Cross-Dresser Versus Greedy Bastard

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

Garden City, New York

Feb. 6, 2015

E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

If it is true, as has been widely reported by the Ghanaian media, that the General-Secretary of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) has worn his wife's winter coats on many official trips abroad, then, no doubt, Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia may well be a pathological and/or clinical cross-dresser or transvestite. I don't know whether in the case of the man popularly known as General Mosquito, it is a psychological handicap or even a disease, in the traditional sense of the word; but it surely strikingly appears to have a psychological tinge to it. And if it really does, then there is a diddly little that the protocol officer of the Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress could do about the same.

What brings me to this subject, though, is the news report that Mr. Kofi Portuphy, popularly known as the "Greedy Bastard," has launched a lawsuit against Western Publications Limited, publisher of New Patriotic Party-leaning Daily Guide newspaper. Well, if he is successful, it would be the second time that a prominent operative of the NDC would have won substantial damages from the paper that is widely known to be owned by the First Vice-Chairman of the main opposition New Patriotic Party, Mr. Freddie Blay, a former front-bencher of the rump-Convention People's Party (r-CPP) and the latter's former Member of Parliament.

Mr. Portuphy is reported to be demanding GHC 5 million; and so it is quite obvious that the main and sole objective of the lawsuit is to run Mr. Blay and his wife, Gina, out of business. Well, I call Mr. Portuphy a "Greedy Bastard," my profuse apologies to the infamous Butcher-of-Sogakope, some say, because he is the only political operative in the country to double as Chairman of the ruling National Democratic Congress in, addition to being the substantive National Coordinator of the National Disaster Management Organization (NADMO). It is also significant to underscore the fact that both titles are fully paid positions. They are also, of course, full-time jobs.

My beef with Mr. Portuphy, even as Dr. Richard Amoako-Baah has poignantly observed, is the fact that Ghana's 1992 Republican Constitution expressly prohibits anybody from holding an executive position in any political party, at the same time that the subject of concern may also be holding another executive appointment in government. Dr. Amoako-Baah, who is also Chairman of the Political Science Department at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), quotes the relevant portions of the Constitution in support of a lawsuit that he has threatened to launch against the newly elected Chairman of the National Democratic Congress, should Mr. Portuphy persist in his refusal to resign one of his two full-time jobs.

Concerned Ghanaians have yet to hear any word from the Supreme Leader of the NDC, President John Dramani Mahama. It would be quite interesting to learn what the man who appointed Mr. Portuphy the NADMO head has to say on this matter. I am, however, not holding my breath. After all, wasn't Mr. Asiedu-Nketia a member of the governing board of the Bui Dam Authority (BDA) when he was awarded a sweetheart business contract to supply the Bui Dam Project managers with the most expensively priced cement blocks for a partial construction of Ghana's second-largest hydro-electric power plant?

The fact of the matter is that the noble and diligent concepts of "conflict-of-interest" and "moral integrity" do not exist in the vocabulary arsenal of the National Democratic Congress. Else the NADMO boss would have been summarily disqualified from contesting the chairmanship of Ghana's present ruling party, let alone be staunchly backed by the pontifical and pathologically self-righteous Chairman Jerry John Rawlings. Mr. Portuphy is alleged to have said that short of the use of a bulldozer against his person, he intends to stay put in both full-time paid positions in perpetuity, or Till Kingdom Come, whichever lasts longer.

My major concern here, though, is that once it is determined by a legitimately constituted court of law that Mr. Portuphy has violated a constitutional mandate, and that he needs to choose between the post of NADMO chief and NDC Chairman, would the Ghanaian taxpayer and/or party underwriter be entitled to a salary refund? It looks as if Mr. Portuphy is woefully dissatisfied with his two monstrous paychecks, thus his rather curious decision to sue Mr. Blay's newspaper for GHC 5 million damages, on grounds that he, Mr. Portuphy, was maliciously libeled when on January 26, 2015, the Daily Guide published a news report claiming that NADMO's chaief had misapproprited some GHC 300 million of the public dole.

If I were Mr. Portuphy(God forbid!), I would promptly publish a comprehensively audited report of NADMO's budgetary expenditure under my watch in order to shame the proverbial devil. The fact of the matter, though, is that the NADMO capo may very well be the very demon he is seemingly so earnestly seeking to judicially exorcise and effectively deter.

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