In The Name of Ghana

Let the manifest destiny of our great nation be realigned unto the track of development in freedom! We are back to that time of the election year when I do what some have waited with bated breath to trigger their politics of political gymnastics regarding the upcoming 2012 elections. As I am wont to do since 1996, in May of every election year, I publicly declare my position on the most likely outcome of the elections. Let me issue a disclaimer at this point: I am not a “pollster” and I don’t double as the Ghanaian representative of any quasi-election related body. I do this not post-facto but on the basis of facts available to me and matters I would exercise the right not to disclose. So far, I have never gone wrong as for instance my “swan song” of May 2008 titled “In the Name of Danquah” articulated. At the time, I warned the NPP that it was waltzing its way into political opposition and bore the consequences of my blunt talk. A lot of water has gone under the bridge since then and once again, we are back to where we tell it as it is.

The NPP is on its way back to power; in short, the NPP and its presidential candidate, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo will win the elections of the last quarter of this year. I am prepared to do what I did on Choice FM on Saturday July 31, 2010 and repeated on Peace FM on Monday August 1, 2010. At the time, I publicly bet my very healthy right kidney, adding inter alia that if Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo got less than 76.56% of the total valid votes cast in the NPP primaries, I would donate my Kidney to the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital. I was certain of the work we had done and the authenticity thereof before making that bold public bet; the man got approximately 80%. I am repeating same here. If Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo gets less than 52.16% of the valid votes cast in the upcoming elections, I will donate my kidney to the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital. I will not give the full basis for my daring position for obvious reasons save for those I feel inclined to share and in order that the rather smart heads within and under the perforated umbrella do not quickly rise to the occasion and induce a yaw in the aerial maneuvering of the NPP’s supersonic flight towards political victory.

Slide

The NDC danced itself out of power right from the day President Mills looked the voting Ghanaian in the eye and asked us whether or not it was the first time a Minister of State had taken his girlfriend out on a connubial tryst outside the borders of Ghana to engage in self-defeating onanistic perfidy. What President Mills forgot to tell Ghanaians was that he had jettisoned his statement made when he was a candidate that as soon as he heard a mere allegation, he would unleash the full angst of his opprobrium against the canker worm of corrupt practices. That day, President Mills pushed his main opponent one rung higher on his way to bring the golden fleece of political power to the Danquah-Busia-Dombo tradition. His subsequent actions, bordering on a matrix of shielding and promoting people who have made the path of political jingoism and public insults an art worth glorifying clearly sent the signal that we as a people, had moved from near barbarism to decadence for never has it been the case that Ministers of State would so blatantly and publicly vomit unprintable words in orgy-like maneuvers to outdo each other, perhaps to catch the ear of those whose remit it falls within to confer appointments to high public office or impose disappointment unto the torsos of their party apparatchiks.

What constitutes one of the biggest reasons for the defeat of the NDC is based on a spiritual principle ironically abandoned by the man they call the “asumdwehene”, to wit “King of Peace”. That title, appropriated as part of the image-sprucing antic for President Mills, unwittingly pointed the proverbial finger in the face of the Lord God Almighty, for has he not told us in his Pentateuch how jealous a God he is? How can a mere mortal take a title of God and not end up like King Midas? More importantly and on the spiritual tip, is it not in the same Pentateuch that humanity was given the only commandment accompanied by a promise with the edict to honour our fathers and mothers so as to live long in the land that the Lord our God has given unto us? So when contrary to the reminder of his friend the Archbishop Nicholas Duncan-Williams that we don’t dishonor our leaders, President Mills consistently sat by watching for his appointees, agents, assigns and side-kicks including the guttersnipes of the bootlicking nomenclature decimate, denigrate, dishonor and ridicule his peers including his two predecessors and ultimately his “father and mother” JJ Rawlings and Nana Konadu his wife, was he not unwisely activating the circumstance of “ichabod” to be his lot? True it is that he may be older than JJ Rawlings but God in his wisdom has given unto us principles that political expediency can never be enough to vitiate or violate. Perhaps, when he sat by and watched the misguided malcontents calling themselves Ga Dangme Youth throw John Kufuor’s office equipment out of his office, JJ Rawlings should have spoken, Ghanaians should have rebuked him but our relative silence may have prompted him to extend the same discourtesy to his party founder with all its concomitant ramifications. Today, JJ Rawlings is a founder not respected in his own party. Let this be an indication to the incoming President, Nana Akufo-Addo, to set a new example and shift the paradigm by honouring out-going President Mills, John Kufuor before him and JJ Rawlings who began the 4th Republic. The spiritual benefits of that effort cannot be quantified.

