Election 2012: Applying The Institute of Strategic Studies’ Winnable Games in Ghana
Konongo Fordjour 01 October 2010
Elections, at any time, are the same as going to war; or penetrating any given market with a substitute product. Anything that uses CAMPAIGN to secure any given position signals its preparedness to compete. Consequently, competing at any time is equal to going to war at any time; regardless of whether or not the competitors have done enough preparations. There are three strategic points that can be considered as most important indicators for vote winning in the 2012 General Elections in Ghana.
1. The 360,000 Young Adult Voters
The nation is close to graduating almost 360,000 young adults, who were in their 14.5 - 17 age bracket in the last 2008 General Elections, into full-fledged eligible voters. The ruling NDC Government is planning a total winning strategy focusing on this figure. The then opposition NDC group managed a slim win over the then ruling NPP party. It will capitalize on this newly founded window to widen the gap. The reality of the existence of this figure would be authenticated by the on-going national census.
Nevertheless, the most important thing here is that the incumbent government has a solid plan to win at all cost - by hook or crook. Then my main question is this: “Is the opposition man paying attention to that?” What is the NPP doing to grab a larger share of that figure; or possibly splitting that number? Hopes on the opposition NPP side are extremely high; and may even read into close contest; or possibly self-rate the contest as gaining upper hand. However, we are leaving the NDC to manipulate that huge number of new voters. Is the opposition man paying attention?
In 2008, prior to the General Elections, I posed a strategic question in my article: “Incumbency Theorem, Administering a Wrong Dose for Unsettled Democracy” as to whether or not there were indicators that could force the NPP flag bearer to boycott the elections, as it had happened under Dr. J B Danquah and Professor Adu-Boahen. Apparently, complacency, egoism, sheer unrelated superiority complex, and common folly thrashed my noble appeal and simply picked up a big NO.
Alas, the Election Day came and the commonly erratic NPP polling agents (even in our own cooked and relaxed voting) returned with a massive 220,000 or more spoiled votes that could have genuinely registered our One-Touch Campaign slogan; forced it into a second round presidential voting. Our flag bearer saw foul play and boycotted the Tain Constituency voting to force our party into opposition. Interestingly, my NPP party has a history of boycotting general elections unnecessarily that keeps us in opposition longer than anticipated. The NDC do not have record of that nature! Consequently, the NDC will always capitalize on that unfortunate weakness from such an internationally respected democratic party and try new or hybrid tricks to beat the NPP at the ballot box. More so, as they have witnessed the NPP endorsing the NDC own dirty tricks of total Volta win strategy in NPP own flag bearer primaries.
The standoff for the vote winning in the recent 2008 General Elections was a little over 40,000 votes. The NDC plans to widen the gap with the newly 360,000 voters. Is our flag bearer paying attention? Please permit me to pose the same question this time round again. Are there possible indicators that can convince our flag bearer to boycott the 2012 Elections to force us to stay in opposition longer? May be Yes, May be Not; only time will tell! However, I will say yes, why? This is because if the NDC plan of total grabs of the 360,000 works, it can easily blur the NPP horizon to warrant a boycott. Electoral boycotts in Africa have never been considered any serious business; and my party must wean itself from that habit. There is also an Incumbency Theorem that works for an African Government as well. NPP must pay serious attention; prepare for an all out electoral war; and design smart strategies to win!
2. The Bi-Metric Voting System
Is the opposition man paying attention?Our own NPP openly denied its own to vote! NPP-USA fought very hard to force our parliament to enact the ROPA-Act into ROPA-Law; but our own man refused to implement the law into real voting. Shame! Today, the NDC Government wants to implement the ROPAL, but in a different flavour. Ghana’s Ambassador to the USA, Dan Ohene-Agyekum, in his recent visit to my community here in Massachusetts-USA, tried to explain how the NDC-style of the bi-metric voting system will work but failed to make any sense.
However, the home Government’s own position posits that the Bi-Metric Voting System will affect only Ghanaians resident in the West African belt; and not those noise-makers like Konongo Fordjour in the USA, Canada, Europe, and some parts of Asia. Thus, the bi-metric systems also can easily off-truck the NPP completely from the electoral race. Is the opposition party paying attention to a possible total loss in the 2012 General Elections - in both presidential and parliamentary? Can the Bi-Metric Voting System strategy also force our own man to boycott the 2012 elections; hence leaving the NDC a free-for-none-but-itself to compete? Has this scenery been visited before?
