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Put very simply, �negation politics� is one in which a political opponent is deemed to be a troublesome or worrying enemy whose actions, words, movements and programmes must also be interpreted and calculated as unsatisfactory and vicious and therefore must be painted black and condemned, to the extent that he will gradually lose his popularity and fame. The end result of all these is to remove that political enemy into total oblivion, whilst any good legacy he has carefully and pleasantly constructed and left behind is consciously buried. Negation politics is the destruction of one�s political mate or pal or opponent, the act of negating another political personality, in many ways, including lies and fabricated stories about him. This is what has been going on in the NDC since the beginning of President Atta Mills�s reign in January 2009, and this is what is going on right now in that party. Negation politics! Indeed, it is within the context of all that has been described above that President Fiifi Atta Mills and his government are now made to be seen by Ghanaians. In other words, President Mills and his government have mysteriously been placed under negation politics not from the opponents of other parties, but from WITHIN his own party, the NDC; and this really presents a funny, laughable, yet pitiable spectacle to behold! And this really confirms the Akan traditional saying that �se obi benya wo a, na ofiri wo ntoma mu� (literally, the one who can destroy you comes from your own cover cloth, comes from your corner) These negators from within the NDC are led by ex-President J.J. Rawlings and his wife, Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings and Ekow Spio Garbrah. At most, within three months of Atta Mills�s Presidency, J. J. Rawlings had fired the first salvo of open criticisms saying: �Atta Mills was slow and inactive, he must get up to apprehend the NPP malefactors who have misused state funds�. This periodically continued until the array of such open negation criticisms expanded into vilification of Mills as having �chosen only Team B Ministers, instead of the Team A group who can deliver�. Such repudiation was validated by Ekow Spio Garbrah who came all along from his base in London to accuse his own Cape Coast pal that the government was parading a Team B group of Ministers. Alban Bagbin, now a Minister of Works and Housing who was the Majority Leader in Parliament, also shouted the same refrain. And when a responsive government reshuffle of the Ministers later included Alban Bagbin himself, E. T Mensah (former Sports Minister of Rawlings) and so on, such �Team B� criticisms subsided. Unfortunately, Ekow Spio Garbrah was not chosen as a Minister, in spite of his probable expectations! SPIO GARBRAH It is now plausible thinking that Ekow Spio Garbrah, who hails from the same Cape Coast as President Mills, and whose father and Mills�s father were die-hard active CPP Nkrumaists and were therefore close comrades in Cape Coast, might have exacted the utmost displeasure of fellow Cape Coaster, Fiifi Atta Mills, with his alleged references to some sicknesses supposedly being suffered by Atta Mills, who was his fellow NDC flagbearership contestant in 2006. It is considered that Spio Garbrah�s alleged �wild preachments� about Mills during the flagbearership race of that period have still not been atoned for with the necessary �forgive-me� overture, hence Mills�s refusal to include him in his Ministerial set-up. However, Spio Garbrah seems to have muddled the NDC political waters with his late registration bid to be another flagbearer aspirant who is set to contest against President Mills. Only a few days ago, he collected Registration Forms that can entitle him to be an NDC flagbearer. He is therefore the third person to possibly declare himself as an aspirant, coming immediately after President Mills who was next to Nana Konadu in the collection of the Registration Forms. Some of us political scholars interpret Ekow Spio Garbrah�s aspirancy overture in two ways. Firstly, we see it as part of a carefully planned scheme of the Rawlingses to divide the votes that are likely to accrue to Atta Mills to make him win convincingly. If Atta Mills gains only a marginal victory, the Konadu-Spio Garbrah�s camps will not likely accept the election results; and thus attributing it to fraud, will cause uproar and chaos, leading to bloodshed and injuries and calls for a re-run of the elections. When Mills wins convincingly, it will be said to be the result of electoral fraud, which allegation will be amplified to include a pre-election vote buying. The second interpretation of Spio�s aspirancy attempt will be to cause a DRAW in the upcoming elections during which no side can be declared as a clear winner; and thus, if the NDC Constitution underlines a 50 per cent plus one vote win, as it is with the national electoral system, then either Nana Konadu or Spio Garbrah (who emerges as a second candidate) will immediately decide to support the other with the votes from his or her followers. It will be like Bedie supporting Ouattara in Ivory Coast to possibly gain victory over Gbagbo. The equation here was that Bedie and Ouattara are capitalists and Gbagbo is a socialist, just as Konadu and Spio are pure Rawlingsians who are always ready to listen to President Rawlings�s dictates, and to honour his name, whilst Atta Mills is an Nkrumaist ready to glorify Kwame Nkrumah�s name. It is therefore the wish of Rawlings to politically eliminate Atta Mills so to install a personality who will be pervious to all his (Rawlings�s) advice, and also honour him in the country. Spio�s last minute collection of Registration Forms gives an indication that, in view of his winning a second place in the 2006 flagbearership race, he can cause a draw with his sizeable number of supporters, and thus disenable Atta Mills from winning that race. This may be refuted, but political scholars with analytical minds, have such sure convictions that Spio is in to cause a draw and a run-off which will be disadvantageous to Mills. NANA KONADU For over several months, I predicted in my analyses that Nana Konadu was likely to stand as a flagbearer to challenge President Atta Mills who definitely appears not to be a Rawlingsian but an Nkrumaist. (I have already argued in some of my articles that we cannot have the terminology �Rawlingsist� because Rawlings has no definitive political ideology of his own, like Nkrumah, Karl Marx, Lenin, Mao of China; thus those who love Rawlings�s personality and brutal ways can be called �Rawlingsians�). If President Mills has been honouring former President Kwame Nkrumah by celebrating Nkrumah�s 100 birthday anniversary, and on top, instituting a national holiday on Nkrumah�s birthday, and again has named the Oil Producing Ship as �Kwame Nkrumah� whilst embossing the effigy of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah on �2.00 notes, without giving Rawlings any such accolades (which are clearly undeserving to such as military dictator, autocrat and political vandal as Rawlings), he, Mills, must be kicked out of Rawlings�s NDC. But who make the NDC? Not Nkrumaist CPPists? Or, when Rawlings was �stealing� Nkrumaists to his side to form the NDC, was he thinking of negating or eliminating Nkrumah in the country, a man whose achievement of independence and laying of development infrastructure were through sweat, toil and sleeplessness. If Rawlings did not come to meet and enjoy free Primary, Middle and Secondary School education provided by Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, where, it must be asked, could he have been right now? Wouldn�t he have been an �old-man� carpenter? His jealousy of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah has no basis, and it�s funny. And his negatory, schemes to eliminate Atta Mills are funny. They will not succeed. Atta Mills will surely win! (To be continued next week).