Is President Mahama so powerful?

By Dr. Michael J.K. Bokor

Monday, November 23, 2015

Folks, there is ample evidence from the NPP camp to suggest that they see everything not working well for their party as the doings of President Mahama and the NDC. Be it Paul Afoko’s problems with the corrupt elements in the party, it is President Mahama’s manipulation. Be it the operation to retrieve weapons and other illegal substances being stocked at the NPP’s national headquarters in Accra, it is the mastermind of President Mahama. Is President Mahama so politically adept as to know how to weaken the NPP’s front? If so, why blame him when he wins genuine, free, and fair elections, especially if it is possible for the NPP’s own organizers to do things to smooth his path toward victory? Ghanaian politics is intriguing.

We are privileged to know why the NPP people are so much confused as to how to do politics in contemporary times to be relevant. We know them for their anachronistic rogue and book politics, especially after former President Kufuor had handed over the mantle to Akufo-Addo. To his credit, Kufuor left a united NPP and a united Ghana for his successor to build on.

And if you will bear with me, that supposed or expected successor was none other but William nana Addo Dankwa (Danquah) Akufo-Addo. Kufuor had done everything possible to prepare the way for him, putting everything in place to ensure a vigorous campaign session toward Election 2008 only for Akufo-Addo to flop. Kufuor didn’t relent and put in everything again toward Election 2012 only for Akufo-Addo to flop again. The fault didn’t lay in Kufuor but Akufo-Addo himself.

We are seeing clear sings of that FAULT as the events characterizing Akufo-Addo’s attitude toward the outcome of Election 2012 confirm. He had held himself up as the inevitable winner of Election 2008 only to be pro0ved wrong by the electorate when they showed him where power lay at the run-off. The electorate in Tain (Brong-Ahafo) held the decisive key and everything went wrong for Akufo-Addo despite this bombastic electioneering campaigns wrapped around the “kangaroo dance”. The carnival sessions energized the electorate but they knew where to go; and they went for Atta Mills.

Come Election 2012 and Akufo-Addo counted on other factors only to be shot down by his own personal inadequacies and the fact that once the electorate had no trust and confidence in him, there was no way they would entrust their destiny into his hands. His angry reaction to the outcome of Election 2012 caused much public anger and his humiliation by the Supreme Court after hearing his useless petition put him in a really bad light.

His return to contest Election 2016 is not without troubling manouevres whose upshot is the confusion that is tearing the NPP apart. No need to draw attention to the crisis; but it is compelling to way that the NPP under Akufo-Addo is in a shambles. There is everything happening to prove that the party is a pale shadow of itself and is using anachronistic means to make itself relevant. Such means won’t appeal to the electorate.

Despite all that has been pointed out to the NPP people, they still think that their inability to be focused and on target to clinch victory at Election 2016 is the working of President Mahama and the NDC machinery. No day passes by without their doing things to deepen their own woes. So also do they not cease to point accusing fingers at President Mahama and the NDC for infiltrating their ranks with moles.

The main reason used to emasculate Paul Afoko is the allegation that he is an NDC mole being paid to do the bidding of President Mahama to the NPP’s disadvantage. Others lined up for that matter are Kwabena Agyepong, the NPP’s General Secretary, and Sammy Crabbe, the Second National Vice Chair of the NPP.

None other than Freddie Blay, the fraudulent Acting National Chair of the NPP, has been quick to blame all problems in the NPP on the manipulations being orchestrated by President Mahama and the NDC. He is joined by others to create that dirty impression. By so doing, they leave us no other option but to probe into issues and question them as to why they would go that way.

QUESTION: Is President Mahama so smart as to infiltrate the ranks of the NPP with his moles? If so, isn’t it simple to write off the NPP as nothing worth the noise that its leaders make about it as a formidable force?

More questions: If it is so easy to plant moles in the NPP, what guarantee is there that it can secure the country if it wins political power? More importantly, why would it be so easy for the President and the NDC to buy the conscience of the NPP’s main national leaders?

Every negative thing happening in the NPP is attributed to President Mahama and the NDC. Whether it is the crisis involving the national leaders (Afoko, Agyepong, and Sammy Crabbe, for now), it is the NDC that has planted them there to do its bidding. Be it the happening at the party’s national headquarters where the military retrieved weapons and other substances stocked there, it is President Mahama and the NDC that is behind it all. What else?

When reality struck and the platform on which Akufo-Addo was making ugly noise just before Election 2008 collapsed, accusing fingers were pointed at the NDC for masterminding it all. Come to think about the fracas involving Afoko and others seeking to clean the NPP’s stables and prevent fraudulent characters like Freddie Blay and Abankwah from reaping where they haven’t sown, it is President Mahama and the NDC that should be blamed. Everything negative happening in the NPP is traceable to the President and the NDC. Will the NPP be so useless as to open itself to such infiltrations? If so, why so?

Guided and aided by hindsight, can we say that the NPP’s electoral defeat is the work of its own leaders? If so, why blame the Electoral Commission and the NDC to warrant the 8-month’s useless petition hearing after being defeated at Election 2012?

Folks, the arguments raised by the NPP to explain their inability to outdo the NDC borders on sloppy thinking and misplaced sentiments against its own leaders, not to talk about sterile political campaigning for the elections. Now that they have succeeded in neutralizing Afoko just because of the allegation of his being an NDC mole, they have created a nasty impression and set us up to write them off as a bad debt in Ghanaian politics. And they should prepare for the fallouts at Election 2016.

If that will be the workings of President Mahama and the NDC, so should it be. Once the NPP opens itself for haggling and bargaining at the cheapest cost, why not blast away at it? No serious political camp will position itself this way to create the impression that it is overly cheap and just positioned for the picking at the poke of a finger. But from happenings, the NPP seems to be so. Why so?

Is President Mahama so adept and powerful as to plant moles in his arch nemesis, the NPP to serve his purposes? If so, then, he deserves tons of commendation and to remain where he is and should continue to be. And it tells me how cheap the NPP is and why it will continue to take faulty steps and be sent to the thickest part of the political bush, where it belongs in truth.

The kind of politics being done by the NPP has no justification in our time. Instead of facing up to their own inadequacies and learning the ropes to improve their politicking (as Dr. Arthur Kennedy has insisted all this while), they are doing things and falling on their own swords. It tells me that the NPP is too paranoid to be given the mandate to rule Ghana. The truth is that paranoia is debilitating; it is negative, and a huge political deficit. It can’t lead to progress.

Once the NPP is established paranoid, it doesn’t deserve anybody’s support to be where it is not prepared for. If upon all that it constitutes it will allow President Mahama and the NDC to infiltrate its ranks and frustrate it as is being peddled, then, it has no business to be put in office. And if so powerful and adept at confusing them, I congratulate President Mahama.

I shall return…

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