By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
May 8, 2015
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net
The decision by New Patriotic Party (NPP) General-Secretary Kwabena Agyei Agyepong to brazenly undermine the authority of the party's National Executive Committee (NPP-NEC) must not go unpunished. And it must be promptly and severely punished, in order to instill the requisite level of discipline and decency into Ghana's largest and smartest political party (See "NPP Scribe Waiver Rejected" MyJoyOnline.com / Ghanaweb.com 5/6/15). We are told that sometime ago, the NPP-NEC met and decided that any good-standing member of the party who intended to contest the 2016 parliamentary election, both at the primary and general-election level, needed to pay a mandatory application fee of GHC 30,000 (Thirty-Thousand Cedis).
And then Mr. Agyepong, the Kumasi-Fufuo relishing maverick, decided to single-mindedly play Kokofu with this legitimately established rule by conceiving of and writing "waiver letters" for at least some three favorite candidates of his (as of this writing), to enable them file their candidacy applications at 50-percent less the consensually stipulated fee. I hope Mr. Agyepong would shortly come out and make a clean breast of his sentiments on this issue, too, by telling the world, very likely, that he was neither at the party headquarters nor at the NEC meeting at which the GHC 30,000 application-filing fee was decided.
If he was not, then, of course, it is more than quite obvious that Mr. Agyepong contested for the wrong job in Tamale last year. And he had better shape up, in New York street idiom, or ship out, for the New Patriotic Party can ill-afford hiring pathologically narcissistic people like Mr. Agyepong while hoping to have a fighting chance at Election 2016.
The perspective of those who have virulently accused Mr. Agyepong of shamelessly shilling for the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress is becoming uncomfortably clear to me. But, of course, I don't have the requisite evidence to legitimately tag my old Prempeh College classmate as an NDC mole, except the following out-of-context quote from former President John Agyekum-Kufuor that appeared in an article comically captioned "Leave Kwabena Agyepong Alone!": "It is far better to be a messenger in a party in power than the general-secretary of a party in opposition." I am sure Mr. Kufuor would not be very pleased to see and hear this sometime constructive piece of admonishment being insulting misinterpreted by a failed Akufo-Addo detractor desperately fighting for legitimacy and credibility. I know the ancient historic township of Kokofu; I have been there several times myself. I also have part of my moorings, on both sides of my family from Manhyia. This ought to settle all doubts, or doesn't it?
For all one cares to know, part of his egregious misbehavior may well stem from such intemperate public accusations, although I am equally in no forensically sustainable position to boldly back up such claim. What I can, however, say for certain, based largely on my gleanings from his public behavior and demeanor and deportment, so far, is that whatever agenda Mr. Agyepong might have come to his NPP scribe's job with definitely does not include him working hard and around the clock to ensure that the Akufo-Addo-led New Patriotic Party carries the vote in the 2016 general election.
For starters, the NPP General-Secretary's Kumasi-Fufuo-Eating riposte to the National Steering-Committee members of the NPP demonstrated neither cultural refinement nor the sort of administrative tact and gravitas required to manage the daily affairs of a party that has the enviable record of having afforded Ghanaians the most progressive democratic governance of any consecutive 8-year period in the country's postcolonial history.
So far, other than childishly threatening his "detractors" with punishment from Antoa-Nyama, the globally renowned and fearsome Asante deity, as well as threatening to "wash the party's dirty linen in public" (which is strong reason enough for his summary expulsion), Mr. Agyepong has yet to meaningfully respond to the latest charge of gross insubordination, which ought to be punishable by summary discharge, or expulsion, if such penalty is not already written into the constitution of the New Patriotic Party.
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