Please let me say this time and time again that: if we are not careful, we will stay in opposition longer than we anticipate it. The 2012 elections will be an uphill war that demands stamina; but my NPP seems to be wrongly wielding weapons pointing at itself, just like an inexperienced soldier going to war with a sophisticated weapon. Hopefully we do not mistakenly shoot at our own right arm before the war starts! It can also be fought on policy issues. In this second situation, what is NPP’s story?
3. The Economy
I have been a very strong critic of the Mills Administration recently over the way our nation’s economy is being handled. I even called for the dismissal of the Minister of the Economy, Dr. Duffour, for poor performance. I had promised earlier to release a report on the current state of Ghana’s Economy, two years under the Mills Government by October 10, 2010 (10-10-10). I am happy to inform you that a 5-page report is undergoing thorough review and editing for your smooth reading. However, I am not going to release this heavily researched report on schedule because of the latest movement on the economic front signaled by the government that has fascinated me; and demands careful study of the economy. Consequently, I have to travel to Ghana to do more research and seek first-hand information before reporting by January 11, 2011 (11-1-11) - exactly two years that NDC assumed power.
I am giving the Mills Administration more time because it looks like our Beleaguered-President-With-a-Memory-Loss is slowly gaining consciousness from his long deep slumber. Our president listens and pays serious attention to advice. My recent heavy criticisms on the Mills Government also included strategic implementation of practical economic policies to help take our nation to a different level. My free consultancy for our Government included a straightforward advice in my article titled “Loans for Economic Resuscitation, Where is the NDC Job Creation Plan?” to jettison foreign loans from the vampires - The World Bank and The IMF - sell off all our oil reserves, and invest the funds in Ghanaian youth through local investments in commercial corn production, for instance.
Today, Mills’ agric ministry is doing exactly that. They call it Cooperative Farming of President Nkrumah fame - a socialist strategy - to blend off Konongo Fordjour’s capitalist dimension. Regardless, the president must respect property ownership as a strong tool for quality nation building because “mine-and-ours” are two similar words with complete different meanings. Notably, European and USA economic advancement insisted on the “Tiny Propertied Class”; ours should rather be on a broader collectivist propertied class.
Property ownership is a very powerful tool in nation building! Please target corn production in the Northern territories and Volta Region. I am saying this for several reasons. One, commercial farming using mechanization will be cheaper in grassland as it is in Volta region and the north. Two, production seasons can be more than twice in those areas. And finally, deliberately creating riches in those extremities of our land to reduce poverty, ignorance, and desperation. Material wealth into riches also will dilute radicalism because rich people are always afraid of premature death; and would not want to leave their material wealth unceremoniously. The Akan traditionalist political cowardice imbued in their loosely-defined peace such as: “Nnye-hwee-Gyae-ma-ne-nka”, etc. exists because of the fear of leaving their material wealth.
Please, sir, identify private commercial farmers with high affinity to employ workers to develop the sense of ownership, motivation, and Maslow’s high esteem. I am still insisting strongly on the use of pilot project targeting at least one hundred thousand (100,000) Ghanaians - be they NDC, NPP, CPP, or whatever affiliation - to get into commercial farming.
Trust me; the reward in that investment is extremely enormous; such as job creation, poverty alleviation, unemployment reduction, youth empowerment, quality nation building, and practical method of changing the social set-up and the mindset of our people. The other reward is instant. Ghana under President Mills has won a supply of about 25,000 tons of corn to the United Nations to feed refugees. The reward is that we have a huge market waiting for our product.
Juxtaposed with the increased demand of corn in the USA, Brazil, shortages of corn (staple food) in Southern Africa, Zimbabwe and Zambia, increased consumption in Ghana and the entire West African sub-region as well, corn production is better than gold mining. Mr. President, the peripatetic white Zimbabwean corn farmers are flooding into Eastern Nigerian region to produce corn; just to contribute to the global corn shortages forecasted into several decades. There is money there!
Sir, corn futures has also earned 25 US Cents since my last communications with you. Mr. President, note very well that, ours is an agrarian economy; and please initiate the nation’s advancement from corn production. Please empty the streets of Accra, Kumasi, Sekondi-Takoradi, Tamale, Konongo, and all the large cities of grouping young people (with nothing to do) into corn production in the rural areas. We will need storage for corn farmers just as we needed cocoa sheds for our cocoa farmers. Please think of privatizing the non-functioning 1960s Kwame Nkrumah silos; renovate and stuff them with modern gadgets to store corn and other grannies. Let Ghana pick up the tub as a global corn exchange rendezvous.