Then comes the issue of the misbehaving junior appointees. They are the greatest and clearest reason why President Mills will lose the elections. The decency of Ghanaians and respect for elders and our cultural mores, imbibed into us from the generations that have gone before us received the most bashing during the tenure of President Mills. Is it not jaw-dropping, that an appointee can actually tell a Chief in his home region to literally go to hell, simply because that appointee believes the Chief is partying with the opposition NPP just because he says that region is no longer a World Bank for the President’s party? When did these people develop such arrogant uncouthness, almost as if they were raised in broken and decrepit houses and not homes where skills and traditional sense of decency are honed? These actions of junior appointees, encompassing the unprintable words flung at the incoming President, the two living former presidents and other people of high public standing including the likes of the Catholic Archbishop of Accra, the Head of the Christian Council, the Ameer of the Ahmadiyya Mission, the Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana and other religious moguls of Ghana, Her Ladyship the Chief Justice, the Ghana Bar Association, the Otumfuor Asantehene and innocent umpires like the Chairman of the National Media Commission all show a certain inclination: Ghana does not want such people anywhere near the levers or corridors of political power ever again. At best, they have succeeded in blighting the already minuscule opportunity available to the youth as far as participating in the governance of this country is concerned. At worst, the junior female ministers among them have confirmed the erroneous impression that when given the chance, foul-language and lose talk is their main contribution to the growth and development of this country. Is it any wonder that the NDC government under President Mills was unable to fulfill its electoral pledge of fielding 40% of women in their governance structure? After all one of them was bold enough to tell us that they never had that number of women to appoint in the first instance. The one who could have brought some grace and dignity has turned out to be Al Capone’s female reincarnation, twisting the law to fleece Ghana to her GHS2.5 million loot of the Woyome booty. Now we know why she had no time to prosecute the so-called NPP ministers; she was busily scheming to outwit us all and stash our cash. Nana Akufo-Addo as President is definitely not going to allow any such acts of misdemeanor to become the lot of Ghanaians, especially when he has been the most politically battered political figure in Ghana since the election of President Mills as Head of the Ghanaian state.

And then there is the exclusive matter of President JJ Rawlings. For all his shortcomings, President Rawlings is the only living founder of a political party who has ruled this country at the highest level. President Rawlings raised every single person of means in the NDC from rags to riches, never mind that they spit on him in private even now just as they spat on him publicly during the FONKAR-GAME spectacle. I have always maintained that President Rawlings on his own controls 3 to 4% of the voting public in Ghana. I was not surprised when Mrs. Rawlings got the 3.1% of the votes that she garnered during the Sunyani contest. Although she was “mafia-ed” at the presidential primary, that figure accurately reflected President Rawlings’ core strength within the Ghanaian voting populace. The last time I checked, that vote is splitting in three ways: 2% is going to the NPP to teach the NDC a lesson on how not to spite their own; 0.6% will remain with President Mills and hope for a miracle in the general elections. The remaining 0.4% would simply not waste their time voting. I may have given out more than I should but these are the facts as I know them to be.

