These NPP MPs Are a Laughing-Stock!!

October 20, 2010

The NPP's MPs are gradually creating a bad name for themselves, and must be told the truth. The kind of politics that they are doing is backward and detrimental to oneness in the country. I will say it as it is and damn the consequences.

With all the problems facing our people, it is unimaginable for them to waste precious time creating needless tension and threatening to bring the roof down on everybody except themselves. Their behaviour demonstrates the contradictions inherent in political immaturity. 

Let me tell them straight to their faces that Ghanaians are more interested in what their leaders will do to improve their living conditions than who is an Asante, Ewe, Frafra, or Wangara.

They are not interested in being told who lives in the cities or in a hamlet tucked far away in the thickest part of the forest; who walks the Sahel; or who dives into the Volta River to eke out his livelihood. Or who, when he wakes up in the morning, washes his face upwards.

They expect their leaders on whom they spend their tax money to expend resources solving their existential problems. That's what these NPP MPs seem not to recognize. 

In a classical show of idleness and pettiness, the NPP Minority Caucus in Parliament has demanded the immediate resignation of the Deputy Tourism Minister, Kobby Akyeampong, over comments they consider as “ethnocentric and an affront to the dignity of Ashantis and people living in cocoa growing communities.”

Addressing a press conference on Wednesday October 20, the aggrieved MPs from cocoa growing areas, notably Ashanti, Brong Ahafo, and Western Regions, led by Kwame Osei Prempeh, MP for Nsuta Kwamang- Beposo and a former Deputy Attorney-General, issued a three-day ultimatum to Kobby Akyeampong to explain himself for insinuating that people from those areas are uncultured and unsophisticated.

Kobby Acheampong has admitted calling the General Secretary of the NPP, Kwadwo Owusu Afriyie, a “Kookooase Kuraseni,” meaning a villager from a cocoa-growing area.

But there is nothing to suggest that Kobby Akyeampong's insult was aimed at any ethnic group as these NPP MPs want us to believe. They are looking for manure where no cow has grazed and seeking the opportunity to cause trouble.

I can very well remember how we used to taunt some wayside gentlemen in those days as “Kokooase Abrantie,” a name that the Asantes have even given to a bird with beautiful plumage that patrols the cocoa farms and is admired for whatever it is.

Did we mean to say that we were insulting all people in cocoa-growing areas? Not all. A reference to a specific individual in a specific circumstance shouldn't be misrepresented as a stereotyping of all people of that individual's ethnic extraction!

I don't support Kobby Akyeampong's insulting behaviour nor am I endorsing any uncouth behaviour in national or local politics. In the same vein, I will not support this waywardness by these NPP MPs who are hell-bent on making a mountain out of a molehill or setting up a storm in a tea cup.

The way they are spinning the matter is disgusting. It is irritating when these self-centered people in politics seek to rouse ethnic sentiments about issues that don't deserve to be highlighted or raised to such a pedestal. This kind of trance-like stupidity doesn't solve national problems.

Name-calling is common in politics. What haven't we heard from and about our politicians since time out of mind? Do these NPP MPs not know how their own people call Northerners (“Pepefuo” or “Ntafuo”) or Ewes (“Number 9”), for instance? Or how the Northerners in turn call Akans (“Kabonga”)?

We all know that these names carry pejorative meanings but don't seek to burn the political landscape just because one person calls the other by it. Politicizing issues this way is disgusting, which these idling NPP MPs must be told. 

Sadly enough, these hypocritical NPP MPs are satisfied with the bad-mouthing of political opponents in the NDC but don't want anybody to paint them with that same brush. They are happy when one of them goes out of his way to hurl insults at such opponents.

From disparaging the then Vice President JEA Mills as “a poodle” in a campaign of calumny led by Kofi Coomson's The Ghanaian Chronicle to their flagbearer Akufo-Addo's discrediting of President Mills as “President Do Little,” these NPP idle hands haven't batted an eyelid in protest at this bad-mouthing.

They haven't found it prudent to condemn the open insult hurled at President Mills by one of their supporters who called him a “chimpanzee.” Nor have they had any compunction to question the lack of civility in the tones of insults hurled at Jerry Rawlings, his wife, and all others not in their political camp.

I am talking about a group of people who come across as thieves, liars, and murderers but who will whitewash themselves in public and go after anybody who is bold enough to take them on. These are the people who profess to be the apostles of liberal democracy who are the first to cast the stone at people who dare point out their frailties to them.

What arrogance didn't the NPP's General Secretary himself display toward the Akpeteshie distillers when he made a disparaging comment about them and was asked to withdraw it and apologize to them?

Did these NPP MPs see anything wrong with all the shady deals that Kufuor led them to commit in his 8 years at the Osu Castle, some of which led to the Duose Commission's work involving Kwadwo Mpiani and Wereko-Brobey? Did they know that the word “resign” was in existence in those circumstances?

These are people who have sworn despicable oaths of secrecy in matters concerning thievery, bribery, and corruption to such an abominable extent that irks decent-minded people but will come out to glibly condemn others over petty issues.

