Friday,
January 25, 2013
With
the NPP’s abstention from the two upcoming bye-elections in the Akatsi South
and Buem constituencies, the NDC must be laughing all the way to claim an easy electoral
victory. Not much money expected to be spent campaigning, certainly.
The
candidate for Akatsi South has been selected without incident. But for Buem,
the situation has turned ugly—too ugly—for comfort, which raises questions: Is
somebody being batty? Or allowing the NDC’s performance at Election 2012 to eat
away his reasoning ability?
The
NDC leaders have disqualified Kofi Adams, the spokesperson for the Rawlingses,
from contesting the primaries. This action is not only sickening but it also
reflects the shadiness with which the party’s leaders approach politics. It is
a clear instance of the off-colour politics that they do to create problems.
We
are told that a member of the party in the Buem constituency yesterday sought the
court’s injunction against the exercise. The belief is that the court
injunction is linked to the disqualification of Kofi Adams. That is good news
to me. At least, it exposes a major cause of the NDC’s self-created woes.
I
consider the extreme to which the NDC leaders have gone to disqualify Kofi
Adams as politically unwise because of its implications and the impact on the
party itself.
What
is it about Kofi Adams that we haven’t had before in Ghanaian politics? In the
heat of the factionalism rocking the party and threatening an implosion, he was
suspended over the contents of a so-called leaked audio tape recording that
exposed clandestine attempts at undoing the NDC.
The
National Executive Council rose up to the issue and stripped Kofi Adams of his
post as Deputy General Secretary, leaving Asiedu Nketiah alone to have hold
sway. Several public pronouncements indicated that the matter was to be
investigated for Adams’ fate to be determined.
Nothing
concrete emerged to confirm that he was indeed the person caught on tape attempting
to ditch the NDC; nor was any official action taken to dismiss him from the
party. He didn’t of his own volition resign from the party. It was just the
post that he lost. Nobody took over from him to fill that slot in the party’s
echelons.
So,
what is the basis for not allowing him to stake his luck in the primaries? Just
because he was suspected of destroying the party from within and divested of
his status within the party?
What
is it about Kofi Adams’ so-called “treachery” that is novel? None, to me. From
all indications, he was downright critical in his public pronouncements about
goings-on in the party, especially when the late President Mills became the
butt of open ridicule and scathing criticisms over his leadership style.
Of
course, he identified with the Rawlingses and tore into the Mills-led
administration for its perceived failures, especially in the case of the Woyome
judgement debt scandal and many others regarding sloppy performance at the
Presidency.
Indeed,
he can be described as a victim of circumstance—speaking for the Rawlingses who
had turned themselves into matadors ready to gore ex-President Mills. He couldn’t
dissociate himself from the forces among which he was situated. But he didn’t
resign from the NDC all through those tumultuous times.
However,
when President Mahama moved into the saddle to ride the horse of state, he turned
coat. He quickly submitted to President Mahama’s authority, even to the chagrin
of Nana Konadu (if news reports on happenings in the Rawlings household were to
be believed then).
He
even went the extra mile to openly declare his support for President Mahama and
the NDC, refusing to toe Nana Konadu’s political line to join the National
Democratic Party that was formed right where his daily bread was being
buttered. He stuck to the NDC and openly campaigned for President Mahama in his
own small way.
Here
is my beef. In all that situation, the Rawlingses stood out as the worst
internal destroyers of the NDC, but the party leaders couldn’t take any action
against them. They still regarded Rawlings as the founder and father of the
party despite all that he did to destroy its fabric, hitting heads against each
other, and going to the extent of uplifting the NPP and its Akufo-Addo as
better than President Mahama and the NDC. Even after the elections, the
Rawlingses eased themselves toward the President.
My
question is: If the NDC leaders could still accept Rawlings for all that he
did, what is it about Kofi Adams that irks them so much that they can’t look
beyond the surface to allow him stake his luck in the primaries for the bye-elections?
Granted that he has bitten the finger feeding him, can these party leaders not
consider his worth to accommodate him but will rather choose to destroy him and
damn the consequences?
In
truth, what I see happening here is a rare case of wickedness in politics. I am
highly disappointed and will caution these leaders to act wisely if they don’t
want to re-start the internal wranglings.