Nana Akufo-Addo

That Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo will win the elections has been stated above in this piece. He will be the first direct descendant from the House of Danquah to be elevated to the high office of President of the Republic of Ghana. His would be a challenge as it would be an opportunity to do the one thing that God has taken him through the rigours of campaigning and training to do: transform this country in the shortest possible time. When Nana Akufo-Addo kept resisting our pressure to go to court to teach some of the Mills appointed miscreants a lesson on slander and libel, little did we know that God himself was honing the spirit of tolerance into his torso. When Nana Akufo-Addo decided to hit the ground with his listening tour, we recognized that while he has had name recognition across the country all this while, the people wanted to look him in the eyes and say “Chief, we would send you there but don’t ever make the mistake of letting us down as the one you will replace has done”. Nana dare not let Ghanaians down: from the people he crossed the river with in a dugout canoe at Kete-Krachi to the fishmonger at Anomabu and the children who told him their parents cannot pay their fees in Bolga through to the members of the Association of Ghana Industries who believe that a businessman like Nana would elevate Ghanaian industry to a new all time high, there are people who are furious but serious, for they are no longer interested in mysterious posturing and political platitudes. Their hot imploring eyes and their thumbprints are a constant reminder to Nana Akufo-Addo to go back to the basics of what Joseph Boakye Danquah, Kofi Abrefa Busia and Simon Diedong Dombo envisaged at the dawn of Ghana’s independence and which John Agyekum Kufuor implemented to the best of his ability during his tenure of office; Ghanaians indeed want development in freedom but without insults and scornful disdain from appointees of the President. It is the collective decimation of those principles and the ones institutionalized by Jerry John Rawlings that have so infuriated the Ghanaian voter that President Mills would be the first Vice-President turned President and double as the first President to serve a single term as the country’s Head of State. Simply put, President Mills has been a disappointment to all the relevant sectors of this country: students, artisans, professionals, hangers on, ascetic and lukewarm religious groupings and more surprisingly, the unemployed to whom he promised jobs.

Conclusion

President Jerry John Rawlings told the whole nation that President Mills started losing the election a week after taking the oath of office and that by the eighth month of his Presidency, he had completely lost it. President Rawlings also told us that President Mills was not only at a standstill as far as Ghana was concerned; he was actually moving us in reverse gear. There is no indication that what President Rawlings said is untrue. He may not be a prophet, for he is neither noted as being from the priestly line of Shiloh nor bears the Levite unction of the Aaronic pedigree.

Nonetheless, former President Rawlings has ruled this country long enough to understand the nuances, mores, behavioral patterns and inclinations of the people he ruled with an iron hand for 11years and under a more restrained genre for 8years. If he called any group “greedy bastards”, it might be his penance from genuflecting over the coterie of venomous vipers that latched unto his reign as Head of State of Ghana. However, when he tells us that the NDC and President Mills lost the elections in September 2009, who are we to disbelieve him? If he asks publicly how he can go back to campaign for the NDC after all he has seen and witnessed under Mills when he did his best for Mills to come to power only to be such a massive disappointment, is he not telling us that the Mills-led NDC is on its own?

The greed that President Rawlings spoke about, translated and transformed in real terms is the audacious pilfering of close to GHS 142 million of the Ghanaian taxpayers money by the combination of Mills appointees, public servants and NDC financiers at both corporate and the individual level. It is the first sign post and billboard of this 2012 election, closely followed by the kleptomania exhibited over Ga Lands stretching from Osu, through the now defunct Nungua farms through Oyibi and Tse Addo, little wonder how the Lands Commission managed to embrace a fire one fine Thursday in March 2012. Of course, the people of Asere are keeping their fingers crossed on how their compensation money has been used to erect an edifice at the crossroads of Osu and the rest given out in shylock loans to the unsuspecting public. O! Greedy Bastards they are indeed, and very wicked ones at that. These mark the exit points of the NDC and the entrance of the NPP under Nana Akufo-Addo and at its apex is the constant reminder to all politicians henceforth: fix the mess, transform Ghana and relieve the people of Ghana from greed, avarice and shameful corruption. When Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo takes the oath of office on January 7, 2013, his would be the road to restoration of the ideals, hopes, aspirations and trust that the good people of Ghana have sought to associate with the Presidency since our return to constitutional rule. May it be, that his service to this country, shall be the confluence between burying the shenanigans from the past and the repositioning of Ghana in its rightful place towards the land of glory and greatness that we have collectively asked the Lord God Almighty to grant us in the first line of our national anthem and the last line of our national pledge.

Calus Von Brazi

vonbrazi@hotmail.com