De facto propaganda chief of the NPP, Gabby Asare Otchere Darko in a widely circulated article last week which was published in the Daily Graphic of Monday 3rd September, 2012, offered the latest instalment in a sustained effort by his party to denigrate President John Dramani Mahama with a view to denting his squeaky-clean image.
In the said article, Gabby heaped insults on the person of President Mahama describing him in certain paragraphs as �oafish�, �flimflam� among other appalling invectives. The article has since spawned further write-ups which are equally in bad taste and has become a reference point for vile attacks on President Mahama by NPP propagandists.
Obviously rankled by the fact that the relatively youthful President Mahama holds greater appeal for the youth and broader masses of Ghana as compared to their near septuagenarian candidate, the NPP has for some time now made it a key plank of their campaign strategy to hurl as much mud at him in the hope that it will stick.
Beginning just three days after the burial of the late President Mills, the NPP held a press conference addressed by its chairman Jacob Obetsebi Lamptey during which he unfurled some of the most risible acussations ever penned against the President. Indeed, so outrageous were the claims in their defiance of logic that it left one wondering the sort of brainstorming session that went into the drafting of that statement. A case in point was when in that statement the NPP suggested that the NDC�s promise of setting up the Savanna Acelerated Development Authority (SADA) had been broken and so that amounted to corruption on the part of President Mahama.
The truth however is that SADA has indeed been set up and all monies promised them released. Till date SADA has received GHS 260,000, 000 which is in excess of the seed capital of GHS 200,000,000 promised in the NDC manifesto of 2008. This has gone a long way in giving them the wherewithal to roll out far reaching interventions aimed at transforming the lives of the inhabitants of the entire Northern Savanna Ecological Zone (NSEZ).
One such intervention is the setting up of a 40,000 metric tonne capacity Shea nut factory at Buipe in partnership with the Produce Buying Company which has created a ready market for Shea nuts which is one of the mainstays of the livelihoods of people in Northern Ghana. Currently, SADA in partnership with a private firm, Avanash is constructing a rice processing factory at Nyankpala in the Northern Region. This rice factory will have the capacity to process every bag of rice produced in the entire Northern belt of Ghana. These two projects have provided jobs for thousands of hitherto unemployed youth.
That said, assuming for argument sake that the promise to set up SADA had even not been fulfilled, how does that amount to corruption on the part of President Mahama? Such has been the paucity of depth in the message of the NPP over the last three and half years.
It was therefore little surprise that Gabby Otchere Darko in the same spirit threw in his article just when the NDC was concluding its special delegates congress which gave President Mahama an overwhelming mandate in Kumasi. Writing under the guise of critiquing the hugely successful autobiography by President John Dramani Mahama, �My First coup D��tat�, the NPP spin doctor had only two objectives in mind. I will not spend any time defending the contents of the book because no such defence is required as it speaks for itself. Besides, a masterful review was written last week by the respected Colin Essamuah in which he set out all the relevant points about the book.
Armed with his favourite tools, sophistry and insufferable arrogance, Gabby first sought to portray President Mahama as a condescending elitist and a believer in mindless thuggery of the sort preached by Nana Akufo Addo through his blood cuddling �all-die-be-die� war cry.
The second objective was to extricate his boss Akufo Addo from the deep-seated public view about him as a haughty aristocrat with a sense of entitlement to the Presidency of Ghana and in recent times as a desperate politician who is prepared to resort to blood shed if only it will secure him the leadership of Ghana.
In order to set the stage for this unwarranted attack on the President, the skilled propagandist, took a chapter of the book in which the President recounted an incident during his days at Achimota School involving a bully called Ezra out of context and distorted the message that the writer was sending across that it was possible to stand up to wrong doing in society and live to tell the story.
In the end, Gabby fell short of achieving either objective because unlike Akufo Addo, President Mahama does not have to do anything to convince the electorate that he is a gentle, affable, down to earth politician who for all the period that he has been in public service has upheld the highest standards of ethical conduct. They are fully aware that President Mahama is also not terribly afflicted by the lust for power which has pushed Akufo Addo to hanker after violence.
It is not lost on the Ghanaian electorate that in spite of President Mahama�s relative youth, he has more public service and governance experience than Akufo Addo having served as a three-term MP, a deputy minister, a minister, Vice president and President. In all these years he has not put a foot wrong but has rather carried himself with admirable grace and circumspection especially in his utterances. This rich track record makes him by far the best prepared man for the job of President in Ghana at the moment.
