind them.

A fly will bite an elephant if it can find a weak spot in its hide. That’s exactly what has happened to the NPP, which hasn’t missed the attention of world leaders.

They are congratulating President Mahama; and they are leaders of old, well established, and viable democracies whose attributes we admire and wish we could nurture our democracy to emulate. Despite the sporadic technical hitches, the 2012 elections passed off as successful in its entirety, winning the commendation of the world.

Are these NPP people expecting the Presidents of these countries (the United States, Britain, and France, especially) to take back their congratulations from President Mahama and give them to Akufo-Addo instead? That won’t happen.

There is every reason to say that if these leaders hadn’t been convinced beyond any shred of doubt that the elections were genuinely won by President Mahama, they wouldn’t have gone out of their way to congratulate him and assure him of their countries’ support and cooperation with Ghana. They didn’t hesitate to stick out their hands of welcome because the evidence reaching them is different from the one that the NPP is making noise about.

Of course, I don’t blame these NPP leaders for sticking to their guns and assuring their followers that victory awaits them at the Supreme Court. That is the smartest means to keep their hold on their followers. After all, once they began the political race with lies, they have no other option but to continue churning out lies to push their agenda. Anything short of that will expose them to the venom of their own followers.

But lies have a very short life span. Very soon, they will catch up with those spinning them for temporary relief. That is when Akufo-Addo, Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey, and Kwadwo Owusu-Affriyie will see “red”; that is when they will be stopped in their stride by their own angry supporters. They will definitely suffer grave consequences for all that they have done to mislead their followers into the tunnel, assuring them not to give up because there is light at the end of it.

I can tell them the truth: that the light they are seeing is one of a speeding train rushing toward them, not to give them hope of a bright future, but to crush them and their lies into ugly ribbons.

They can’t, however, abandon this cause of lies, lies, and lies. They do so at their own risk to face an early reprisal.

The truth that they should have known by now isn’t hidden. The abysmal performance of the NPP caused its defeat, not the so-called tampering of over one million votes to boost President Mahama’s chances. Let nobody continue telling lies and yet refusing to proceed to court as said more than necessary times. The sweetness of the pudding is in the eating.

The NPP lost the elections because it wasn’t what the voters wanted. Let nobody tell any lie. Many factors accounted for this heavy loss, more so when the NPP organizers repeated the very mistakes that caused Akufo-Addo’s doom at the 2008 elections. Even though shorn of the carnival and kangaroo dance, the NPP’s electioneering stunts had a lot of the theatre of the absurd to annoy the electorate. The circus was still in action to the chagrin of the voters.

Let me tell them these hard facts because I know there will be no Adu Boahen to write any “Stolen Verdict” for them, nor will Kennedy Arthur waste his energy to tell them to their faces in another rendition of his “Chasing the Elephant into the Bush.”

In all honesty, the elephant has already returned to its perch in the bush, where it is more comfortable than being prodded into the corridors of power. The NPP’s defeat seemed to have been pre-determined. Some of us saw it and revealed it only to be insulted by the blind followers and their crafty leaders massaging their sentiments.

Many factors contributed to this defeat, some of them self-created, others beyond their control. In sum, though, the real causes of this defeat stemmed from the self-created problems.

We are even not talking about the aspect of character, which also largely influenced the political decisions of the electorate. Of course, so much had already been put in the public domain about Akufo-Addo’s peculiar character traits or flaws that made it difficult for him to countermand President Mahama’s stature.

They hammered on mere human frailties and foibles that didn’t appeal to the electorate. Despite their attempts to paint President Mahama as a “promiscuous Billy goat,” they couldn’t harm him because his admirable streaks of character that endeared him to the hearts of the electorate put him poles ahead of his opponent. Of course, Akufo-Addo isn’t any better when it comes to issues of (im)morality; so, why try to calumniate President Mahama on that score? That was a miscalculation because all that vilification didn’t stick.

Another futile attempt was made from the angle of corruption. The NPP followers presented President Mahama as corrupt, citing his brother’s business dealings with the Merchant Bank as a case in point, the President’s alleged orchestrations in the purchase of aircraft from Brazil, and the botched STX housing project as other instances of corruption.

Of course, they were measuring him with Akufo-Addo’s yardstick of not being corrupt before, not corrupt now, or won’t be corrupt in future as the truth intoto; hence, to them (and as they sought to project to the electorate), President Mahama wasn’t as “clean” as their sacred cow to warrant being retained in office. The electorate didn’t see things that way. Another woeful miscalculation.

Worse of all, while bent on destroying President Mahama’s public image, they neglected their main objective and failed to “sell” Akufo-Addo to the electorate. Better still, the candidate himself failed to endear himself to the hearts of the voters as he persisted in maintaining his belligerent posture, making inflammatory pronouncements and effusive promises. The electorate were not impressed by his stubbornness in highlighting the “All-die-be-die” mantra, refusal to condemn Kennedy Agyapong’s genocidal utterance against the Gas and Ewes, and many more.

I shall return…

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