When The NDC Mourn More Than The Bereaved

It looks like the leadership of the National Democratic Congress and its foot soldiers are in no hurry to leave Government House. Having lost power in the year 2000 and regained it in 2008, members of the political party founded by Jerry John Rawlings from the butt of the gun are ready to dig in for a long stay.

Not many Ghanaians are happy with the party’s record in office, with corruption and nepotism eating deep into every aspect of national life, and reducing the quality of life of most of our people to a struggle to exist.

The Woyome loot, SADA corrupt deals, GYEEDA naked stealing, and an economy oiled by huge borrowings and International Monetary Fund dictation do appear not to worry those who weave the plot at the party office at Adabraka, a suburb of Accra.

Throwing mud at the main competitor is becoming the stock in trade of the party leadership and its communication team. In the run-up to the 2008 presidential vote, the party, led by its Women’s Organiser, acidic-mouthed Ama Benyiwa-Doe were at their dirty campaign worst. The woman, fondly remembered at the NDC offices across the country as Ama Chavez, seized every opportunity to smear Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, presidential candidate of the opposition New Patriotic Party. She sat sheepishly at various radio stations and proclaimed Nana Addo as a drug peddler.

At the time she was spreading those lies, Benyiwa-Doe and her party leadership knew that it was a white lie. But the more people drew attention to the fallacy in those utterances, the louder she shouted from the roof-tops. When her party won the polls in December 2008 and Benyiwa-Doe was appointed Minister of the Central Region, she sheepishly sat before the Appointment Committee of Parliament and confessed that at the time she was smearing Nana Akufo-Addo with those allegations, she knew she was lying. “It was political talk,” she said, without any sense of guilt.

My greatest regret, as a native of the Central Region, is that such a pathological liar was appointed by Prof Mills to head the region, with some of the best centres for learning this country could boast of.

With the 2016 vote barely six months away, the NDC is at it again. On radio stations, and what Citizen Vigilante, Martin Amidu, describes as ‘criminally-minded rented press,’ aspersions are being cast day in and day out at the NPP presidential candidate and the main threat to President John Mahama’s continued stay at the Jubilee House.

The latest beef is that as Member of Parliament for Abuakwa and a Foreign Minister in the Kufuor regime, Nana Akufo-Addo was unable to complete a library complex under construction at Kyebi, his hometown. The contention is that the library complex, which is named after the late Mr. Joseph Boakye Danquah, the doyen of Ghana politics, has been abandoned to weeds, and that means Nana Akufo-Addo cannot be trusted to run this state and its economy.

Yesterday, a spokesman for the traditional area called into a radio programme where a communication team member of the NDC was in his elements, and explained that the library complex was being constructed by the traditional council, and that Nana Addo was not involved in any way. Even with this explanation, the so-called NDC communicator would not listen.

It is a fact universally acknowledged that in Africa, where one man could hang on to power for 30 years and still counting, reasoning cannot be counted among political virtues. Even then, it is irrational for anybody to contrive to question the capabilities of a presidential candidate on the basis that a project in his hometown has not been completed.

I have not been to Bole, President Mahama’s hometown. But I have seen pictures of several dilapidated houses in the town that could do with re-construction. I know for a fact too, that a Ghana Cocobod experiment with a shea nut tree plantation in the President’s backyard is not progressing according to plan.

Normally, shea nut trees grow in the wild. The idea is that if the plantation idea at Bole proves successful, the experimental farm would be replicated throughout the north to offer reliable income from the cash crop along the lines of the cocoa industry.

The experiment began about 12 years ago. So far, there is no indication of the success of the exercise. Could any rationale human being conclude that because Bole is the President’s hometown and constituency, Mr. John Dramani Mahama is incompetent to lead this nation?

“Unnatural deeds,” wrote William Shakespeare in Macbeth, “breed unnatural troubles.” I am offering free consultancy to the NDC and its party apparatchiks to stop their politics of smearing opponents and begin to discuss issues. This smear campaign and propaganda stance might have served the party Jerry John Rawlings founded in the past. Slowly, and surely, this nation is moving away from the era when contrived lies took the place of rational thinking.

If this society should go by the dirty standards the NDC has set, President Mahama may well not qualify to contest the vote again. In his own words, the Head of State of this republic is a Socialist.

“I am still a Socialist,” says President Mahama. “I am a left of centre politician. I believe that in Africa, if you see the poverty around us, you can’t afford to be anything else.”

Under Mahama’s socialist watch, Korle Bu, this nation’s finest institution for medical care as well as a number of our health centres, have abandoned the National Health Insurance Scheme and resorted to Cash and Carry.

As you read this piece, Isaac Adobah, the poor father of nine year-old David Adobah, the Class Three pupil of Dansoman One Basic School in Accra, who broke his hand in a freak playground accident, has contracted a loan from a shylock money lender to pay for the child’s medical expenses of over GH¢2,000.

According to Senior Adobah, the terms of the GH¢1,000 loan he secured requires him to fork out GH¢200 every month in interest. Until the principal is retired in bulk, he would continue to pay GH¢200 every calendar month.

Under Socialist Mahama, all the social interventionist policies bequeathed his administration are collapsing. What I call the Mahamean Economic Theory of borrowing to confront every problem, with its Tekpernomics, has saddled this country with nearly GH¢100 billion. This nation is mandated by this massive borrowing to pay GH¢11 billion in interest payment per annum. Under Socialist Mahama, the centre cannot hold.

If the NDC theory on Nana Addo should apply to Mr. Mahama, the sitting President would not qualify to contest the vote in November this year. Politics is changing. At this point in time, elections are a contest of ideas, and not mudslinging.

On Wednesday, I laughed my lungs off when I heard the news item that the NDC would not contest the Abuakwa North Constituency by-election in sympathy with the family of the slain Member of Parliament, J.B. Danquah Adu. I laughed, because the reason given by the party in power does not add up.

In July 2012, sitting President John Evans Atta Mills, who sat at the Castle on the ticket of the NDC, kicked the bucket in circumstances that have still not been unraveled. How a seriously ill Head of State of this Republic ended up at the Maternity Ward of the 37 Military Hospital in Accra, and without warning to the health professionals at the hospital, was tragic in every sense of the word.

Yet, the NDC contested the 2012 presidential election without any qualms. Why party officials are mourning more than the bereaved, in the case of deceased Joseph Boakye Danquah Adu, is a subject matter that should interest students of Ghanaian contemporary politics.

I shall return!