On the other hand, Nana Akufo Addo�s public service and governance record is limited to stints as a three term MP during which period he served as Attorney General and Foreign Minister respectively. Needless to say that his tenure as Attorney General was replete with shocking instances of ineptitude such as going to court with wrong charge sheets, failing to prosecute NPP supporters caught trafficking drugs, preferring wrong charges against suspects in the Ya-Na murder trial etc. The inertia that characterized his handling of the murder of some Ghanaians in Gambia provides further proof of his poor performance as a Minister.
Again unlike President Mahama, the widely held views about Akufo Addo�s arrogant and violent disposition have been based on his own conduct and utterances over the years and it will require more than sophistry to erase them. This is a fact well known to Gabby Otchere Darko and his colleague handlers of Akufo Addo as can be gleaned from some of the campaign antics he�s been up to in recent times.
The carefully syndicated pictures of Nana Addo engaged in stage-managed eating of local delicacies with party supporters which have intermittently been splashed on the front pages of NPP newspapers have not gone unnoticed. It points to a desperate attempt to carve out a non-existent image of a humble, down-to-earth politician who mingles freely with the down-trodden in our society after years of distancing himself from them. Why should it be front page news if a �humble� politician eats with party supporters?
Instructively, President Mahama owing to his pleasant demeanour towards all manner of persons has not had to dabble in such elaborate ruses to convince anyone about his close ties to the masses of this country
Ghanaians are unlikely to be taken in by Akufo Addo�s gambits as they are aware that the attempt to project him in this uncharacteristic light is in stark contrast with the image that he has cultivated for himself all this while as a man of elitist extraction and one from a privileged background. Akufo Addo and his relatives have not missed an opportunity to flaunt this background and table it as reason why he should be elected president of this country.
One only needs to glimpse the official magazine which the NPP produced for their lavish 2007 congress at Legon to find proof. On page 29 of the magazine which profiled Akufo Addo, it was boldly stated in paragraph 15 that �Nana Akufo Addo comes from a background where public service is considered a duty and where PRIVILEGE AND GOOD FORTUNE demand even greater commitment to the common good�.
Paragraphs 16 and 17 on the same page also proceed to tell who in Akufo Addo�s family was a big man in society when it states that �Generations of his forbears and relations have been in the forefront of the fight for freedom and democracy in Ghana. His maternal grandfather was Nana Sir Ofori Atta 1, the illustrious traditional ruler and major political player in the Gold Coast until his death in 1943. Three of the Big six were his relatives: J.B Danquah (grand uncle), Edward Akufo Addo (father), who became Ghana�s third Chief Justice, and later the President of the second republic, when Dr Kofi Abrefa Busia was Prime Minister�.
Even more bizarrely, Akufo Addo�s mother�s appearance before the Watson Commission was touted as reason why he should be made President. This is found in the same paragraph 17 which states that �His mother Yeboakua, Adeline Akufo Addo, never ceased to remind her children that she was the one woman who appeared before the historic 1948 Watson Commission, which designed the future constitutional development of the then Gold Coast, now the nation Ghana ,celebrating her 50th Golden Jubilee year�.
Nana Akufo Addo effectively severed any ties he had with the ordinary man when haughtily declaring on 5th December, 2008, at Accra Academy where the NPP held its last rally before the first round of elections in 2008 that he had never credited �Yoo ke gari� (Gari and beans) in his life. This was meant to make mockery of President Rawlings who was compelled in the 1970s to buy Yoo ke gari on credit to feed starving army boxers under his supervision.
It is therefore incongruous that a man who has always insisted on being elected president on account of which family he was born into and who never ceases to draw a distinction between himself and the ordinary people of this country who may have at one time or the other been compelled to credit Yoo ke gari due to economic difficulties, would now be foisting himself on these same people as one of their own.
Gabby�s other attempt to defend his boss� infamous �all-die-be-die� war chant was an exercise in futility. It was most bewildering to read his insipid justification of Akufo Addo�s unacceptable call to violence by drawing parallels with the Chapter of the President�s book in which he regales readers with an account of how he and some colleauges in secondary school insisted on keeping a close eye on the voting process during the unigov referendum.
Nowhere in the President�s account did he hint of violence as a means of protecting the ballot box.
While Gabby�s lame comparison between President Mahama�s determination to observe proceedings during the unigov voting and Akufo Addo�s incitement of party youth must be dismissed, it is the untenable rationale that he seeks to provide for the latter�s belligerence that requires immediate scrutiny.