Also, we hear today that our president has rejected the vampires and of course T B Joshua, negotiated over $16-billion from China, and responding exactly to my strategic advice. Good Job, Mr. President, keep it up! Job well done deserves more jobs well to be done. It is a blessing to have a leader who listens, pays attention, and does exactly what is asked from him. Mr. President, please do me a favour: Recognize my good advice. Tell the world about the good things that the opposition man Konongo Fordjour has done to help you govern the nation in peace and in development.
The Mills Government listens! In less than two years the Mills Administration has started responding to my articles. One of such articles that welcomed it titled “Amidst Abuakwa Trials and Tribulations, Kwaata is Whirling at Crossroads” forecasted a possible break or make of the NDC under Professor Mills. As usual, the article also advised the president on practicable strategies to pursue. It advised President Mills to tread along survivable direction, seek footholds first, and govern from the center; and he did exactly that. The article continued that, once the government has secured maximum and complete control of the nation, it must go straight ahead to force recalcitrant, renegades, and menace like Tony Aidoo, Jerry Rawlings, Victor Smith, etc. into permanent political oblivion; and that has also been done.
The article also advised that one possible measure to prevent the break of NDC is to pick the young and send thousands of his toilet-grabbing supporters to study abroad. And it is doing exactly that with even overseas in-service training for his Team-B ministers, which is a very good idea because we can engage them in fruitful debate on Ghana’s economy. Today, we see young faces like Okudzeto-Ablakwah, Boateng-Agyenim, Zita Okai-Kwei, etc. in the front line of the Mills Administration. And importantly, they are all getting first class Western education from Europe such as London School of Economics, London Business School, Edinburgh, Oxford, Cambridge and so forth. I am happy because a brilliant and intelligent ruling government is healthy for our nation as against the ghastly fast aging grey-haired NDC evils.
Teacher Mills listens! He pays attention to his lesson notes in his lesson plan! I also advised him in the article about instituting effective tax system. I teased him that as a tax professor, he seemed to have forgotten his tax tutorials; but now he has started taxing cellular phones and calling card networks operating into and within the country. However, what is the government going to do with the funds coming from such exercises? Will it go to Mills second term campaign? Is the opposition man paying attention? The president must provide periodic detailed report on the incomes coming from such exercises. Please target other areas as well to generate funds within the country itself.
Nevertheless, I am very upset and extremely sad because my strategic economic advice had always targeted my beloved party, the NPP, but here we are; my own party stubbornly refuses to take advice. A party that boasts of a huge stock of high quality research team; but will never use it. Shame! The NDC group that has no economic research team to boost its government performance will always pick up the pieces from the quality work done by the NPP stewards to make a difference. The sad thing is that, unlike the NDC youth, whose leaders spend millions of dollars to give them first class education, the NPP youth, on the other hand, had their own training and nursing their own huge federal loans; yet feel happy to support the party with smart economic advice that they will not take, anyway. Shame! They would even proudly dismiss us with our “Nsempoa-ne-Nkapre” and “Shallow Pockets” support.
Shame! It is very sad to offer the self to a beloved party that will simply dismiss a very important advice. Advice that changed President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe to tread along peaceful line of governance (we hardly hear of Morgan Tsvangirai these days); advice that is changing once a ruthless group, NDC, in Ghana; is the very same advice that my own family, NPP, repeatedly refuses to take.
A warning note to the NPP is that a very rich, brilliant, intelligent, powerful, and experienced Team-B youthful ministers will cushion the NDC group to pursue its change campaign regardless of how loosely-defined the change thing may be. Look the NDC is building a very strong, rich, and influential young base to transfer power in later life. A win for Mills second term will be extremely hard for NPP comeback. Vice President John Mahama will demand continuity with a dynamic young team to ridicule and render an aging die-hard over-ambitious NPP politicians obsolete. John will even go an extra mile to renew the group’s vision under internationally recognized philosophy to demand recognition from Konongo Fordjour (they do not have now!). Young people identify easily with young people; and the Ghanaian youth are larger (over 60%) in population than all other groups. Watch out!
Remember that the two parties fought, in their recent 2008 General Elections campaign, over ownership of smart policy implementation. The NDC group is fast changing from crude militarist sentimental politicians into brilliant Western-trained administrators. It will not be long when the clueless NDC even laid claims on the OMOV strategy. Is the opposition man paying attention?
