Kyerematen Is the Weakest Link

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

Unlike what the largely one-man Internet "pressure group," Get Alan Kyerematen Elected (GAKE) would have the Ghanaian electorate believe, Alan Kyerematen is the least qualified among the presidential-candidate aspirants who have so far picked up their application forms. His base of support is wholly among a straggly posse of sub-ethnic chauvinists. And so, perhaps, it would enlighten the London-based so-called National Coordinator of GAKE to study the reasons given by Mr. Kennedy Ohene Agyepong for threatening to quit his membership of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in order to forge a common cause with the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC).

Mr. Agyepong, arguably the single most important logistics contributor to NPP general elections, is threatening to vacate his membership of the party because of what the Assin-Central Member of Parliament terms as Asante intransigence, arrogance and adamant refusal to observe the democratic culture of the NPP. The subtext of Mr. Agyepong's conniption, of course, is Asante supriority complex. I will fully dissect Mr. Agyepong's quite legitimate grievances in due course.

In the meantime, suffice it to at least observe here in passing that if there is any Mafia grouping, or faction, in existence among the rank-and-file membership of the New Patriotic Party, the coloration of such faction is anything but Akyem. Indeed, the GAKE enthusiasts (for such is exactly what they are - wishful thinkers and pathological dreamers) are entitled to their own mischievously calculated affliction of amnesia, but the rest of us have not forgotten the lurid and primitive ganging up of the "Kumasi Three" against Nana Akufo-Addo in the wake of the Election 2008 defeat of the two-time presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party.

And the "Kumasi Three," of course, were Messrs. Frempong-Boateng, Isaac Osei and, you guessed right, Alan John Kwadwo "Quitman" Kyerematen. The first two members of the "Kejetia Gang" appear to have come to a mature and constructive appreciation of the need to forging a unified front and a cohesive alliance, if the party is not to remain on the margins of our national political culture in the foreseeable future. But what is even more worth highlighting here is the pathological and seemingly incurable arrogance of Mr. Kyerematen.

All that the so-called GAKE pressure group has been doing is fabricating whole cloths of lies, in hopes of catapulting its prized political steed into the Flagstaff House. Recently, for instance, GAKE published a press release in which this vacuous Internet facade criminally claimed that Alan Cash had contributed some 40 trucks and $5 million to the 2012 NPP presidential campaign. The fact of the matter, even as Akufo-Addo's Election 2012 campaign manager has sharply riposted, is that Mr. Kyerematen had not contributed even a single "campaign appearance" to Election 2012!

In sum, GAKE can only smugly fool itself and not the far smarter and forward-looking Ghanaian electorate. In fact, were they not charitable, the Akufo-Addo campaign would have dragged the so-called GAKE national coordinator before a legitimately constituted court-of-law to prove his allegation. Still, you have to give it to them, the GAKE rascals and urchins are deathly desperate to have their badly wounded horse fielded in the NPP presidential primary, even knowing fully well that Alan Cash is no Preakness thoroughbred but a clinically confused mutt.

It is also preposterous for anybody to assert that the unification of the various factions - believe me, there are factions - in the NPP is the work of any one man/person. The fact of the matter is that if Nana Akufo-Addo had not wisely and maturely backed the presidential candidacy of the-now-former President John Agyekum-Kufuor in the wake of the 1998 Sunyani Congress, the political profile of our proverbial "Gentle Giant," my beloved Uncle Kofi Diawuo, would be very different from what it is today.

Of course, we all know, from his grossly infantile walkout on revered party elders like Messrs. Da Rocha, Odoi-Sykes and Appiah-Menka, among a host of others, that Mr. Kyerematen woefully lacks the skills direly needed to take the New Patriotic Party to the Flagstaff House. This is what the GAKE rascals find extremely difficult to admit. Can Mr. Cash genuinely blame anybody for his woeful lackof any remarkable leadership skills but himself? After all, who killed Antwi-Boasiako?

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

Department of English

Nassau Community College of SUNY

Garden City, New York

Board Member, The Nassau Review

June 22, 2014

E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

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