By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
As a prominent Ghanaian banker sarcastically told yours truly in the wake of his undemocratic ousting of Dr. Limann’s People’s National Party (PNP), Flt.-Lt. Jeremiah John Rawlings was privileged enough to attend Achimota School, but the pistol-packing career coup-plotter does not appear to have been smart enough to have gained admission into Ghana’s flagship academy, the University of Ghana, which was, and still is, only a stone’s throw away. His wife, Nana Konadu Agyeman, on the other hand, did a little better by managing to proceed from Achimota to attend the University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, and to receive a bachelor’s degree in Graphic Design, not Political Science, Philosophy or Law, mind you. And yet, this couple has continued to project themselves unto Ghanaians, largely through the force of arms and raw intimidation, as the best politicians our country ever had.
So far, I have struggled to restrain myself from lighting into the loudmouthed, hot-air balloon wife of Ghana’s best-known certified assassin, because my elder aunt, Mary Sintim, is also a pioneer art student and, in fact, a colleague of Kofi Antubam’s at both Achimota and the University of Science and Technology. Still, it stretches the proverbial imagination beyond common sense, when a nondescript Graphic Design first-degree holder, who is not known, in any way, shape or form to have distinguished herself in a trade for which she was specially trained, begins to call the professional qualifications of her intellectual and political superiors into question.
And on the latter score, also, it bears recalling for the benefit of our readers that, perhaps, the most distinguished “achievement” or claim to fame of Monsieur Rawlings, is the eerie fact of him having clinically and summarily executed Air-Vice Marshall Yaw Boakye, the very personality who protected an otherwise professionally ossified Flt.-Lt. Rawlings from being dishonorably discharged from the Ghana Air Force. Yes, indeed, the man had been widely recognized and credited with having performed as one of the finest pilots of the Ghana Air Force. But that mechanical aspect of the job was about all that he had been able to acquit himself of. And so, it ought not to come as any surprise that both Mr. and Mrs. Rawlings would shamelessly attempt to reduce the substantive President of Ghana, Mr. John Agyekum-Kufuor, and the flagbearer of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to their own level of professional pedestrians.
The problem, though, inheres not in the fact of Mrs. Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings telling a group of college-level students, who visited the bloody couple in their ill-gotten Ridge mansion, that Messrs. Kufuor and Akufo-Addo are economists and not the lawyers that they have distinguished themselves before their compatriots as. The problem regards the timorous manner in which their political opponents have responded to the downright mendacity and scam-artistry of the Rawlingses. For instance, an editorial which appeared in the Ghanaian Statesman chose, rather pathetically, to thank Prof. John Evans Atta-Mills, the presidential candidate of the so-called National Democratic Congress (NDC), and the man whose rocky and still-listing campaign the Rawlingses had actually intended their mendacious diatribe to boost, for rising up to the defense of both President Kufuor and Nana Akufo-Addo. And this is precisely where the level of political sophistication of the staunch supporters and sympathizers of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) becomes insufferably worrisome; and the latter observation amounts to casting matters more diplomatically.
Now, let’s cut to the chase. And the fact is that other than those who are supposed to be in charge of the NPP propaganda machinery, nobody is being fooled by the deftly orchestrated “Bad Cop, Good Cop” political theatre scripted by the NDC propaganda machinery for Messrs. Rawlings and Atta-Mills. In that script, the two decide per a proverbial gentleman’s agreement, that the swashbuckling and notorious Mr. Rawlings would go about the tawdry business of smearing the reputation of the key figures among their political opponents, while the Asondwoehene – or Prince-of-Peace – pretends to have been caught totally flatfooted and scandalized by the calculated rhetorical irrationality of the Rawlingses. In other words, if the NPP is really serious about retaining power for the good of democracy-loving Ghanaians – remember “Gen. Mosquito” just recently returned from a Communist Strategy Session in the quite distinguished and “plenipotentiary” company of Prof. Kofi Awoonor – then the NPP propaganda operatives had better take the battle to the NDC, rather than timidly playing the proverbial “schoolyard victim” to the NDC’s “schoolyard bully.”
Ultimately, when Mr. and Mrs. Rawlings question the professional integrity and qualifications of President Kufuor and Nana Akufo-Addo, the bloody couple ought to promptly have their bluff called, as it were, or challenged to provide proof of their allegations or be forced by a civil court of law to promptly retract their foolery. You see, it is often sissies and weaklings who go whining for apologies. If Mr. Rawlings or any of his paid minions make the deadly mistake of slapping yours truly upside the head, as New Yorkers like to say, one of these days, my riposte would unreservedly be one of a battle royal. This was exactly what I had prayed to happen in the wake of the assassination of the Supreme Court judges. And then, you guessed it right, Old Sleepy Eyes, ever the parade rainmaker, emerged out of nowhere with this theatrical sham and ritual copycat called National Reconciliation Fiesta, as an excuse for condign justice! What kind of crap is that?
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