Thursday, June 18, 2015
Folks, let’s be blunt to say upfront that happenings
in the NPP regarding the status of Paul Afoko (National Chairman) and Kwabena
Agyei Agyepong (General Secretary) give us a comedy of errors to fear and not
enjoy. Here are two high-ranking party administrators declared as “enemies” and
chased out of office; yet, they are still doing things and making public
statements being followed by the party’s functionaries without question. The
NPP is grinding to a point of disrepute.
The rumpus rocking it, caused by agitations
against Afoko and Agyepong and their continued stay in office, portrays an
ambivalent picture of the entire NPP setup. It is a litmus test that the
leaders of the NPP, the Akufo-Addo camp instigating the agitations, and the
unwitting elements being used against Afoko and Agyepong have woefully failed.
And it portrays the NPP as a laughable political entity to be watched lest it
plunges the country into chaos if put in office. In politics, ambivalence
portends danger!!
Afoko and Agyepong are still at post. Despite
all the machinations against them, culminating in their being stained as the
masterminds behind the acid-bathing of Alhaji Adam Mahama and consequently
declared as “persona non grata” unfit to administer the affairs of the NPP,
their being physically debarred from entering their offices at the NPP’s
national headquarters to perform their legitimate duties, and their being ostracized,
Afoko and Agyepong are still standing tall in the workings of the NPP. By
digging in and refusing to resign as demanded by their detractors, they have
proved that they are no putty at all to be cajoled into submission. They have
stood their grounds and are standing tall to make statements that no one in the
NPP has dared to counteract.
Kwabena Agyei gave instructions on how the
recent primaries to choose Parliamentary candidates should be conducted and
followed up to issue a stern warning to defeated aspirants, poking them in the
eye that any among them who chose to go independent would be dismissed from the
NPP. None of those butting heads with him and Afoko has reacted to his
authoritative moves as the General Secretary of the NPP.
He has also said that the 4% rise in the
prices of petroleum products is a confirmation (to him) of the Mahama-led
administration’s incompetence. I dismiss this utterance as balderdash aimed at
regaining lost grounds in the NPP camp. This kind of statement is characteristic
of rogue politicians. No more. But he chose this moment to spring back and be
accepted as the substantive General Secretary of the NPP. On the other hand, Paul
Afoko hasn’t been so loquacious; but he still stands tall as the party’s
National Chairman. On the flip side, all those bad-mouthing them and calling
for their heads have recoiled into their shells.
The National Executive Committee of the NPP,
the Council of Elders, the NPP MPs, National Officers, Regional Chairmen, Constituency
Executives, and ordinary members haven’t had the audacity to question Agyepong
on why he is still upholding himself as the General Secretary of the party and
performing functions that he might have been regarded as divested of. The
ambivalence is thick.
Have Agyepong and Afoko been re-admitted into
confidence to perform their functions? Have they been cowed into submission
after the “baptism of fire” so they will work assiduously for Akufo-Addo? Or
have their detractors lost the fight, after all? The ambivalence is really puzzling.
Against this background, I want to analyze
happenings in the NPP regarding the recent uproar and series of physical
actions against Afoko and Agyepong that have portrayed them as undesirables;
but that has also reflected negatively on the NPP itself as a divided front.
Such a broken home is not fit to rule Ghana, one might claim. I want to use the
rumpus concerning Afoko and Agyepong to question the problem-solving abilities
of the NPP’s leaders, seeking to prove that they are better at crying wolf and
damaging their own political interests than their political opponents can ever
do. The fault is within the NPP and its own leaders. I premise my analysis on two
questions: What is the status of Afoko and Agyepong in the NPP today? What
authority do they have to continue doing and saying things in the name of the
party after all that has been done to deflate them and make them unattractive
as administrators charged with mobilizing forces to put Akufo-Addo in power at
Election 2016?
Here is the context for my analysis. The
machinations leading to the declaration of Afoko and Agyepong as dangerous to
the Akufo-Addo agenda began many years ago when they were perceived as working
against the interest of William Nana Addo Danquah (Dankwa) Akufo-Addo, the
party’s third-time flagbearer. Without even providing any evidence to
substantiate the allegations against Afoko and Agyepong, their
detractors—easily identifiable as Akufo-Addo’s lackeys—did many things and splashed
much mud to soil their public image.
I shall return…
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E-mail: mjbokor@yahoo.com
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