Nana, the year 2011 is over and 2012, the election years is here. This is the time for Ghanaians to be mobilized for the tortuous journey towards the December election. In line with this, I have decided to send you this message for you to think about and when you find anything useful, to guide you in your campaign for the presidency of our great country Ghana.
In this message I will try to be frank with you and I hope you will take it in good faith. To avoid any doubt I want you to know that I am the son of the former Odauapagyahene, the leader of the Akyem Abuakwa Apagya troop of Akyem Otwereso of the Odau traditional area of the Akyem Abuakwa traditional area. As a royal of Abuakwa and somebody who on numerous occasions have made pronouncements as to how much you cherish that, I hope the link between us will let you know that I mean well of you.
The first thing you should know and appreciate is that as the flag bearer of the NPP, you are handicapped. This is because the history of elections in Ghana shows that the NPP and its Danquah-Busia tradition have won only one national election. That of 2004. The 1969 elections that finally made your father the President was won because the CPP was banned. In 2000 Ghanaians DID NOT VOTE NPP TO POWER, instead, we VOTED RAWLINGS FROM POWER. We needed a change from the 19 years of only Rawlings power and the only way to achieve that was to allow the largest opposition party that happened to be the NPP to take over. In so doing, we wanted to see what the NPP could offer. The NPP is in opposition now because of what we saw and from the way things are going, they may remain there for a long time. As at now they don't seem to have learnt any lessons at all.
During the 2008 elections, you and your campaign team and the whole NPP committed what is called the sins of incumbency. You were too confident of victory before even the first vote was cast and you lost the elections long before the election day. To me, you behaved like a ruler in a children story who was so impressed with his omnipotence that he could control the tides. Alas, when he set his throne on the beach at low tide and commanded the tide to cease, he was drowned by the incoming tide, and you seem to be doing exactly that again. The best way forward is to properly reconnect with the electorate – particularly those who left you at that election. Don’t repeat the sins of office from opposition.
I am happy that you found it necessary after all these years in political leadership to go against the tradition of NPP to take a nation-wide tour of the country outside an election year to meet as you put it, “the ordinary farmers, hawkers, artisans, small business owners, nurses and patients, police officers and commercial drivers, teachers and students”. I was very happy to read in your new year’s message that the tour has afforded you the opportunity to “learn so much more about what it takes to serve this nation, to serve Ghana and every Ghanaian”. After more than 30 years in political leadership, all you needed was to leave your ivory tower and go to the people in their communities to know what it takes to serve them.
In all the turbulence in the socio-economic conditions of the people of Ghana within the last 30 or so years, you did not hear them and did not know what their needs are. I hope you will share these experiences with the leadership of NPP and particularly with former President Kuffour. He turned the Presidency into a political foreign evangelism, moving from the capital of one country to the other even when the northern regions were flooding and the forests were burning. I also hope you will thank President Mills for initiating the nation-wide door to door tour that you have found so enlightening.
I hope you have learnt that in vast areas of Ghana there are no public places of convenience and people including presidential candidates are forced to piss anywhere in the open. How many such places of convenience could have been built with the money former President Kuffour used to buy medals for himself and his followers? How many such places could have been built with the money wasted on the Ghana@50 celebrations? I hope you are also thinking about all these lost opportunities for the ordinary people of Ghana. I also hope that your tour thought you that for the many million Ghanaians, their paths in life were not cleared for them by their fathers and descendants and were not born with silver spoon in their mouths, as you were.
You have a great challenge ahead of you, but with God, good organizational skills, truth and honesty, you can face up to it. This is very important because the NPP can no longer use the health of Professor Mills as an election issues so does the fear of being Rawlings poodle. From my student leadership days, I have come to know something I want to share with you. Don’t tell Ghanaians lies because they will find out and when they do, they will chase you out. Lying, maligning and vilifying are not strategies that will win elections in 2012 Ghana.
I hope you now know that the greatest concern in Ghana is youth unemployment and imperialism. As a conservative right wing politician you may not like the word “imperialism” but the reality is that we owe only 3% of AngloGold Ashanti and our share of Jubilee oil is still in the hands of Kosmos. Your nation-wide tour should have shown you that the most important phenomenon that keeps Ghana going is our “exceptionalism”. I have not come across a people who are not that rich but so peaceful. So be careful, very few Ghanaians will die so you will become president.
