Monday,
December 17, 2012
The road in front of the NPP is
indeed winding and long. It fits into what the celebrated Ghanaian poet,
Atukwei Okai, has rightly captured in his imagination as “Lorgorligi Logarithms.”
Will the NPP leaders move their supporters along this road to reach Canaan? To
claim what they are clamouring for as their electoral crown? I wonder.
As they insist on having their
day in court but continue to give conflicting/contradictory explanations
day-in-day-out about where they are in the process of gathering evidence for
that purpose—or even on the exact quantum of votes allegedly stolen for
President Mahama—they give misleading impressions about their true intentions.
All that noise about their
research office being raided or the office of the leader of their legal team
(Gloria Akuffo) being broken into are part of what makes the journey truly lorgorligi
in nature. Too many different tastes will confuse the tongue; not so?
They seem to be stuck at three
points now: mustering enough bravado to take on the EC, the NDC, and the media
at the Supreme Court; persisting in demonstrating their displeasure through
physical acts of mayhem; or presenting a petition to the Asantehene on Tuesday
(after a public demonstration in Kumasi), then, prevailing on their supporters
to end the street bedlam and return to normalcy to wait for further directives
from them.
The expectation at that point
will be that they themselves will abandon their hot-headed protests and follow
the due process in seeking redress, as is expected of those calling themselves
democrats!
Any of these lines of action has
its own consequences which, I hope the NPP’s followers will factor into
whatever they decide to do henceforth.
Let me briefly tell them that the
intention to go to court is well registered on the minds of Ghanaians and they
will expect it to be carried out for us to know what they think they know.
In this light, we are thrilled to
hear from Nana Akomea, Communications
Director of the NPP, that the party would file its case at the Supreme Court
within 21 days, as stipulated by the Constitution, and that the hearing of the
case could start in full by January 15, 2013.
But there seems to be a snag
waiting for them already. All of a sudden, voices opposed to this court action
have started emerging from within the NPP’s own fold. Initial reports that the
NPP supporters in Kumasi were divided over the issue seem to be given substance
by Dr. Yves Charles Wereko-Brobby, a founding member of the NPP. The Tarzan has
bared his teeth at those gunning for court action or street protests, which he
sees as useless.
In
a statement issued in Accra yesterday,
he objected to the court action and suggested that the party should let
sleeping dogs lie. In other words, “As
far I am concerned, those who watched things happen then, instead of making
things happen, and are now straining their credentials to prosecute stolen
verdict simply have no case. Their time would be better spent ensuring that the
will of the people of Ghana in election 2016 will be manifested in a victorious
outcome.”
That’s
a bombshell, coming from Wereko-Brobby. Not only is he taking issues with the
party’s organizers and polling agents for not playing their roles properly to
put Akufo-Addo in office but he is also bold enough to dismiss the intended
court action as a waste of time.
Wereko-Brobby
is pessimistic of the outcome of this court case and wishes that the party will
concentrate efforts on re-organizing itself for the future. The reasons he
cited aren’t different from what I have been harping on all this while to alert
the NPP leaders and their followers to the danger into which they are plunging
their party just to serve the purposes of one person—Akufo-Addo—who is at pains
to admit that his loss at the 2012 polls means the end of his political career.
The
court action, as Wereko-Brobbey and I see it, won’t reverse what has already
been declared by the EC nor will it help strengthen the NPP for future
electoral contests. At best, it will only be for the records. And who will
benefit from such a rhetorical feat? Only the Ghana Law Reform Commission or
those in charge of preparing legal reports to serve as reference points for law
students will be interested in such legal theatricals. The Tarzan has a strong
argument here.
This
stance has suddenly shot the NPP out of focus and will trigger more wrangling.
As is to be expected, sharp criticisms of Wereko-Brobby have already surfaced.
Nana Akomea is questioning the basis for Tarzan's
comments. In an analogy, he said merely because a security man failed in
his duties to protect a house does not mean that the burglar should be rewarded
and praised for his action. To him, given the “extensive irregularity” that
characterized the 2012 elections, it would be foolhardy on the part of the NPP
to let sleeping dogs lie.
