Believe, Doesn't Believe, Who Cares?

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

Garden City, New York

June 26, 2014

Dr. Kofi Konadu Apraku has every democratic right to plead his own cause. What he doesn't have is the proprietary right to cavalierly impugn and mock the credibility of those who are in a better position to know what they are talking about (See "Apraku: Claims of 100 NPP MPs Backing Akufo-Addo Untrue" Ghanaweb.com 6/26/14). What the estranged and inordinately ambitious former Akufo-Addo campaign coordinator is disputing is Ms. Shirely Ayorkor Botchwey's widely reported assertion that the overwhelming majority of New Patriotic Party Members in Parliament are in staunch support of Akufo-Addo's third shot at the party's presidential candidacy.

For a voluble and loud-talking intellectual like Dr. Apraku to smugly assert that even though he is no longer a Member of Parliament and has not had the chance to talk to a single NPP-MP, nevertheless, the NPP-MP for Weija cannot be accurate in her assertion of Nana Akufo-Addo's being backed by at least 100, out of the 123 NPP-MPs, is inexcusably absurd. It is absurd because it points to the abject lack of intellectual diligence and political savvy on the part of the former Offinso-North MP. In sum, so deathly desperate is Dr. Apraku in becoming President of Ghana that he does not even care a whit how he arrives at his destination.

We must also point out that the widely reported utter displeasure expressed by some among the party's national executive membership, vis-a-vis the staunch and open show of support for Nana Akufo-Addo, flagrantly violates the tenets of neo-liberal democratic political culture and ought to be promptly condemned in no uncertain terms.

Needless to say, this is an obviously rude and nasty attempt by some cynical and divisive party operatives to deviously plead the unwholesome cause of one particular serial candidate manque and his Amen Corner posse of nihilistic railroaders hell-bent on scuttling the all-too-prime chances of the putatively most formidable front-runner for the party's flagbearership in the lead-up to the December 6 presidential primary.

Now, let it be observed herein and emphatically so, that the NPP national executives, be they individuals or a group, have absolutely no right to determine who decides to openly support whom and when. Ghana is no longer a primitive police state of the sort meanspiritedly presided over by Messrs. Kwame Nkrumah and Jerry John Rawlings for some three decades in the postcolonial era.

And it is rather darn ironic for me to have to report that even the rambunctious stalwarts, supporters and sympathizers of the hard-nosed ruling National Democratic Congress perfectly appreciate this salutary new reality and have, in fact, been laudably known to routinely observe and practice the same.