Political Odyssey 1: Mills was Guilty of Innocence

You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold! ? William Jennings Bryan, 1896

After spending eight years in the so-called political wilderness by 2008, Prof. Mills would have found a commanding role for himself ? the leader in waiting who will always deliver a message of truth and hope to the people. Equipped with a strong sense of electoral politics and the fine art of effective campaigning, it is clear that the professor is ready and imbued with a sense of fair and t! ough campaigning, to tackle what promises to be a very competitive election. This new Prof. Mills is no one's pushover. In fact, he never was, and he will be ready to make that clear, once the opportunity comes.

If he manages to achieve the elusive 'trifecta', and he is nominated again as NDC Flag Bearer, Prof Mills would have served his penance for his conviction for innocence. He would be a fine politically tuned candidate, with a great chance to prove all his skeptics wrong.

In the annals of Ghana?s History, there have been two methods employed by which leadership has devolved: by military force and by elections after political campaign. Military leaders leveled the barrel of their guns in the faces of the people and secured power. Our current leaders particularly, told the electorate what they thought would garner them enough votes and disappointed the masses after they found themselves in office. It is the contention of this paper that political awareness is on the ascendancy in Ghana and that ultimate leader is yet to be unveiled.

Kwame Nkrumah entered the people?s consciousness with panache, conjuring in their minds, a leader who would transport them to utopia. He trumped those pompous colonial lawyers and was helped by his ?glittering generality propaganda? ?Kwame Nkrumah Show-boy? catchy song. In the end, his Preventive Detention Act and declaration of One-Party State turned him into a ?monster? in the eyes of the military adventurers who overthrew him on February 24, 1966. Nkrumah had taught school children that ?Nkrumah Never Dies, Nkrumah is our leader? and the Center for! Civic Education under Busia responded by getting the military folks to destroy his effigies and banned key members of Nkrumah?s party for 10 years from holding political office, amongst other measures aimed at wiping out the image and the name Kwame Nkrumah. It didn?t work, for 13 years later, in 1979, PNP, Nkrumahist party, came back to power.

A series of Military regimes ruled Ghana, between 1966 and 1992, except for the abridged PNP?s two and a half year rule. H.E. Jerry John Rawlings won two terms of four years each between 1992 and 2000, as the civilian President of Ghana. It was in the struggle to replace Rawlings after his constitutionally barred ter! m ended that the onslaught of propaganda, the like of which had never been seen in Ghana ever before was unleashed. For the first time in Ghana?s Political History, television commercials or political advertisements were prominent in the campaign in 2000. Propaganda in all its form became a visual art beckoning the viewing electorate to their causes. NPP won that battle without sweat, as the ruling NDC, was forced to react rather than to be proactive, because NPP claimed it had never ever been in government and thus successfully dissociating themselves from the disastrous Progress Party government of Busia, 1969 to 1972. The NPP attacked the NDC?s track record, and was successfully able to t! out its lack of governance experience as a positive. Meanwhile, NDC tied its apron strings to the PNDC, hoping the positives of the PNDC economic recovery programme would overshadow the first two years of PNDC in which hardship and the unforgettable murder of 3 members of the Judiciary and an army officer took place.

One then can say that the NPP decisively won the propaganda stakes during the elections of 2000 and consequently, the general election. The NPP was successfully able to demonize the achievements of the NDC, turning its many accomplishments into convoluted actions that the NDC had to explain. What did the winning NPP ?Propaganda? entail?

Propaganda presents little agreement about what it means. It has been said that ?all persuasive communication is propaganda?, while some maintain ?that only dishonest messages can be considered propaganda?. Political pundits usually claim that they ?speak the truth while their opponents preach propaganda?. Perhaps, the scholar Harold D. Lasswell who as a psychologist studied and researched politics, personality, and social science, is one of the best sources in this area of inquiry. Born on February 13, 1902, in Illinois, USA, Lasswell set forth the parameters of propaganda. In his "Propaganda Technique in World War" Lasswell discussed four ! major objectives of propaganda, which he stated to be; "to mobilize hatred against the enemy, to preserve the friendship of allies, to preserve the friendship and procure the cooperation of neutrals, and to demoralize the enemy". NPP threw all these techniques at the NDC and then some more.

