Folks, we have been brazen enough to say that no matter what the NPP’s good agenda may be for Ghana, its fixation on violence as a means to win political power overshadows everything else. It is not a figment of our imagination but a true assessment of how the NPP is doing its politics, which is nothing but a real display of intolerance, intemperance, and quirkiness. It is frightening. The undeniable truth is that political power won through violence is ceded through violence. It is just like those living with the sword dying by the sword. In a democracy, anything of the sort is anathema, which is difficult for the NPP people to accept as they continue to flex muscles, even without any provocation or justification.
Place their latest threats of electoral violence against anything else coming from the other political camps and you will see why it will be difficult for Akufo-Addo to be welcomed by the voters on the basis of violence. Why does the NPP think that it has more stake in Ghana’s well-being than the other political camps do? Some clear evidence lends credence to our concerns.
The NPP’s Ashanti regional Chairman (Boasiako) is threatening to lead the NPP machinery to crush the NDC’s polling agents; and the foul-mouthed Kennedy Agyapong is saying that the NPP will lynch members of the security services (particularly soldiers) deployed at the polling stations. All in the attempt to make the NPP win the elections at all costs. An “all-die-be-die” agenda to be perpetrated as such!!
What will it mean to our democracy if the NPP crushes the NDC polling agents monitoring happenings? Or if the NPP mobilizes disgruntled retired or dismissed personnel of the security services to lynch serving officers deployed to oversee the smooth conduct of the elections? And what is it that empowers the NPP to go that distance while creating the impression that the legitimate state security apparatus will be so emaciated as not to function in the interest of the entire country? Will a victorious Akufo-Addo then put more premium on those hoodlums paving the way for him to be in power through violence? What, then, becomes of the legitimate national security apparatus?
The conclusion isn’t difficult to draw. By going this way, all that the NPP is telling Ghanaians and the whole world is that their might is right and should be accepted as such. Unfortunately, it won’t be so. That is the likely source of tension and a possible cause of unrest in the country. I am confident that the government—which is mandated by the Constitution to use all resources available to it to ensure national security, stability, and cohesion—will live up to expectation and not allow itself to be disabled by a desperate opposition seeking political power. When it comes to crunch, right will definitely overcome might!!
Meantime, the NPP persists in its scare-mongering campaign. While all that verbal sludge from it is passing under the bridge, its flagbearer has remained silent. He did so in the past when Kennedy Agyapong instigated the Asantes to kill the ewes and Gas and when Osafo-Marfo made his outrageous comments favouring the Akan majority’s hegemonistic tendencies. He has been in the forefront of the NPP’s campaign to submerge the minority ethnic groups, as we can tell from his tour of the Volta Region and why his running mate would attempt swallowing his own vomit to seek support from the Ewes in the Volta Region who had been made Guinea pigs in the NPP’s experiment of denigration regarding the NPP’s version of a flawed voters register. Are these Ewes no more Togolese to be chased out on Election Day? Too bad for Ghana!!
The NPP under Akufo-Addo is pursuing an agenda that won’t benefit Ghana. Is it because Akufo-Addo is part of the plot to visit mayhem on Ghana and Ghanaians at Election 2016 to achieve his childhood ambition of becoming Ghana’s president at all costs? Or because he endorses that kind of slimy politics? He has already succeeded in tearing apart his own party, having had those with dissenting views either gagged or viciously scapegoated. Anything different to come from him? Yet, he needs to change his public image; not so?
What he is leading the NPP to do is limited and restricted to a campaign of pessimism and nay-saying to anything coming from the Mahama-led administration. We have already examined some of those issues and concluded that the NPP is still its own enemy, which Election 2016 will confirm. No matter how much suffering Ghanaians feel they are subjected to, they will still be more wont to cherish peace and stability than going for the ghoulishness of the Akufo-Addo-led NPP. We know where we stand and will emerge at the end of Election 2016 to have the last laugh.