In light of that, you should take genuine criticism in good faith because it is by redeeming yourself from such criticism and working on your short falls that will make you a man and a great leader. I want to let you know that in your campaigning, you show desperation for power. Already, you have started giving promises that objective observers consider as empty. For instance you have promised to stabilize fuel and gas prices and give free education for everyone. Do you believe you can influence the price of oil that is dictated by multinational oil corporations and the OPEC? You should remember that Ghanaians have come to know that politicians give empty promises when they are in search of mandate
It is known in many Ghanaian circles that you are arrogant and too formal and so far, you have completely refused to come clean on the allegations of your drug use. With the Election Day approaching, the door is closing on you. I hope you will not blame anybody when it comes back to bit you. In 2008, you even lost all the non-Twi areas of the Eastern Region. This should be avoided at all cost and you can only do that if NPP reforms its campaign strategy.
You have a lot of work to do to salvage the image of the NPP. Remember the fate of your campaign is tied to the image and attitude of NPP. Now that insults and outright lies have been promoted to become the platform for political campaigning, we are going to witness the worst part of our character, which is, trading insult in public and fabrication of lies about our opponents. You should do everything in you power to avoid turning the election year of 2012 into the year of the toilet, when your followers will only talk shit. You should remember that you need more than the votes of NPP followers to win the elections.
Disagreement and conflict are inherent to democratic politics, and heated disagreement has long been a feature of politics in Ghana. Incivility currently runs rampant, with politicians and pundits alike engaging in name calling and resorting to disrespectful outbursts. Recently a different, and potentially more destructive, type of political rhetoric has become more commonplace, what I call political vilification. Partisan disagreements are increasingly steeped in rhetoric that depicts the other side as the enemy, an enemy that is evil and a threat to the Ghana and her people.
As public office seeker, you will be subjected to public scrutiny, and your best chance is to answer questions truthfully and honestly. Also, honest criticism will come your way and your best chance is face them with dignity and come clean. Shoving them under the carpet as you did with the allegations of your drug use will not help in an election year. Neither will the unleashing of your “Dogs of insults” help you. In your New Year message you called on all “to work together and RESPECT EACH OTHER”. I hope you can go beyond the call to ask your campaign team to stop paying people to go to radio stations to rain insult on the President and the Presidency of Ghana. It is painful to read and hear the disrespect your dogs of insult show on television and on radio.
If you don’t exercise firm control on your campaign team, the “beautiful” professors with degrees in creative writing in the team are going to let their imaginations run wild. They are going to create fictional stories to debase their opponents, as if the lives of Ghanaians exist in mythical realm for which we can use our imagination to twist and turn.
Recently, I read that you consider yourself as one of the most vilified persons in Ghana. No, I don’t think so. How would your “dogs of insult” from the Twi confederacy led by your professor Ahoofes have behaved if President Mills had had a third class degree from college? How would they have taken it if former President Rawlings had told the Ewe followers of NDC to do anything in their power to win the elections “after all, all die be die”? How would you and your propaganda team led by Gabby have behaved if it had come out that Professor Mills is a drug addict who wakes up with a cloud of smoke around him?
The mistakes are mutual on both sides of the isle, but the mark of a leader is to live above reproach. Remember, when Ghana starts burning, there will be no innocent by-standers. When we start fighting, the hypocritic clergy in Ghana will as usual standby aloof until their favorite party, the NPP, is at the losing end of it all before they will come out with their pastoral letters asking for decorum. It may be too late for many of us. Meanwhile, your people back home will be busy at galamsey sites to come to your aid.
In your campaigning, you will be asked genuine questions and people will express concerns that you will need to address honestly. For instances,
1. You were a high ranking and cabinet member of the NPP government when companies that won bids for contracts during the Ghana@50, such as Waterville of Woyome, were kicked off and the contracts given to others associated with the NPP, against the advice of the NPP’s own Sports Minister, and you did nothing. Now that a court of competent jurisdiction has ordered the government to pay compensations, you and your followers are as usual trying to pin the blame on the new government whose only role is being the unfortunate government to mob up your mess and corruption. What did you do?
2. You were the Minister of Justice and Attorney General when Ghana paid large sums of monies to the Malaysians when your NPP government similarly abrogated the Ghana Telecom Contract. You did not find anything wrong with it and you were personally responsible for the authorization of the payment. You and the NPP government did not find anything wrong with such payments. Yet you and your party have pounced on Professor Mills and NDC for being forced to obey a court order. The President has shown a sense of responsibility to institute a probe into that and all payments of court order during their time. Would you do the same for the NPP period?
These and many more questions are coming your way. Arrogance and desperation will not help. Your only course of action is humility and honesty, two attributes that you have a long way to master. I will pour libation for you and you may need to learn from President Mill to go to church. You may start with attending the prayer camps set up by Sir John. Hopefully, they may help.
Wishing you all the best in this Election Year.
Kwame Yeboah
gyeboah@harding.edu
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