Prior to the 2000 elections, 34 defenseless women, some pregnant were brutally murdered around Accra and the countryside. Was that to scare the electorate and alienate them from the then ruling NDC as being incapable of safeguarding personal security of the masses? The NPP said if they were elected, they would make sure the killing of the women would stop. True to their billing, the murder of the women seized simultaneously with NPP?s election. It has been a debatable issue as to who stood ! to gain by these murders. Some have sworn it was the NPP that masterminded these killings with a view of making NDC unpopular as surmised above. A deranged man, Charles Quansah was hurriedly put before court by NPP, not for the murder of all 34 women. Nothing has been heard again from NPP regarding justice for the rest of the women whose deaths are still a mystery. This lack of concern by NPP in the 6th year of their rule makes one wonder whether they have any interest at all in finding justice for families of the remaining dead women. Were those killings extreme acts to mobilize hatred for NDC and to demoralize voters who might have considered voting for NDC? The jury is still out and the lie-detector tests remain political fodder, awaiting suspects.

Politics in Ghana during the 2000 Election touched on all the parameters of propaganda as stated above and it was the NPP that applied the full force due to the inability of NDC to realize quickly as did their opponents, the effects of negative propaganda and the place of technology in the prosecution of the election campaign as will become clearer. Or, was it a feeling of invincibility on the part of NDC at the time? Hard to tell.

The growth of technology as signified by liberal use of the internet propelled ?propaganda? to another level. Ghanaweb.com took events of Ghana globally and instantaneous as compared to the past where people had to rely on weeks old Newspapers or phone calls more centered on the concerns of callers from Ghana wanting foreign exchange to be sent to them than recounting political events faithfully. The now famous Say It Lo! ud Discussion forum was thoroughly dominated by elements of NPP. In fact, the then presidential Candidate now President of Ghana H.E. Mr. J.A.Kufuor, was sponsored by Kofi Jumah now MP, then resident of New Jersey, to hold real time political discourse with Ghanaians in the diasporas and raised campaign funds on the side. The campaign of Mr. Kufuor was boosted by fiery attacks on SIL by people like Henry Kwasi Prempeh, a lawyer, now Director of CDD, together with Kofi Ellison and Maxwell Jumah. NPP collaborated with their Internet correspondents. It is thus interesting to hear Mr. Kufuor complain about the same medium he used to get to power. He certainly knows how powerful Ghanaweb.com is and is perturbed NDC today has a foothold there. The Archives of Ghanaweb.com bear witness to this fact.

This sets the stage for a look at some of what Prof. John Mills missed in his first try ! for the presidency. As a remarkable Vice-President, he had been instrumental in instituting the GetFund after leading a roundtable conference in North Carolina and the VAT, which NPP organized violent ?Kume Preko? protest against in opposition, but increased its percentage whilst in government without abolishing it. He worked so hard, was scrupulously honest and above all brought character to his position. He earned the respect of the nation and the then president. Hawks and Doves in the NDC had their own ideas of who should succeed former president Rawlings as NDC Flag Bearer in 2000. However, Prof Mills so endeared himself to the presidency and perhaps to stem the tide of speculations, former President Rawlings declared he would support the candidature of Prof Mills if the latter so desired to run in what has historically been termed ?Swedru Declaration?.

The purity of thought of Prof Mills came to the fore as he accepted his nomination for Flag Bearer at Ho. He uttered the words ?I will consult? President Rawlings when the need came up because he was the only Ghanaian with 19 years of experience as Leader of Ghana. It became a sacrilege to his opponents. It remains to be seen what the NPP eventual nominee for Flag Bearer in 2008 will say to a question whether or not he/she ?will consult? would be ex-President Kufuor for advise anytime, or, will shun his company and guidance altogether. Be that as it may, did Prof Mills do himself good by being truthful and forthright? In the shorter period, the answer would have to be in the negative, but in the longer run, say in 2008, he will be seen as the cleanest, honest politician who will say what he means and mean what ! he says. It would be a huge positive.

