Just as the other governments before it, the current NDC government has probably done a lot of good things meant to improve the living standards of Ghanaians. Let me leave the spin on what they have done right to their PR team, which I must admit, could have done a much better job than they have so far done. How I wished I had the guts of IMANI Ghana and Africa Watch Magazine to grade them!
Our recent political history has clearly shown that the survival or otherwise of a party in government is not predicated on how tall the list of good things it has done is, but rather on the shortlist of things it did not do right. Ask J.J and JAK and if you are lucky to catch them in their sincere mode, they will tell you that they lost power in 2000 and 2008 respectively not because the list of their good deeds was not tall enough but more because they were guilty in the court of public opinion of political misdemeanors. Do you remember “the GHANA NOW and the GHANA THEN” ads on the Kufuor Buses in the run-up to the 2008 elections? Of course you already know their impact on the election results. It is certainly not about the list of good things! Avoidance of misdemeanors holds the key!
I am just an ordinary political observer, and probably a naïve one at that, but the first time I heard Mr. Alfred Agbesi Woyome being officially referred to in the media as the financier of the NDC, my stomach crunched at the politically suicidal implications. If we open NDCs books of accounts today, shall we find donation lines that are traceable to Mr. Alfred Agbesi Woyome? Do you also know any other person after the days of Paa Grant, who has been publicly acclaimed in contemporary Ghanaian politics as the financier of any political party, let alone the one in power? It still beats my imagination why the Asiedu Nketias, the Kwabena Adjeis and the Kofi Adams did not do anything to nip this accolade in the bud. How could they allow this to pass! But they did and are still doing so.
Whilst all this was going on, there was a Kennedy Agyepong who probably saw the political naivety of the NDC in allowing this political misdemeanor to persist. He waited patiently until Woyome’s public accolade as an NDC financier sank very deep into our psyche. Then he struckmade his first move. He dared Woyome to a fight, which at first glance, appeared as the proverbial altercation between the kettle and the pot about which of them is black. He publicly called Woyome a con man and threatened to expose him for duping the state. What followed is a script too well known for me to reproduce here. Suffice it to say though that I cannot remember Mr. Agyepong ever succeeding in stirring up public support for a cause he stands for as has happened in this case. I can see him smiling to himself with a lot of satisfaction.
Most amazingly, the public outcry which followed the revelation of the 58m Ghana cedi judgment debt payment did not even draw the NDC’s attention to the fact that Woyome’s head was outgrowing the hat of a financier into that of a political suicide bomber. They did nothing to stop the accolade. Worse still, the party’s spin doctors jumped to his defense with incomprehensible alacrity. The day I read on one of the news sites that the Deputy Chief of Staff, the soft spoken Alex Segbefia, stepped into the fray to defend the payment, it began getting clearer to me that, knowing how to win political power may be one thing whilst knowing how to keep that power may be another thing altogether. The civility and coherence of thought that Alex displayed in his political discourse during the run-up to the 2008 elections no doubt bought a lot of goodwill for NDC. I don’t know his job description at the presidency, but I will be surprised if it includes defending such cases.
The president has asked EOCO to take a harder look at all the judgment debt cases. I wish him well in his search. He needs to find one or two other judgment debts that involve the officially acclaimed financiers of other political parties. He also needs to find others involving sums of similar magnitude to the Woyome one. More importantly, he needs to find several others in which the state did not only find it unnecessary to put up a defense but also where the debt was paid within two months of the case being filed in court. Did I read somewhere that the case was brought up in April and the first payment of 42m or so was made in May? If the Ghanaian justice system would ever have its own Guinness Book of Records, I believe this case would find a place in it on account of the speed with which it was foreclosed.
If EOCO’s search does not uncover the above mentioned leads, the public, including the political opponents of the president will wait to see what he will do. I can see through my political lenses that, if the public is not satisfied with the decisions he makes and the actions he takes, it will constitute a first degree political felony that may attract a punishment which will hurt more than any pain the president’s differences with FONKAR can ever inflict on him and his party. I must admit though that twelve months is a very long time in politics where first degree felonies can be turned into misdemeanors that may only merit caution statements. But I also do know that not all political wounds are healed by the lapse of time. Over to you Mr. President!
Mathias Dorfe
mdorfe@hotmail.com
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