Whenever any of them is exposed for punishment, they quickly resort to rabble-rousing, corrupting their witless supporters to take to the street in protest. Creating anarchy, then, becomes their trump-card. One recalls what happened on the numerous occasions on which the searchlight was focused on NPP elements.

Take, for instance, the action by the Police against Kwadwo Mpiani and Wereko-Brobey. The NPP organized its supporters to cause needless mayhem within the precincts of the BNI and Police Headquarters during which one life was lost.

On numerous other occasions, these supporters were misled into supporting the wrong cause and creating the impression that they were victims of a political witch-hunt. 

Rabble-rousing of this sort is their penchant. Any time one of them commits a blunder and is taken to task, the first thing to do is to extend issues beyond their reasonable bounds to create the impression that all others of that party members' ilk is being victimized.

Take the case between Ursula Owusu and Jinapor, Vice President Mahama's Special Aide, for instance.

Even though Jinapor had specifically isolated Ursula as a single woman against whom he had passed the scathing comment that threw her into disarray, she unconscionably misrepresented issues to cover all Ghanaian women and sought to manipulate their sensibilities toward a demonstration on the streets of Accra in the nude to register their protest at defamation of their womanhood.

What a shameless opportunist Ursula proved to be?

hen, this very case involving this NPP MP is being blown out of all reasonable proportions to suggest that an NDC functionary had insulted all Asantes. What a cheap way of doing politics in the 21st century?

The sad aspect of this rabble-rousing is that these NPP MPs forget that when they over-exaggerate such utterances and blow them out of all reasonable proportions, they only end up making big fools of themselves.

Indeed, how can one fail to see Kobby Akyeampong's specific references to this NPP MP as a single individual whose behaviour and utterances place him under the label of “Kokooase”? Calling him by this name doesn't extend to all others, especially those in the Ashanti Region.

In any case, why should anybody want to limit the reference to the Ashanti Region alone? Is that the only area in Ghana where cocoa is produced? For the records, let it be known that cocoa is abundantly produced in the Western region of Ghana as well as in the other regions—Central Brong-Ahafo, Volta, and Eastern Region.

So, extending Kobby Akyeampong's insult, which was specifically aimed at this single NPP MP, to cover an entire Ashanti Region or others from where those idle NPP MPs at the press conference come and, invariably, seeking to turn Akans against the NDC, is not only a mischievous political game but is also indicative of the pettiness that these NPP MPs have reduced their politicking to. It won't work.

If their intention is to benefit from this kind of dirty political game of rabble-rousing, they are deceived. Discerning minds have already isolated the sheep from the goats. 

These NPP MPs have gradually drawn attention to themselves as the black sheep of 21st century Ghana politics. I am not deceived at all about their hidden agenda—using Kobby Akyeampong's verbal attacks on an individual NPP MP or functionary of the Asante extraction as a political tool to undercut the NDC's interests in the Ashanti Region. 

I am reminded of Victor Owusu's damning reference to the Ewes as “inward-looking people,” whose negative backlash has hit the Danquah-Busia political family ever since he made it in 1969.

At every election time, the Danquah-Busia political group cringes, fearing that it would certainly not get the nod from the Ewes because of what Victor Owusu had done to annoy them.

Of course, Victor Owusu was blunt in his utterance—directing his verbal cannon at a whole ethnic group. That's where the disparity between what Kobby Akyeampong has said and Victor Owusu's incontinence emerges. 

These NPP MPs shouldn't forget that members of the other ethnic groups who have their personal disinclinations towards their party may be doing so for various reasons, particularly the arrogance and damaging cunning that they infer from the NPP elements' attitudes and utterances.

Of course, being a party that has its roots in Kumasi (the Ashanti Region, generally), the NPP can't contain any reference to its origin that detracts from its worth. The point is that these NPP MPs see problems as nails and the only solution they have is a hammer.

Their NPP's being Akan-based (and suffering from the bad public image thereby), they are quick to react in the very predictable manner that these MPs have demonstrated—reading ethnicity into everything that works against them. And with their hammers in hand, they go for the nails that they perceive the problems to be. They are a bunch of idle hands who have too much time and too little to do.

Of course, I don't blame them. Instead, I blame the late Attakorah-Gyimah of Nkukuo Buoho, near Offinso in the Ashanti Region, whose pioneering efforts through the formation of the Danquah-Busia Club in 1992 provided the lifeline and vim for the NPP to emerge as a political party to bring together these idle hands.

These are the people for whom the state has raised salaries to 20% and who have been given 50,000 Dollars each as car loans by President Mills. These are the people who will do all they can to protect their own parochial interests while turning a blind eye to the debilitating plight that millions of Ghanaians continue to suffer.

These are people doing politics but are not politicians. A true politician will think beyond the “stomach” and do what will fetch him/her a good name and qualify him/her to be written in the annals of a country's history (even while alive).

Ghana is, indeed, cursed with such characters in charge of its affairs in Parliament.