n Voter Intimidation, John Mahama Must Ask Mitt Romney

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

I have yet to avail myself of the full details of the latest dastardly attempt by an alleged National Democratic Congress (NDC) sympathizer to violently reduce members and supporters of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) into submission with barely a week before Election 2012 (See “AFAG Statement: NDC, Halt the Intimidation” Ghanaweb.com 12/1/12).

As the press statement released by the Alliance for Accountable Governance (AFAG) clearly and aptly indicated, this NDC-instigated attack comes right on the heels of the so-called Manhyia Peace Accord (MPA). I, personally, found the entire affair to be rather strange, to speak much less about the downright suspicious, especially in view of its curious orchestration with the apparently active and central involvement of the Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei-Tutu II, in this decidedly political affair.

I have since wondered, perhaps at the risk of being accused of paranoia, whether the Manhyia Peace Accord was not a deftly orchestrated ploy by somebody, or even a group of individuals, hell-bent on seriously undermining the will of the Ghanaian electorate by deviously attempting to preempt the latter’s constitutional right to vehemently protest, or even righteously call for the immediate nullification of the results of Election 2012, should it come to the forensically provable conclusion that, indeed, the entire exercise has woefully failed to meet the standard democratic test of credibility.

As AFAG also aptly indicated, coming not too long in the wake of the Yaw Boateng Gyan tape saga, in which key and prominent members of the Mahama-Arthur regime of the National Democratic Congress were discovered to have conspired to violently rig Election 2012 in favor of their paymasters, makes the latest Manhyia Constituency voter-related eruption all the more disturbing.

For me, though, the Manhyia or Ash-Town shootings, as some media reports characterize it, eerily recalls the infamous Baffoe and Twumasi Ankrah deadly anti-United Party mayhem brutally and systematically orchestrated by the erstwhile Nkrumah-led Convention People’s Party (CPP). In sum, if the Mahama-Arthur Gang is hoping to bulldoze its way back into the august seat of governance, come December 7, 2012, with this kind of savage criminality, then I am afraid the two Mafia dons have woefully miscalculated. For Ghanaians would rather pay with our dear lives – in the hallowed tradition of Dr. J. B. Danquah and Mr. Obetsebi-Lamptey; and also Sgt. Adjetey, Lance Corporal Attipoe and all the other unsung heroes of Ghana’s independence struggle – than be docilely enslaved by the “revolution”-mongering and violence-prone National Democratic Congress.

But, perhaps, it may do the Mahama-Arthur posse a lot of good to learn a thing or two from the failed attempt by the U.S. Republican Party presidential candidate and former Massachusetts governor, Mr. Mitt Romney, to use voter intimidation and racism to edge out President Barack H. Obama. Needless to say, the backlash came in the predictable form of galvanizing Democratic Party members and supporters and their sympathizers and allies in the “mainstream,” or white, community – the 47-percent of “Nobody Americans” that Mr. Romney secretly disdained and was serendipitously caught on tape insulting – to force Mr. Mahama’s American-Double back to his Utah Mormon Community.

God willing, by this time next Friday, December 7, 2012, Ghanaians resolved in their righteous indignation and immutable desire to seeing a hopelessly corrupt and profligate “Little Dramani” fittingly retire to his sprawling estate and harem in Bole-Bamboi will have their prayers answered affirmatively. They will also massively vote to ensure that no pathological “Tribal-Regionalist” ever rises, again, to occupy the highest seat of governance in the land, not even by the hook and/or crook of a Millsian tragedy!

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

Department of English

Nassau Community College of SUNY

Garden City, New York

December 1, 2012

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