Since he came under intense public condemnation for his �yen akanfuo�, �all-die-be-die�, �Atiwa yekyere bribi kakra woho� statements, Akufo Addo and his propagandists like Gabby have claimed that the bone-chilling call was premised on self-defence. They cite election-related scuffles at Chereponi and Atiwa as well as a completely unrelated clash between some Abudu and Andani youth at Agbogbloshi in Accra which was a spill over from the longstanding conflict between the two Dagbon gates, as evidence that the NDC government then led by the late Asomdwehene President Mills was plotting to rig the 2012 elections through violence.
Whoever put the NPP and its leader up to such ridiculous excuses was only being too clever by half. First the NPP�s account of the Chereponi and Atiwa by elections are at best grossly exaggerated and at worst completely false. Minor scuffles have been an almost permanent feature of Ghana�s electoral history for as far as I can remember. The people of Ghana have not forgotten how an NPP activist named �Red� rained terror on voters in Tamale during the 2004 elections when he led other NPP thugs on a shooting spree at various polling stations.
Neither has it escaped the memory of Ghanaians how NPP thugs set upon innocent NDC supporters in Gushegu in the run up to the 2008 elections murdering three of them and burning about eight vehicles belonging to the NDC�s chairman in that constituency. The above incidents clearly demonstrate that the NPP has never believed in peaceful elections but have resorted to violence whenever it suits their purpose.
Nana Akufo Addo�s all-die-be-die mantra could not therefore have been necessitated by the need for self-defence but was rather the product of both desperation and paranoia. He knows that the 2012 elections offer the last chance to achieve his inordinate ambition of becoming President and feels the way to achieve it is to blackmail Ghanaians into voting for him with threats of conflict.
More importantly he is haunted by his own misdeeds during the 2008 elections .Having masterminded the biggest election rigging plot in Ghana�s electoral history, he harbours a morbid fear that the same loopholes within the electoral system which he exploited rather unsuccessfully in 2008 will be used by the NDC to deprive him of his childhood dream of becoming President.
In an interview with a London-based Ghanaian radio station, Radio Focus last year, Kennedy Agyapong revealed that in the run-up to the second round of the 2008 elections he recruited about a thousand macho men for the NPP to execute the election rigging plot in the Ashanti Region. This he explained was after they had failed to secure the cooperation of the country� security agencies in their bid the steal the mandate of Ghanaians.
These hired thugs unleashed terror on NDC polling agents, beating and intimidating them on Election Day. This forced the polling agents to flee for dear life and created a situation where in over half of the almost four thousand polling stations in Ashanti the NDC had no representatives as required by our electoral laws. With the coast clear, the NPP then proceeded to make every Tom, Dick and Harry vote irrespective of whether they were registered to vote or not. This also paved the way for multiple voting to take place.
The blatant thievery manifested in the figures presented during the collation of the results from the various polling stations in Ashanti. Upon close scrutiny it emerged that out of 1,517 polling stations whose results collation sheets the NDC managed to obtain in spite of the fiendish intimidation, 55 polling stations recorded between 100 to 139.9% turnout, 205 polling stations had between 90 to 99.9% turnout whiles 351 polling stations witnessed between 80 and 89.9% turnout. To lay bare the extent of the crime perpetrated by the NPP, the following examples will suffice.
At a polling station called Temporary Booth KMA Stores in the Subin Constituency of the Ashanti Region with polling station code F160702, the number of eligible voters was 481 but the results declared in that polling station after the election showed that the NDC had 125 while the NPP had 548 with no spoilt ballot. When you add up the total votes for both parties it comes to 673 which means that 192 more people voted than the number who should have voted leading to a turnout of 139.9%. Even more baffling is the realization that the NPP obtained more votes in this polling station than the total number of eligible voters.
At T.B. Odumasi 2 West, another polling station with code number F130207 but this time in the Manhyia Constituency also in the Ashanti Region, 785 people were eligible to vote. The results in this polling station revealed that the NPP got 872 votes which is 87 more than the total eligible voters-while the NDC had a measly 62. Turnout was 124.4%.
The above incidents were replicated in 53 other polling stations according to results collation sheets certified by electoral officials. There can be no doubt that the stealing was much bigger in light of the fact that these 1,517 polling station results are spread over just 19 out of the 39 constituencies in the Ashanti Region. Till date the NDC has not been able to obtain the results from the polling stations in the remaining 20 constituencies.
When this insidious plot failed to achieve the desired results they then resorted to the now infamous �Atta Akyea plot� in a further attempt to subvert the will of Ghanaians and cling onto power. The plot entailed the dumping of corpses in the Volta Region in order to point to them as NPP polling agents who had been murdered by the NDC in order to get the judiciary to aid them overturn the outcome of the election when it emerged they were losing.
