Where is the Beef Here?

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

Garden City, New York

Oct. 16, 2015

E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

Almost every Ghanaian of age knows that fundamentally speaking, there is absolutely no difference between the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the National Democratic Party (NDP). Both parties were founded by a Rawlings; at least that is what the media has made us understand. The ruling National Democratic Congress, of course, was founded by Chairman Jerry John Rawlings; and it was part of his suave attempt to morph himself from the jaded status of a junta operative and leader into a modern democratically elected president. The very idea for the latter metamorphosis may very well have been hatched by his hangers-on who saw the prime opportunity to perpetuate their socioeconomic and political stranglehold on the destiny of our country. And so far, the NDC Abongo Boys have made a good game of it.

The Ghanaian economy has been effectively run aground and asunder to about the same ramshackle level and degree of receivership where it was in January 2001, when Chairman Rawlings handed over the reins of democratic governance to then-President-Elect John Agyekum-Kufuor. The National Democratic Party was also founded by Mrs. Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings, after her lurid attempt to unseat the now-late President John Evans Atta-Mills, at the party’s 2010 congressional primary in the Brong-Ahafo regional capital of Sunyani, picturesquely exploded in the face of the brazen bloody couple. Chairman Rawlings clearly appeared to have gone along with his petulant, cantankerous, megalomaniacal and kleptocratic wife to get along or make peace in the Rawlings household. And she may well have succeeded in creating a lot of trouble for her husband’s political baby, except for Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, the extant Electoral Commissioner, who was determined at all costs to clip and contain the vaulting ambitions of the woman who has been widely alleged to have been complicit in the abduction and brutal and savage Mafia-style assassination of the three Akan-descended Accra High Court judges.

Mrs. Rawlings is a very fascinating character on the Fourth Republican Ghanaian political landscape, if also partly because she is blisteringly petty-minded and epically an emotional wreck. In recent times, for example, she has attempted to have the eagle insignia positioned on the apex/crown of the NDC’s umbrella party icon removed because she claims the entire idea and decision to have the eagle positioned on the party’s umbrella was uniquely hers. But what is also fascinating here is the decision of Dr. Ezenator Rawlings, the eldest daughter of the Rawlingses, to contest the Klottey-Korle parliamentary seat in the Greater-Accra Region; which clearly has something to do with the strategic attempt by the bloody couple to regain leadership and ownership of the National Democratic Congress. Dr. Rawlings’ political adventure may thus be aptly envisaged in terms of a beachhead, a vantage position from which a decisive assault could be launched with the primary objective of establishing what may well shape up to become the Rawlings dynasty.

Now, whether such tactical move will succeed or not is moot. Not surprisingly, quite a remarkable number of internal detractors of the Rawlingses are not taking it lying down. The splashing of a squall of posters with the emblem and colors of the Konadu-Rawlings-led National Democratic Party, showing what many claim to be the picture of Dr. Rawlings and her siblings, or the Rawlings children, is one striking example of attempts to draw away any support that Dr. Rawlings might be perceived to have in the Klottey-Korle Constituency. As of this writing, Dr. Rawlings was reported to have vehemently denied that she could be authentically identified on any of the aforesaid posters.

And to criticisms leveled at her to the effect that she is not a known resident of Klottey-Korle, Dr. Rawlings ripostes that her mother registered her as an official member of the NDC way back in 2006. But it is not clear whether she has remained active as a dues-paying member of the party. For now, though, Dr. Ezenator Rawlings wants her prospective constituents to know that she is staunchly focused on working to improve the level of sanitation, employment and healthcare in the constituency. She has not, however, explained precisely how she intends to realize and/or fulfill the acute needs in these priority areas.