Last Note: Coercive Rule
Does coercion work? Yes! In Ivan Pavlov maze psychology, subjects exposed to coercive method and immediately thereafter rewarded handsomely forget everything else to support the conductor [Dr. Kwabena Adjei, a psychology professor and NDC National Chairman, will definitely agree with me on this]. Have we witnessed this before? After a bitter and humiliating attack on Asanteman, royalist Akwasi Agyemang was conned into Gun-man Rawlings fold; of course with money because money can buy anything. In Ceausescu’s Romania and Bongo’s Gabon, coercion and rewards have even changed their cultures and abilities to reason. In Communist China, the all time rich, most educated, most powerful, and most influential few imperialists designed coercive, most repressive rules to control the world’s most populous nation. Today, the only one party, the Communist Party, has started rewarding its citizens after a century of oppressive rule. Please, understand that coercion works!
After forcing the nation through hardships of high petrol price, poor electricity supply, unemployment, etc. the spendthrift NDC Mills strategy is to reward Ghanaians with a trek on spending spree; splash of money to close off the suffering chapter. At least until elections are over! Of course that is also electioneering strategy in an African contest! Is the opposition man paying attention?
How About Women in politics?
The UN branch on family and population has declared that global female to male ratio is 36 females to 1 male (36:1). In war-torn regions such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan, the picture is a lot more disheartening (97:1). In the USA, it may be in the region of 19:1. Ghana is mostly likely to record somewhere between 9 and 7 women to 1 man in its 2010 census. What has this information got to do with our politics and forthcoming voting exercises in Ghana? The voting power! The parties must recruit more women to campaign for a clear win. There is a possibility of the spate of female presidency around the globe. It is inevitable! Please target powerful women now and groom them for leadership tomorrow.
Finally, Another Strategic Advice
Mr. President, have you considered building two separate ultra modern libraries - Presidential Library and Parliamentary Library - for Ghana and furnished with high-powered gadgets, books, periodicals, etc. to join the global parliament? The Ghanaian parliamentarian has too much time to waste, which is not healthy for a nation considering advancement and international role. After house debates, the Ghanaian MP must go straight to the library to update him/herself with up to the minute developments across the globe. Some MPs have remained dumb in the house waiting for their end-of-service (term)-benefit. They must be forced into mandatory research into economic development to help the constituencies they seek to serve (Not to be worshipped!).
Conclusion
The Institute of Strategic Studies’ winnable games apply anything that works because there is no formula in war. The winner in any war is the one who returns home with fewer casualties. In our electoral context, the winner is the one who returns home with fewer spoiled ballot papers.
This is how the political front looks like right now. If we were to go to the polls now, what would be the results? It will still be forced into second round; and NDC will still have an opportunity to steal. Both sides have ample room to strategize. It is slightly tilted towards NPP right now; but can it make use of it? However, with reference to my article “Mills First-Year Performance Report Card” I reiterate that if President Mills accelerates the youth investment program to affect many people, he will win many hearts to change future voting decision.
He could possibly appeal to his disappointed supporters to rejoin the group and sympathizers as well by pointing directly to his rewards for them; but can the NDC group, synonymous to failure, really make the real smart cut? There are so many good-on-paper promises that have passed without looking at them. Reading my two articles: “Hopelessness in Adoration! Did NDC Achieve Vision in Obama Visit?” and “A Citizen’s Special Message to President Barrack Hussein Obama” together, one will find that the Mills Administration has a tough job it could hardly fix.
The hardworking president is surrounded by miserably failed economists. The disgruntled youth base in the NPP, on the other hand, could not reason with their leaders during their tenure in office. The Election Day is fast approaching yet the two camps are seriously disorganized. Then, what are the possible campaign slogans for the two parties? What catch phrases will genuinely work for both sides?
My next article, preceding the promised article on “Ghana Economy, and the One-Term President” will look at practical strategies for NPP to snatch power easily from the Mills Government. It will feature researches conducted under “sustainable economic policies and sustainable governance” such as those by Professor Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University, who recently visited Professor Mills, our president. Did the professor offer the professor such tutorials in Accra? The article will compare Mills’ notes penned down during the Obama lecturers in the Parliamentary Hall with Mills’ notes from the Sachs lectures in the Jubilee Hall. Is Mills paying attention? Can the opposition man capitalize on Mills weaknesses? Catch you soon! Good Day!
Konongo Fordjour, Boston-USA E-Mail: koafordjour@yahoo.com
