NPP should set up a parallel Electoral Commission with its own chair

The ethnocentric New Patriotic Party (NPP) is at it again—already beating the war drums in the lead-up to the 2016 general elections—when it should be actively involved in grassroots campaign canvassing for votes through strategic education of confirmed and potential—floating— voters across the country with a clear, convincing policy statements characterizing it as, perhaps, the most viable alternative to all the other political parties.

But not this wobbling party.

Rather, the parties’ leaders sit on radios badmouthing everyone else but themselves for why they keep being rejected at the polls under the stewardship of the un-Buharic Akufo-Addo, also able men and women of the same party ensconced in the comfort of their political ethnocentrism spewing garbage using unprintable language to threatening hell, fire and brimstone if the NPP is not voted into power.

This kind of arm-chair and ivory-tower approach to politicking is certainly bound to be counterproductive for the NPP and its leadership given the outcomes of the two previous general elections.

Kennedy Agyapong’s ethnocentric rant and Akufo-Addo’s “All-Die-Be-Die” war cry did not fetch any meaningful political capital for the NPP in the last two general elections, particularly the 2008 one.

Neither will Kofi Jumah’s “Operation Let The Blood Flow” nor Kennedy Agyapong’s “NPP Will Lynch Security Officials” earn the party any political capital, beyond putting apocalyptic fear in the gullible.

Kennedy Agyapong—for one—opens wide his now-defunct Kejetia Forest of a mouth in the “public toilet” called Ghana, a gutter of a mouth from which one only smells the agonizing, painful and offensive stench of hyenas, skunks and hoopoes—and make irresponsible statements to the media.

Intellectually, diplomatically and emotionally unsophisticated political Luddites such as Kennedy Agyapong are, undoubtedly, important political assets for the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC).

These are the kinds of men whose unguarded rhetoric makes the NPP seem unattractive and anti-democratic, even undemocratic to many—although the NPP has never been “democratic” in the truest sense of the word!

Its proverbial “Matemeho” historical precedent—that is, primarily using raw violence to achieve political and social ends—says a lot about its political, philosophical and ideological character.

However it is NPP campaign manager Mac Manu’s recent outburst that, in our opinion, tops the ever-rising mountain of political deficits for the NPP, thereby defining an entrenched character of intellectual, emotional idiocy in the special case of the largely two-faced anti-democratic political institution—called the NPP. This is what he reportedly said according to the popular media:

“In this election, the NPP will also declare our own results…The IGP cannot stop us. Whether you are the Electoral Commission, whether you are a police or security official, whether you are a polling agent, whether you are a chief, you cannot stop NPP from declaring results.”

This “declaration of electoral war” with the Electoral Commission (EC) does not bode well for Ghana’s “democracy” given that the power of declaring election results is exclusively vested in the EC via its mouthpiece, its Chair.

By this bold and controversial stand, Mac Manu and the NPP are therefore saying they are willing to usurp the EC’s exclusive power of declaration and constitutional authority at the expense of the country’s relative peace and development.

Thus, considerations for national security are not an indispensable matter in this unconstitutional decision.

This is appalling and will constitute a dangerous precedent in the body politic if it ever materializes.

And the security and intelligence and judicial communities must not sit down unconcerned and allow this to materialize.

Now if the NDC and all the other political parties also decide to follow suit or the NPP example, what then becomes of the constitutional mandate of the EC?

However one chooses to look at the NPP’s controversial stance, though, one is certain to come to a conclusion, a conclusion the NPP represents, where the EC and its Chairperson, Madam Charlotte Osei, are in cahoots with President Mahama and the NDC to rig the upcoming general elections.

This nagging suspicion lacks forensic credibility or legitimacy because it still stands tall as an unproven working hypothesis of the schizophrenic NPP, of its diabolical leadership.

Possibly realizing another crushing electoral defeat staring in the anti-democratic faces of the NPP and its Machiavellian leadership, the latter has taken to a strategic approach of manipulating public psychology in such a way that citizens are forced to see Madam Osei and the EC as fundamentally as an uncompromising enemy of the people and their interests, the state, and the political process.

Of course, this is also when the NPP knows it has nothing constructive for the electorate.

This manufactured consent “special effects” of the NPP is, once again, likely to backfire, which is why it keeps churning out one major subversive threat after another.