Nana
Akomea said the NPP owed it a duty to Ghana and her young democracy to
challenge the election results at the courts. “We have a duty to expose
these irregularities so they don’t happen again,” he added.
Two troubles one God already!
Ghanaians are not perturbed at the NPP’s decision to go to court nor will they
lose sleep at the ebb and flow of the court proceedings. To the majority who
endorsed President Mahama and the 151 NDC Parliamentarians, what is written is
written: the NPP is still in opposition.
So also is it with all the
foreign institutions and heads of state who have already congratulated
Ghanaians for holding free, fair, and transparent elections to elect President
Mahama for a full four-year term. None of these congratulatory messages gave
any indication of fraud as the NPP is alleging, which means that Ghanaians will
care less how the NPP resolves its own internal conflicts in readiness for this
legal tussle.
What fascinates Ghanaians,
however, is Nana Akomea’s claim that “the hearing of the case could start in full by January 15, 2013.”
Ghanaians know that by constitutional demand, the President-elect should
be inaugurated into office on January 7, 2013. The NPP’s court action,
notwithstanding, they expect that the inauguration will take place to
legitimize President Mahama’s administration.
This is where a fine line of
treachery appears. And it alerts Ghanaians to the hidden subversive agenda of
the NPP, assuming that they manage to file their case within the 21-day period.
The overarching question, then, is: Does the NPP expect that once they file
their case before January 7, the Supreme Court will place an injunction on the
inauguration of President Mahama?
We acknowledge that the
Transitional Team has already begun preparing the ground for the switch from
the care-taker administration under President Mahama to a full-fledged one to
be led by him for the next four years.
In view of the NPP’s intended
legal action, one might be tempted to assume that the Supreme Court will decide
that the inauguration be placed on hold until it determines the case. That may
be the faint hope that the NPP leaders may be nursing so they can thump their
chests in self-congratulatory judicial success.
Unfortunately for them, I don’t
see anything of the sort happening. Our constitution is silent on what happens
after January 7 if a stalemate of the sort that any decision of the Supreme
Court stopping the inauguration will create.
There is no provision for the
President to continue in office while a case challenging his election is being
tried. We don’t want to assume that the Supreme Court will place such an
injunction to create not only a constitutional crisis but also a governance
problem. But in our kind of democracy where state institutions are weak and
manipulable for political purposes, we won’t rule anything out. But Ghanaians
will resist anything of the sort because of its negative impact on governance.
That resistance can be fatal.
At this point, we can say with a
measured certainty that the NPP leaders may be aiming at this objective. Once
they’ve made up their minds to destabilize the Mahama-led administration, they
will go for anything at all that can be used for that purpose.
In the long run, though, there is
every cause to believe that the NPP will go nowhere with its manouevres.
Neither the street demonstrations nor the presentation of a petition to the
Asantehene will solve their problems. So also will their court action not
reverse their sad fate. I foresee another defeat waiting to hit them in the
face, which will worsen their plight.
As Wereko-Brobby has rightly put
it, all that they are doing now has the potential to deepen their woes. The
best thing to do is to re-appraise the situation and re-strategize for the
future. Anything short of that will further erode public confidence, respect,
and trust in the NPP.
The truth is that Ghanaians who
voted against Akufo-Addo didn’t just wake up in the morning of Election Day to
do so. They had had enormous opportunities to assess each of the Presidential
Candidates and made electoral decisions that favoured President Mahama. They
will not be expected to turn against him, even if the NPP succeeds in working
for a run-off to be held between him and Akufo-Addo.
From what has happened so far, I
am certain that Akufo-Addo will not get anything close to the 47.71% of the
votes that got him somehow close to the outskirts of Canaan but not helped him
access the milk and honey flowing there. We foresaw it long before it happened
and pointed it out only to be condemned as vile tribalists.
Now that one of their own kind
has begun singing the same refrain, I hope they will listen to reason. Truly, the
truth hurts. Or better still, an insult is not more painful than when it is
true. We wait for the lorgorligi movement to begin in
earnest. Interesting times ahead!!
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