Take a look at Harold Lasswell again in ?Politics: Who Gets What, When, How? in which he sets out concepts in his Model of Communication to find the answers to the simple political question: WHO SAYS WHAT, IN WHICH CHANNEL, TO WHOM, WITH WHAT EFFECT? Authors of ?Communication Theories? explained in simple language what Lasswell meant by the words captioned above: ?The Who" is who controls the message in the media, the "Says What" is the subject matter being communicated, "In Which Channel" are the studies in media analysis, the "To Whom" is the audience or the receivers, and "With What Effect" is the effects made on the public. In 2008, the World Wide Web, FM Radio, Newsprint and a determined campaign will level the field considerably, though incumbency could still work for NPP. NDC should be able to control its message and subject matter and make ! it a duty to ensure electorates who are the audience understand the message and the choice they are faced with.

The NPP proponent of ?Indigenous Capitalism? did not choose his theme at random. He picked on Kwame Nkrumah?s ?glittering generality? propaganda. The Institute for Propaganda Analysis defines ?Glittering Generality? to mean different things to different people and which can be understood in different ways. It seeks to make people approve and accept without examining the evidence. What would the poor electorate understand about ?the kind of capitalism that is protective of the vulnerable? as the proponent intoned to bemused university graduates??

Majority of Ghanaians are poor. They would want to be rich. Some of the HIPC money went as loans to the poor. The NPP is today chasing after defaulters whose lives have not improved. This NPP has to do as conditionality for getting more loans. The HIPC loan defaulters cannot pay the loan they got because the root cause of poverty has not been tackled. Only 39% of arable lands are under cultivation. Over 70% of the unemployed poor are in the rural areas. It has been shown that the Abunu and Abusa Land Tenure system breeds poverty. Would the NPP Candidate be willing to make Land Reform which is at the heart of needed agrarian reform, an issue for Election 2008, rather than some nebulous ?Indigenous Capitalism? phrase targeted merely at vote-catching? More importantly, would NDC?s candidate pin NPP?s candidate down for a discussion on this issue? Pro Mills would, if elected NDC Flag Bearer. If the majority ! of the masses understand the dimensions of the age-old battle between the exploiters and the exploited, proponents of unbridled capitalism in whatever form, be it Indigenous, Extra-territorial, or, Inter- Galactic Capitalism, would indeed have many regrets.

The name-calling propaganda technique has been the preserve of NPP. They called Prof Mills names linking him to a negative symbol to make the electorate reject him instead of looking at the available evidence that he was, and has always been the right man for the job. A good man has his attributes from just people who form the silent majority.

That Prof Mills is devoutly religious is an undeniable fact. Yet in previous elections, NPP used the Christian Church, symbol of the cross, in what the Institute for Propaganda Analysis describes as ?Transfer Device? to carry over the authority, sanction, and prestige of Churches that Ghanaians respect and revere to the benefit of NPP and to the disadvantage of the NDC. NPP propagandist succeeded in getting the church to approve its campaign as ?Ordained by God? and thereby gained by transfer of its authority, sanction, and prestige to them. It helped with the Chanting of ?Ewurade Kasa? at night and in the twilight of dawn by ?possessed sons and daughters of God? whipped into frenzy by fire-breathing pastors and Odiyifos! They couched it as God versus Satan matter, though Prof Mills is so religious, Asomdweehene has become his appellation. His campaign headquarters opens and ends with group prayers and singing of melodious tunes. It is a strong argument that voters accepted something which they might otherwise have rejected. Did the Church crucify its own, with the cross of gold?

Shouldn?t Prof Mills make political capital of his religion? Mr. Kufuor made waves at Christ the King Church. Prof Mills, your time is here! You shall not be crucified ever again upon the cross of go! ld. The Churches now know.

Run, Mills, Run! Go, Mills, Go!

Views expressed by the author(s) do not necessarily reflect those of GhanaHomePage.