The MIGHTY Rawlingses have fallen on their own swords…

Friday, October 19, 2012

Believe it or not, there is wailing, cursing, and gnashing of teeth in the household of the Rawlingses. Why? Because the Electoral Commission has decreed that they do so.

By exercising its mandate in the strongest vein so far, the EC has found fault with Nana Konadu Agyemang-Rawlings’ nomination forms and resolutely disqualifying her from contesting the December Presidential elections.

And with this devastating blow, the EC has brought the black sheep of Ghana politics (Nana Konadu) face-to-face with reality. Will the black ram of Ghana politics (Jerry John Rawlings) join her to mourn the sudden end of her political ambitions—and the setting of his own political sun?

Nana Konadu must by now be too paralyzed by this irreparable damage to know what has hit her. The forces arrayed against her are indomitable and she can’t have the elbow room she has created to operate on the platform of a political party that shouldn’t have been formed, in the first place. Building a nest in the NDC isn’t a politically wise step to take, and she is now paying the price for being incontinent.

The EC has irrevocably put the final nail in the coffin of the Rawlingses, which challenges Ghanaians to be bold enough to consign them to the political wilderness. Ghanaians should be relieved at this phenomenal moment.

Even before she fully girds her loins to launch a nationwide campaign to promote herself for the Presidential elections, Nana Konadu’s ambitions have been dashed. Of course, she has flapped her wings too vigorously and broken them, incapacitating herself in the process. Now, she can’t lift herself off the ground. Obviously, the Rawlingses must be grieving and gnashing their teeth at this turn of events, which runs counter to the boom that had characterized Nana Konadu’s nomination as the flagbearer of the NDP a few days hitherto.

Truly, what God has put together, let no man attempt putting asunder.

The EC has stood firm to act this way and deserves commendation. Its firm action has also affected other political parties and candidates, sending the signal to all that it will not condone mediocrity in the political game.

We don’t know the exact spots on the nomination form that Nana Konadu and those who helped fill that form for her left blank, but we can guess that those areas might be too challenging for them to handle. Otherwise, why couldn’t they provide the information (answers) that would have completed the process and made Nana Konadu’s nomination complete and incontrovertible?

What were they dodging? Or did they not have the requisite answers ready to be able to satisfy the EC’s demand? You see, clothes put on while running come off when one is running.

Indeed, from the manner in which Nana Konadu and her followers have been handling matters, one shouldn’t be surprised that they couldn’t turn all the stones. And not turning all the stones for us to see what lies underneath will definitely raise eyebrows and render their efforts suspicious and unconvincing.

In effect, the NDP couldn’t fulfill all the requirements and has now hit a huge snag on its way to legitimizing Nana Konadu’s candidature. A costly exercise in futility, one might say. But what else should we expect when all the motivation for Nana Konadu’s pursuits is nothing but greed, intolerance, vengeance, and pettiness?

Whether traumatized by this sudden blow or not, she will have no option but to respect the EC’s decision. If she decides to go to court to seek redress, she will make no headway because the EC operated within its legitimate purview to put her where she belongs.

Now that she has been thrown off balance, what will become of her political ambitions? Or her husband’s? I leave them to stew in their own foolery as they attempt coming out of their self-delusional state to know how the tide flows against them.

Having fought all these years to establish the NDC as a major political force, and having served as the party’s pillars in responsible positions, what at all was the overarching internal problem in the party that they couldn’t help solve without having to break ranks?

Nana Konadu was the 1^st Vice Chairperson, a position that empowered her to act as a strong force in the NDC. But she allowed her unbridled political ambitions to disempower her. Losing the contest at the Sunyani Congress seemed to have maddened her to the point of wanting to wreak vengeance on the very party that had propped her up all these years. And what we see happening now is the direct upshot of her miscalculation.

Her disqualification by the EC is just another bump on her political road. At this point, it may be too early to conjecture her next line of action; but we can hazard the guess that she won’t readily let sleeping dogs lie and will continue to swim against the current. We expect her not to immediately return to the NDC fold as a prodigal daughter. Now reduced to the status of a dying donkey, we expect her to kick the hardest and continue to badmouth everybody in the NDC whom she regards as an ill-wisher.

And shamefaced Rawlings himself? We expect that with his double-faced Janus posture, he will continue to move between both political camps (NDC and NDP), deceiving himself that he still has a niche to boast. Unfortunately for him, though, the EC’s action against his wife is yet another clear indication that his political sun is setting too.

Against this background, the Rawlingses have two “painful” two options to consider, either of which will have dire implications for them.

Option Number 1—to swallow their foolish pride and self-importance, recant from their self-seeking political folly, and return into the fold of the NDC.

After all, that’s where they belong, no matter how disgruntled they may be that their so-called principles of probity and accountability aren’t any more being valued by those now in control of the NDC.

They have a price to pay here because if they choose to swallow their pride and return to base, they will be doing so as potentates now drained of their power and influence in the NDC. They will have a hard time rebuilding trust and confidence to win back the clout that they have now lost. They have failed to keep their eyes on the ball and are disadvantaged at this point.

Returning to the NDC makes their NDP a non-starter or a prodigal political party. At this point, the going is already tough for them. Will they have any bargaining chip? Not at all, because they have reached a dead-end and don’t have any trump-card with which to twist arms. They can’t blackmail the NDC anymore nor will they have any bitter pill to ram down anybody’s throat as they’ve been doing all along when they thought they had a foothold elsewhere (probably, in the NDP).

They may deceive themselves that they can wait patiently to start all over again for the 2016 elections; but no one knows what tomorrow will bring. The mirage is too glaring to waste time and resources pursuing. They may return to the NDC from a position of weakness, which will reduce them to a laughing stock. Having spent money buying resources to fund the NDP only to be disarmed by the EC, they have nothing else to do except either disposing of those resources or ceding them to the NDC. Their situation is more than ridiculous now.

Option Number 2—to stand their grounds and snuggle to the NPP, hoping that an Akufo-Addo government will be lenient to them (if we infer from Rawlings’ appeal in his recent interactions with Akufo-Addo).

Anything of this sort is dicey, especially if the elections go the NDC’s way. Then, the Rawlingses will be completely erased from the NDC and have nothing but an endless trauma to contend with for the rest of their lives.

In any case, then, the Rawlingses stand to lose more than gain from the political goings-on. Some of us foresaw this sad end long ago and began sounding the alarm bells only to be insulted as “Rawlings haters.”

As we wait for the full impact of the EC’s decision to fall heavily down on Nana Konadu and her husband (as well as those misguided NDP lackeys), we hope that they will blame no one but themselves for their impending doom. Having hit the brickwall now, will they be prepared to turn a new leaf? Or will they continue to behave like the fish that refused to act when the pond began drying up? Certainly, the mighty Rawlingses have fallen on their own swords! I don’t pity them at all and will wait for their next move.

   

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