By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
I have yet to read the full summation of Mr. Philip Addison, counsel for the petitioners in the 2012 presidential election. But what is clear is the fact that Dr. Afari-Gyan, the Electoral Commissioner, whom President John Dramani Mahama cynically chooses to obliquely dub as "Divine Providence," inexcusably cooked the numbers in order to put his derby favorite well ahead of the pack. He did just that, because there are some 400,000 recorded voters who all they did, if we are to take Dr. Afari-Gyan's word as gospel truth, was simply vote for Mr. John Dramani Mahama, and none else, and just flit out of the polling booth even as they had flitted into the same.
On this question, I intend to primarily appeal to the studied and erudite consciences of the nine Supreme Court justices hearing the Akufo-Addo/New Patriotic Party petition, aptly seeking to nullify the fraudulent declaration of President John Dramani Mahama as winner of Election 2012. And these justices are, of course, William Atuguba, Julius Ansah, Sophia Adinyira, Constance Rose Owusu, Jones Dotse, Anin Yeboah, Paul Baffoe-Bonnie, N. S. Gbadegbe and Vida Akoto-Bamfo. I do not intend to appeal to the consciences of the key operatives of the ruling National Democratic Congress and their hirelings and hacks, because they have clearly demonstrated that they are completely devoid of conscience and good faith.
I am also appealing to the proverbial international community, because the epic travesty that was Ghana's 2012 presidential election has global implications on the way and manner in which democratic cultures are practiced and upheld as the ideal political template, or model, for Twenty-First Century Civilization. It is important for the major players involved in the judicial outcome of the Akufo-Addo/New Patriotic Party petition to fully appreciate the practical impossibility for some 400,000 voters to have cast their ballots exclusively for only one presidential candidate, when the same voters, like their other 10-million-plus fellow Ghanaian voters, also had the choice, or option, of voting for at least one other candidate at the parliamentary and/or constituency level, or one of their own local leaders, in order to ensure the successful execution of the General Election that occurred in Ghana on December 8 and 9, 2012. And also, for the declared parliamentary majority, the National Democratic Congress, to have ended up with at least 121,000 less votes than its closest and most formidable political rivals, the main opposition New Patriotic Party!
The forensically sustainable contention here is that at least some 400,000 fake, or ghost, votes were added to the ballot by Dr. Afari-Gyan, the Electoral Commissioner, whom President Mahama quizzically chooses to call "Divine Providence," in order to guarantee that Mr. Mahama would end up clinching the 325,000 electoral margin of victory fraudulently declared for him by the former University of Ghana political science lecturer. That the marginal difference between the presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party and his pointmen and women in Parliament was a piddling 16 votes, ought to clearly inform the venerable members of the Atuguba-presided Supreme Court panel hearing the petition that Dr. Afari-Gyan must have told only half the truth of what actually transpired in the polling booth on December 8 and 9, 2012; and that, that half-truth clearly pertained to the accuracy and/or near-accuracy of the combined figures publicly posted for both the New Patriotic Party presidential candidate and Nana Akufo-Addo's parliamentary colleagues and representatives.
Naturally, the key operatives of the so-called National Democratic Congress, and their media hacks and goons, would have no trucking, whatsoever, with the above systematically argued observations vis-a-vis the deliberately orchestrated massive irregularities that attended the entire conduct of Election 2012. And that is all well and good, except that the Atuguba-presided Supreme Court ought to send the notorious National Democratic Congress' pathological scofflaws the unmistakable signal that the Mahama posse is not entitled to the cynical fabrication of its own facts, and the consequent passing off of such mendacity as a verity.
Indeed, even as Justice William Atuguba, himself, clearly observed to Dr. Afari-Gyan, it is tantamount to a gross dereliction of responsibility for Mr. Mahama's "God" or "Divine Providence" to fault his minions, scapegoat fashion, for his own acts of omission and commission. Somebody clearly took the patriotic and well-meaning Ghanaian voters to the cleaners on December 8 and 9, 2012. And that person, as well as his collusive accomplice, ought to dearly pay for his treasonous act.
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*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Department of English
Nassau Community College of SUNY
Garden City, New York
August 11, 2013
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net
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