Asiedu
Nketiah, particularly, needs to know that he is not the only person around whom
the NDC revolves. Every single member of the NDC matters in determining the destiny
of the party. The future of the party rests on youthful, hardworking
personalities like this Kofi Adams against whom they’ve all ganged up just
because he miscalculated his steps in a period which demanded what he did or
said.
I
don’t think that his actions or pronouncements hurt the party more than what
all others have in one way or the other done. Take the National Chairman (Dr.
Kwabena Adjei), for instance, when he told the judges that “there are many ways
to kill a cat,” which was a dangerous utterance that detracted from the NDC’s
worth.
Or
the machinations attributed to Yaw Boateng-Gyang, which sought to create
national security problems. What action did the national leaders take against
those two for their impolitic goofs?
Even,
Bede Ziedeng who deserted the NDC for Obed Asamoah’s DFP and harmed its
interests is back and rewarded with a Regional Minister’s post. Obed Asamoah,
who caused the NDC to lose over 100 million Cedis hidden under his bed in his McCarthy Hill residence and worked
against the NDC, is back and deferred to.
The
message I want to convey is simple: The
NDC leaders shouldn’t all too soon revive the intra-party dissensions. They
need to know that their ill-considered action against Kofi Adams will annoy
those who don’t agree with them; and it will be the dangerous seed of discord
to blossom into internal crisis sooner than later.
By taking this drastic action
against Kofi Adams, they are re-igniting the kind of fire that threatened to
consume the party in the post-Election 2008 period but was somehow doused to
ensure its electoral victory in Election 2012. Nerves may be lax after that
victory but can be stretched taut again at the least prompting.
Let’s be honest to say here that
much of what caused thepost-2008 fire resulted from this kind of sheer
incompetence, greed, or a dangerous penchant for vindictiveness.
I’ll place the circumstances
surrounding the Buem Constituency bye-elections in its proper context to
condemn the shortsightedness and plain mischief of the national, regional, and
constituency executive officers of the NDC.
I am more than happy that a court has placed an injunction against
the holding of the primaries to choose the party’s candidate for the
bye-election, which should have taken place today. The leadership of the NDC in
the Volta Region may say that they cannot allow the injunction placed on the
Buem primaries to stay. But it
has already stayed; not so? What can they do to reverse it? Nothing for now!
It is pathetic that the NDC leaders cannot think
outside the box to sustain the seemingly united front that the party has built
after its success at Election 2012 and are doing acts and making unguarded
pronouncements to pit Kofi Adams and his sympathizers against them.
As muscles begin being flexed just because the national,
regional, and constituency leaders of the party can’t make productive decisions
to move the party forward, I am more than convinced that the fire will soon
flare up to throw all of them into the panic mode again.
No amount of litigation will solve this simple
problem. That is why the Volta Regional NDC chairman Akwasi Aboagye’s message
that the party’s leaders are consulting their national leaders to immediately
find lawyers to table strong arguments before the court to get the injunction
slapped on their primaries annulled is nonsensical.
So
also is Kwasi Aboagye’s worry about the situation because this situation
shouldn’t have arisen, in the first place, had somebody in authority in the
party worn his thinking cap at the right angle instead of placing it jauntily
on his spinning head to be noticed as a lazy thinker.
How much more harm do
these NDC leaders want to inflict on the party at this time when they should rather
have been spending their time, energy, and resources on consolidating the gains
made at Election 2012?
I say, give Kofi
Adams the chance to prove his mettle. It is not as if he can’t uplift the NDC’s
flag wherever he is. He has all the benefits of common sense and political astuteness
to do well if given the chance. Disqualifying him from participating in the
primaries is the work of evil minds in the NDC.
Even, the Prodigal
Son had the gift of commonsense to return to his roots when reality struck.
Kofi Adams isn’t a “Prodigal Son” because he didn’t desert the NDC for
anywhere. He has stuck to the party all this while. He is just a small fry who
must not be hit with a sledge-hammer. He deserves better than being treated
like a bugbear. The real bugbears have stuck to the NDC like leeches, sucked
its blood, but are still well treated. Why not Kofi Adams too?
I shall return…
·
E-mail:
mjbokor@yahoo.com
·
Join
me on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/mjkbokor to continue the conversation.
No comments:
Post a Comment