Within this context, let us be bold to say that no matter what Akufo-Addo and his NPP have to project themselves as the solvers of Ghana’s problems, the very foundation on which they stand belies it all. They may be blinded by what they see not to know that appearances are deceptive at this point. Only after the fact will they be wise; that is if they can reconcile what happened at Elections 2008 and 2012 with the ghastliness awaiting them at Election 2016.
In a simple sense, should they be threatening hell and brimstone if they are already persuaded that Ghanaians are so fed up with the Mahama-led administration as to vote it down? Should they be threatening mayhem as such? Or should they be setting up the Chair of the EC and the EC, generally, as an impediment to confront with so much vigour, violence and determination when there is no need for anything of the sort?
The simple truth is that if Akufo-Addo and his supporters are persuaded by their own assessment of the political situation that they stand far tall above the incumbent, should they be flexing muscles at all to the ext5ent as to make violence their main political tool? Shouldn’t they be resting assured of their own deductions to cut their steps properly, even if doing so will be giving them the chance to erase the negative impression of their flagbearer and his “all-die-be-die” mantra as a blot? There is a lot wrong here.
Folks, we are raising these issues to prove that the NPP’s approach toward Election 2016 is a death-trap for it. And it will surely lead to another disaster. We have said it, even to a fault, that although Ghanaians aren’t happy with the prevailing living conditions, they won’t just throw away the baby (President Mahama) with the dirty bath water. They know and cherish the peace and stability that has existed in the country thus far and will do all they can to secure life and limb.
That is why all the rhetoric wrapped around violence coming from the NPP camp is counter-productive. I wonder why it is difficult for Akufo-Addo and his flock to see what we have seen so they can polish their tactics/strategies to do better. Of course, we don’t even expect them to do so because once they have positioned themselves to see their own kind of reality, nothing will influence them to do other=wise. Unfortunately for them, their reality isn’t the reality that the voters see.
But they won’t accept that fact and will continue to set parameters that don’t fit into the political dispensation. Only after the ballots have been cast and counted and the results collected and collated will they know that they have been on a wild goose chase all along. I know that they will still see the wild goose ahead of them to chase, which will explain their outright rejection of the outcome on the basis of trumped-up allegations of collusion between the EC and the incumbent to deny them victory. They have already begun singing that tune, which is ridiculous at this point that nothing concrete has emerged to seal anybody’s electoral fate but their own. They have already miscalculated, sowing the wind but being afraid of reaping the whirlwind. Such people!!
Rather disturbingly, none of those personalities claiming to be peace-loving or institutions shouting their credentials as peacemakers have reacted to the threats of violence from the NPP camp. The so-called Ghana Catholic Bishops Conference, the Ghana Peace Council, the whatever else have not reacted in any way to prove to Ghanaians that they are indeed committed to peace or securing national integrity. They are nauseatingly silent. Their silence raises eyebrows and confirms suspicions that they are in bed with the NPP. But being in bed with the NPP to propagate and prosecute violence won’t secure their own safety because violence knows no bounds once unleashed. History is replete with records to scare them!!
My assessment of issues so far, folks. There is a lot more to do to prove to Akufo-Addo and his cabal that winning Election 2016 demands more than what they have put in place. They are vociferous because to them, noise does it all. To the incumbent and well-informed observers, other factors determine it all. Let the NPP people keep scaring the electorate with their rhetoric of violence. On the day of reckoning, the chips will fall in place for us all to know what is what.
As they harp on violence, they undermine themselves and cast a huge shadow on their agenda for national development. We will leave them to stew in that political foolery, even as we alert them to the fact that the existing security apparatus of Ghana can’t be bent by anybody anyhow to satisfy parochial political interests. So also will it not be possible to replace it with anything carved out of parochial political interests. Confronting it the way the NPP seeks to do will have dire consequences.
Interestingly, those leading the move to undermine it may not survive to tell their stories. Is anybody in the NPP really listening? Retired Captain Koda and Budu Koomson, the two main security props of Akufo-Addo, must be seeking to revise their notes; and we expect them to know how to lead the parade of the NPP’s “Concert Party”. We know where we stand. If they don’t, we care less.
I shall return…
• E-mail: mjbokor@yahoo.com
• Join me on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/mjkbokor to continue the conversation.
