Friday,
December 21, 2012
The signals being sent out by the NPP are disheartening. I want
to say at this point that the party’s choice of Afari Gyan for verbal attacks
and open confrontation over Election 2012 is a disgrace, to say the least. And
here is why:
This Afari Gyan was their target of scorn when the NPP lost the
Presidential elections in 1992 and refused to participate in the Parliamentary
elections, choosing instead to indulge in empty scholarship, writing The Stolen Verdict that did them no
good. It was just a record of their lamentation for losing an election that
they were ill-disposed toward winning because their Presidential Candidate was
no Presidential material. A successful historian he was, but no Ghanaian in the
proper frame of mind would go for Adu Boahen as President.
Many factors worked against him, which put Rawlings poles ahead
of him in the race. Instead of assessing their own inadequacies and making
amends for the future, the so-called “interrectuals” that they labelled
themselves, chose to write a book on the elections. What a waste of talents?.
Failing to learn any lesson, the NPP went into the 1996
elections, organized and successfully supervised by this same Afari Gyan.
Kufuor was a paperweight before Rawlings and lost miserably. The NPP made some
faint noise verging on abuse of incumbency and grudgingly accepted the outcome
of the elections.
Come the 2000 elections, their situation changed for the better
even though Kufuor had to face the late Atta Mills in a run-off that he won.
None of these NPP loudmouths saw any reason to condemn Afari-Gyan at that time.
The praised him for being a resolute and efficient Electoral Commissioner. That
was just because they won.
Fast forward to Election 2004, which Afari Gyan supervised again
and Kufuor won. We recall the anger that the NPP’s victory provoked in the
ranks of the NDC to such an extent that Rawlings rejected the results because
he felt the elections were rigged to favour Kufuor. His agitations for Mills
not to concede defeat or for him to lead street protests to reject the outcome
of the polls failed. Mills would have none of that pushing and shoving. The NDC’s
protests remained guttural only.
Come 2008 when Mills defeated Akufo-Addo in the run-off, the NPP
functionaries rose up in arms against Afari-Gyan and were in the process of
filing an injunction against him on a public holiday but for the intervention
of the late B.J. da Rocha and Kufuor’s wise counsel to Akufo-Addo to accept the
results.
Then, Election 2012. Because Akufo-Addo and his NPP functionaries
had already conditioned their minds for victory, they least expected anything
to the country. After all, they had already judged their own
self-congratulatory campaign stunts and the fact that there seemed to be much
public disaffection against the Mills administration and the huge credibility
problems that faced the government (especially within the context of the Woyome
judgement debt scandal) to conclude that Election 2012 was a done deal for
them.
That was the NPP’s General Secretary (Kwadwo Owusu-Affriyie)
would even announce that victory long before the mass of votes could be tallied
and released. This unilateral fly-blown and pompous display of over-confidence
might have been part of the grand agenda or premeditation to set the stage for
what they did after the official results had been released by the EC. If it was
meant to pre-empt any declaration to favour President Mahama, it failed, as
later developments proved.
We recall that in the 2004 elections, Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey had
usurped the authority of the EC to announce Kufuor as the winner. That
unilateral act of indiscipline was contained somehow by the NDC and nothing
untoward happened.
In all these instances, Afari Gyan stood tall and performed his
legitimate functions. On those two occasions that the NPP won the elections,
none of its activists bad-mouthed Afari Gyan. On all the occasions that the party
lost the elections, Afari Gyan was the butt of their incessant calumny.
What has been happening since the declaration of the results is
unhealthy. It is demoralizing and portrays the NPP is a nuisance, as far as the
personal attacks on Afari Gyan are concerned. There is no justification for
jumping on him this way to create the impression that he is unpatriotic or a
scoundrel.
We reiterate this negative impression as created by the
pronouncements of Kwadwo Owusu-Affriyie at the Abbey Park, Kumasi, last Tuesday
when he “summoned Afari Gyan, the Electoral Commission
(EC) boss before God” for allegedly, rigging the polls in favour of the ruling
NDC. He noted that Dr. Afari-Gyan’s name would forever be attached to rigging
in Ghana politics following his decision to stoop low to rig the 2012 polls in
favour of the NDC.
Why subject such a public official to this kind of disparaging
verbal attacks just because you didn’t win the elections “at all cost”?
I think that the impact of the negative behaviour of the NPP
officials and their followers is devastating. It is demoralizing and will
certainly not encourage public officials to serve the country with all that
devotion and dedication, knowing very well how they will be treated in the end.
Even if the NPP has any cause to doubt Afari Gyan’s integrity, it
shouldn’t have gone to this extent to give the wrong signal to public servants.
In this sense, who will want to serve Ghana with all his heart? I won’t.
I know the NPP will not apologize to Afari Gyan for subjecting
him to this ill treatment and will do so on its behalf. I encourage him not to give
up or throw his arms in despair. Millions of Ghanaians appreciate his hard
work. He has done a marvelous job for the country and made huge contributions
to our democracy for which he must rest assured that he is in our hearts and
will continue to be there for ever and ever!
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