The Road to Kigali – Part 1

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

Yesterday, a bosom friend of mine called to inform me about widespread speculation among forum discussants on Ghanaweb.com that, somehow, in the wake of the forensically provable fraudulent declaration of Caretaker-President John Dramani Mahama as the winner of Election 2012, I have, literally, tucked my hands in-between my thighs and vamoosed into hiding. Needless to say, no speculation could be farther from the truth.

Actually, I have been trying strenuously to figure out the most constructive approach to contribute towards a peaceful and lasting resolution of the impasse resulting from the Afari-Gyan chaired Electoral Commission’s shameless decision to play fast-and-loose with the sacred tenets of our constitutional democratic culture. And while I am utterly disappointed by the turn of events on the ground, I was not in any way caught off-guard by the same.

Needless to say, it was obvious from the start that Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, a well-known and hardnosed Nkrumaist and National Democratic Congress ideologue, and hack, intended to rig Election 2012 in favor of his paymasters.

Now what is left for those so flagrantly shortchanged and morally and emotionally injured, is to seek legal recourse. The problem here, though, is that while I have in the recent past vigorously defended the integrity of Chief Justice Georgina Wood against prejudicial and wanton intimidation and harassment from key NDC operatives like Chairman Kwabena Adjei, I have, nevertheless, lost absolute confidence in the capacity of Mrs. Wood to administer justice in the evenhanded manner for which she was originally appointed by former President John Agyekum-Kufuor.

I have lost confidence in Chief Justice Wood crucially because of a politically pandering and professionally untenable statement that she made in the wake of the tragic passing of President John Evans Atta-Mills on July 24, 2012. In the main, the Chief Justice unilaterally constituted herself into the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board by summarily seeking to have a judicial edifice named after the deceased premier, on the rather vacuous grounds that it was President Mills who made public funding readily available for the construction of the aforesaid court house.

Needless to say, in so doing, the late President Mills was merely responding to one of the primary obligations for which he was elected by Ghanaians. But that Election 2012 was blatantly rigged in favor of the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress, was clearly articulated by former President Jerry John Rawlings, the founding-father of the NDC, who indicated the same suavely and characteristically impishly and euphemistically as follows: “Once again, I commend all Ghanaians for ensuring that the electoral process was held in an atmosphere of serenity, despite the challenges posed by the introduction of the voter verification equipment” (See “Rawlings Cautions NPP Over Violence” Ghanaweb.com 12/12/12).

That Mr. Rawlings deliberately omitted to emphatically observe that about the only “challenges” posed by the voter verification machinery was the patently criminal usurpation of the function of the Electoral Commissioner by the now President-Elect Dramani Mahama, makes such omission all the more mischievous and unpardonably injurious of the democratic aspirations of Ghanaians and continental Africans at large, assuming, of course, that Ghana is actually deserving of the accolade of “Democratic Beacon” and/or Bastion of Africa.

Well, for those of our readers who may not readily recall, shortly after casting his ballot in his northern regional hometown of Bole-Bamboi, President Mahama was widely reported to have countermanded pre-established protocol by illegally and unconstitutionally authorizing polling station officials to ignore the voter verification process by allowing just about anybody who showed up at any polling station throughout the country to cast the ballot. In Shakespearean parlance, this is where the judicial rub is.

And on the latter score, I would rather suggest the establishment of a panel of eminent continental African jurists, preferably from outside the West African sub-region, to determine the “scientific” and/or objective outcome of Election 2012, if the peace, progress and stability that Mr. Rawlings is talking about are to hold.

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D. Department of English Nassau Community College of SUNY Garden City, New York Dec. 12, 2012 ###