The Road to Kigali – Part 24

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

I have been aware of the following piece of news for some time now but decided not to broach the same until now, because I was not able to confirm it at the time; and as a journalist fully convicted of the integrity of the profession, I had to ensure its veracity prior to subjecting the same for public discussion and analysis. The piece of news in question is also circumstantially juicy and could well put the direly needed capstone on the pending lawsuit by the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) before the Supreme Court of Ghana, if it should turn out to bear forensic scrutiny.

Well, the piece of news that I am alluding to alleges that Ghana’s Electoral Commissioner, Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, within a couple of days, or so, after declaring Mr. John Dramani Mahama winner of Election 2012, emplaned for the United States of America but was promptly repatriated by INTERPOL, the FBI or some such vigilant global policing network. If the foregoing piece of information has any iota of credence and/or validity, or accuracy, then, it goes without saying that Dr. Afari-Gyan has some extensive explaining to do before both the longsuffering Ghanaian public and the august Supreme Court of Ghana at large.

We are also reliably informed that the Chairman of the Electoral Commission has been hiding his wife and children for at least some three months now, outside the country, and had hoped to join them for a mammoth celebration of the “Mahama Victory” in the American state of Texas shortly after Dr. Afari-Gyan’s fraudulent declaration of Mr. Mahama as President-Elect of the Democratic Republic of Ghana. If the preceding piece of information also contains an iota of credibility, then it clearly appears that the decision to imperiously flout the election rules of the country, a patently treasonable offence punishable by long-term incarceration, was more of a veritable act of premeditation than it was a sheer normative case of excusable administrative incompetence. And if the latter turns out to be the case, then the collaborators in this racket may also need to be ferretted out, properly identified and promptly dealt with to the fullest extent of the law.

At any rate, it makes a bit of common sense for the Chairman of the Electoral Commission to have been hiding his wife and children abroad in the lead-up to Election 2012, because during Election 2000, Dr. Afari-Gyan’s wife and children were widely reported to have been briefly held hostage by some active elements of the Ghana Armed Forces then alleged to be in the pay of Mr. Rawlings and his National Democratic Congress. But for the timely intervention of the then-Deputy British High Commissioner to Ghana, who reportedly threatened to swamp the country with the British Army, Mr. Kufuor may well have been summarily and fraudulently denied the presidency. In other words,if Dr. Afari-Gyan at any time before Election 2012, felt that his ability to perform impartially and independently had been compromised, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that he could have promptly solicited countervailing assistance from any of our traditional Western allies, including the United States, which the EC capo allegedly selected as a prime escape hatch for himself and his family.

Finally, we are also informed that the alleged residence in which the wife and children of Dr. Afari-Gyan are known to be living in Texas was purchased for the EC chair by either the government of the National Democratic Congress or some key operatives associated with the ruling party. We demand prompt answers to the foregoing allegations. We also demand a thorough independent investigation of the same. With the foregoing in mind, particularly what I have personally dubbed as “The 1.3 Million Stolen Ballot Question,” President Mahama, the most probable beneficiary of this Afari-Gyan scam-artistry, has absolutely no justification for rather facilely declaring that, indeed, “Election 2012 also marked Ghana’s sixth successful election since our return to democracy.”

To be certain, Election 2012 may yet be deemed to have been the most disgraceful moment in Ghana’s postcolonial history. In view of the preceding, it is hardly surprising to learn that President Mahama is a vintage product of traditional CPP chicanery, as also is Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, the man who has for twenty years, and for the duration of six general elections, been making a gaping mockery of Ghana’s democratic cultural credentials and literally getting away with it. And when he rather mischievously asserts as follows, “More than anything, I have confidence in the people of Ghana. Even during Africa’s darker days, through sheer determination, Ghana managed to keep shining its now legendary light,” it is not clear whether Mr. Mahama also wants Ghanaians to fatuously rally around in blind and drunken celebration of the kind of rank and unpardonably benighted electoral fraud that characterized nearly the entire span and tenure of the Nkrumah-led Convention People’s Party (CPP). For there is absolutely no credible evidence indicating that any of the several elections held under the auspices of the British colonial regime were this fraudulent.

Could anybody also explain the following self-congratulatory poppycock of Mr. Mahama’s to yours truly: “I am proud and humbled to be your President, to have been chosen by you as the leader to usher in this next season of purpose and accomplishment.” For a leader whose bosom friend and electoral commissioner has yet to acquire the requisite professional skills and moral integrity for conducting a transparent and free and fair elections, after being entrusted with this otherwise noble job for two of the longest decades in Ghana’s postcolonial history, what “pride” can any honest Ghanaian citizen harbor for a system that has to rely on “ghost-voting” in order to have Mr. Mahama declared winner of a presidential election? Anyway, the other day, a fanatical Mahama propagandist published an article declaiming risibly as follows: “The John Mahama That I Know Never Lost an Election.” Well, the fact of the matter is that the John Mahama that the aforesaid writer knows never ran “mano-a-mano” against Nana Akufo-Addo until this fraudulent mess of NDC electoral grand larceny.

Indeed, I would rather have the Bole-Bamboi faux-democrat throw a sea of computer laptops at Keta schoolboys, in buildings that have yet to be wired up and made Internet accessible, than vacuously call on Ghanaian youths “to be an active part of nation building,” for we know what nation-building means to Mr. John “Paradigm-Shift” Dramani Mahama: it means calling on Chinese artisans to construct presidential cemeteries, and South Korean architects and masons to teach Ghanaians how to design and build modern estate housing a la STX scam-artistry.

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

Department of English

Nassau Community College of SUNY

Garden City, New York

Jan. 1, 2013

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