NPP Can�t Frighten Anybody With Tribal Violence In 2012

Somehow the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) and their so-called team of intellectuals and advisors have sat down and thoroughly done their homework and come to the conclusion that the only way they can recapture power from the discreet and genteel Professor and his National Democratic Congress (NDC) government is to adopt rough tactics: tribal instigation, naked lies and deception, war-mongering, deliberate distortions, threats and what have you. After painstaking observation of the modus operandi of the current crop of NPP leadership and elites, The Al-Hajj has come to the final conclusion that they are the carbon copies of their forebears who subjected the founder of this nation, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah and his Convention People�s Party (CPP) to sustained harassment, characterized by politics of perfidy and calumny until they succeeded in getting him toppled by their surrogates in the military in 1966. The Al-Hajj finds it interesting the current strategy of NPP elites in taking refuge in tribal and ethnocentric politics by always referring to their party as an Akan party just to throw dust in the eyes of our brothers in the Akan dominated regions of the country. Arousing tribal sentiments have dominated recent comments of almost all the key leaders of the NPP, the recent ones being the one in the infamous All-die-be-die comment of the party�s flag bearer Nana Addo Danquah Akufo-Addo and Jake Obetsebi Lamptey�s allusions that what happened in Ivory Coast can happened in this country. Again, the NPP have in the past few weeks subjected the Electoral Commission to sustained verbal attacks and threats over the proposed biometric registration and a potential re-demarcation of the electoral boundaries for the 2012 elections. The security set up of this nation is also not left out from the desperation of the opposition NPP regarding what they perceived may happened in 2012. The list on the misbehavior of the NPP can go on and on and on. But The Al-Hajj wants to sound a note of caution to the NPP. Tribal or ethnic tactics in politics all over the world are adopted by political parties who are desperate to either cling on to power or capture it from others. In the Ivory Coast that they always cite as example, Laurent Gbagbo and his inners circles of elites clang to tribal and ethnic manipulation for the entire ten years that he was in power. At the end, what happened is the total destruction of the Ivory Coast and its institution. In this day and age of multiculturalism, The Al-Hajj just as majority of Ghanaians, considers tribal issues as toxic and unhygienic issues. So we are reluctant in commenting about it but for the recklessness of the NPP elites. Once the NPP elites, whose rationality has been beclouded by the desire to recapture power using the toxic issue of tribalism, we find it appropriate to respond to them and expose the deception in it. The NPP must be made to understand that the NDC is a national party with an Akan as the leader of the party and the current President of the nation. So if they claim they are the Vanguards of the Akans, what are they talking about? Unless they want to tell us that Fantes are not Akans and Nzemas and the people from the Central and Western Regions are all not Akans. Apart from the President who is a certified Akan, the NDC government has capable Akan appointees and leaders such as the Finance Minister Dr Duffuor, Chief of Staff Martin Newman, Bank of Ghana Governor Amissah Arthur, Agric Minister Kwesi Ahwoi, Education Minister Betty-Mould Iddrisu, General Secretary Asiedu Nketia, the list is endless. Again, to demonstrate the true national colors of the NDC, the party in the 2008 elections won three of the five Akan regions, namely: Brong Ahafo, Western and Central despite all the noises of tribalism and ethnocentrism from the NPP and their leaders. Unless the NPP elites want us to believe that people from these regions are not proper Akans or some Akans are more important than other Akans. The Al-Hajj strongly believed that the best description of the NPP is that it is just a regional party; a party which draws its support from the Ashanti Region and nothing more, nothing less. The result of the 2008 is a strong testament to this assertion. They must acknowledge this and stop generalizing every Akans in their political underhandedness and desperate desire to recapture power and perpetrate corruption and wealth-accumulation to the detriment of the majority of the people of this country including the areas that they always bamboozle to get their votes. Further, this paper would like to humbly advise the NPP that they cannot use threat of violence on the Electoral Commission (EC) or the general Ghanaian population and think that through that power would be yielded to them on the silver platter in 2012. They must remember that they are not the only party or their leader is not the only person who has lost elections and conceded in this country. President Mills has lost elections twice to President Kufuor but he never threatened mayhem and Armageddon to the people of this country, on the contrary he peacefully conceded and congratulated his opponent in both 2000 and 2004. In 2004, when it was evident that the NPP had rigged the elections, the genteel Professor resisted all the temptation to move the crowd of agitators on the street of Accra and other regions. They must emulate the behaviours of the gentle Professor and know that just two years after losing elections they cannot be accorded what they think is their birth right of coming back to rule. The Professor was in opposition for a good eight years before God in his magnanimity pushed him to the Presidency. They must also learn to wait until when God in his magnanimity uplift them to rule this country again. They cannot just leave power in two or three years and then begin issuing threats to everybody thinking that by that people would be frighten and allow them to usurp power. They cannot frighten anybody and so the earlier they see through this reality and change their tactics of tribal chicanery the better it would be for them.