Akufo Addo�s bitter lamentation of his failed bid to become president which the NPP likes to pass off as a concession speech came too late to convince any serious -minded watcher of the democratic space that he is committed to the democratic process. True democrats concede defeat when it emerges they do not stand a chance of catching up with the front runner and do not mastermind grand schemes to steal the people�s mandate like he did.
Since then Akufo Addo has gone down in infamy within diplomatic circles as a sour, undemocratic loser as is evidenced in the leaked diplomatic cables made available by Julian Assange and his folks at Wikileaks. In a cable dated 5th January,2009 US Ambassador Teitelbaum writes �Akufo Addo�s non-concession came well after most of his party and the Ghanaian public at large had grown weary of waiting and offended by stalling. Several media commentators characterized it as too little, too late. As it has played out, Akufo Addo has done his reputation no favour by his delaying tactics, court fillings, non-participation in Tain, and finally his passive-aggressive congratulations to Atta-Mills.
In contrast the President-elect has been pitch-perfect in his statements, pledging to be President for the whole of Ghana, promising a presidency devoid of discrimination, and dismissing fears of a witch-hunt by some political opponents�
Worst still for Akufo Addo, his war mongering rhetoric has brought him to the attention of the international community as a clear and present danger to Ghana�s peace. In a report compiled in June last year, the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the authoritative US think tank singled out Akufo Addo as the one Ghanaian politician whose conduct poses the biggest threat to the nations stability.
Titled �Ghana: Assessing Risks to Stability� the report notes on page 16 that �The role of the NPP leader and expected presidential candidate, Nana Akufo-Addo, will be crucial, and early signals suggest reason for worry. Akufo-Addo is desperate to mobilize support, and he has played the ethnic card, referring to the NPP as �We the Akans,� urging his supporters to �all die be die��that is, they should be willing to die to ensure the NPP's victory��
From the foregoing it should be obvious to Gabby and his co-propagandists in the NPP that arrogant attempts to use sophistry to sweep his uncle�s badly dented image under the carpet won�t do the trick. Ghanaians are decent-minded people who are unwilling to accept a violent, desperate man who has entreated other people�s children to engage in violent conduct in order to ensure his emergence as President even if they die in the process. The only way Akufo Addo will stand a chance against the sober, calm and gentle President Mahama in the December polls is for him to show a contrite heart by retracting his incendiary all die be die comments and rendering an unqualified apology to Ghanaians.
He must also publicly condemn and sanction Kennedy Agyapong for his evil call for the slaughter of Gas and Ewes. While doing all these, Akufo Addo will do himself a lot of good if he curbed the arrogance of the people around him like Gabby whose penchant for insulting anyone he disagrees with has gotten out of hand. To call a deputy Minister of state stupid was bad enough but to describe the President of the Republic of Ghana as oafish which means stupid is intolerable. Let him not mistake Gabby�s sophistry as brilliance because often it has worsened his already damaged reputation.
If Akufo Addo doubts it he can reflect over the unnecessary deepening of multiple allegations of illicit drug use against him brought on by Gabby�s attempt to defend him in an article entitled �Getting High on lies and insults�. Instead of seizing the opportunity to issue a categorical denial of the never ending allegations, he deployed sophistry again when writing in one paragraph that �The majority of Ghanaians below the age of fifty have been exposed to wee use, one way or the other.
Even if Nana Akufo-Addo, who grew up in the flower, liberal age of the funky sixties in both England and Ghana, had experimented with grass, like many students do, what in modern PR tactics informed the NDC that they could win by tagging the man, who carries the tag 'yenim wo firi titi', as a dangerous, hopeless, reckless drug abuser?�.
He then proceeded to give a tall list of various leaders who have in the past been accused of illicit drug use and indicated how successful they had being in their chosen field of endeavour.
Rather than clearing his uncle of any involvement in drug use, the impression that he left on the minds of readers was that it was no big deal if Akufo Addo used drugs. Hardly the sort of defence that convinces an anti-drug Ghanaian public of the innocence of Akufo Addo. Predictably this article offered scope for a deepening of those allegations which have done almost irreparable damage to the NPP Flagbearer.
Perhaps Akufo Addo doesn�t have to wait long to rid himself of Gabby.
After calling Dr Omane Boamah stupid on live national TV, he vowed to quit politics after the 2012 elections and he would do his long suffering uncle a lot of good if he stuck to that promise.
Felix Kwakye Ofosu
Member National Democratic Congress
[email protected]
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