What is important for us at this stage is, rather, that citizens see through these political gimmicks and vote with their rational conscience instead of with their rumbling stomachs—politics of the belly!

All these are not to say that it is any better in the camp of the NDC:

The likes of the anorexic-looking cross-dressing Asiedu Nketia, Sam George, Felix Kwakye-Fosu, Omane Boamah, Koku Anyidoho, Solomon Nkansah, Okudzeto Ablakwa…are sometimes guilty of the same crime of incendiary political rhetoric.

This is the more reason why Ghanaians need their freedom from the strangulating chokehold of the two major political parties—the NDC and the NPP.

Stated differently, Ghanaians do not deserve these parties in the knowledge that their political manifestoes, after all, are alchemies of pre- and re-packaged lies and avenues for self-aggrandizing kleptomania, personal and group enrichment, cronyism and nepotism, and national destruction.

Both political parties have also been a bloodsucking liability for the state and its citizens, with special reference to the Fourth Republic.

And the groveling emasculative media and the commentariat do not make the situation any better. They even make the situation worse in most instances. On the other Prof. Naa John Nabila, the President of the National House of Chiefs has an excellent advice for media houses:

“If there are utterances meant to fuel violence, ignore them. If you don’t publish it nobody will read about it…Ghana as of now is one whole country and well all belong to that land of Ghana…There is no need for us to have chaos n order to have a president.”

Excellent observation! Unfortunately, the average Ghanaian is a special case study of the outrageous maxim:

“If you want to hide something from a Black person, simply put it in a book or write it down.”

Though Prof. Nabila’s advice could not have come at a better time, he grossly overlooks how deeply polarized and extremely political partisan the media landscape in Ghana has become in the Fourth Republic, especially, as well as of the fact that politicians and pseudo-politicians such as Freddie Blay, Kennedy Agyapong, Kwesi Pratt, Jr., Alhaji Bature, and Kweku Baako, Jr., to name but four, own one form of media outlet or another, all of which feed or provide some sort of platforms for the very issue Prof. Nabila is lambasting.

These facts do not make it any easier, even while the Media Foundation of West Africa (MFWA) also provides mounting data showing how the polarizing rhetoric of political partisanship and vulgarity are polluting the country, a view we strongly believe is nothing to write home about.

On the other hand with Mac Manu caught up in the paralyzing stench of his own ptylized rhetoric of a constitutional coup d’état, now finds himself seeking refuge in a face-saving constitutional language via semantic circumlocution—precisely summed up in one single word, “could”:

“I didn’t say we’ll declare, please play the tape again. I said we could, okay? I didn’t say we will. No, no, no, we could…I’m saying, when we do our parallel vote tabulation in a way, it’s declaration.”

Wobbling from “declare” to “declaration,” a straight line from outright denial to outright confirmation of the charge!

What a bunch of “unintelligent” lying characters Ghana has as “intelligent” politicians!

This bunch of “unintelligent” characters is the same corps of political animals whose desperation knows no bounds, having tried every maneuver at its disposal—within its power and means—to graft its credibility problems and conundrums onto the EC and its Chair—without apparent success.

This then begs the question:

Is it possible for the NPP to set up its own parallel EC with Mac Manu as its Chair?

And if this is possible, even remotely so, then let us all encourage the NPP and its leadership to go ahead and set up one—but not in Nkrumah’s Ghana—their forsaken country where they bear its nationality and goodwill.

That is to say, the NPP and its teeming supporters should also set up its own country outside Ghanaian geopolitical boundaries.

Then they can also carry the Western Region and the Ashanti Region with them.

Otherwise, we should banish them to J.B. Danquah Nsawam Prisons using the historical precedent of Busia’s Aliens Compliance Order.

There, they can declare the election results while Akufo-Addo serves the full tenure of his presidential royal entitlement. Right there in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s “The Gulag Archipelago”!

Or better yet, Akufo-Addo can choose to take the controversial path Uganda’s Kizza Besigya chose to declare himself president, thereby “officially” swearing himself in as Ugadana’s new president, a parallel move to Yoweri Musveni.

At this point in our national life, Ghana will experience the pleasure of having at least two sitting presidents and, perhaps, efficient governance after Nkrumah.

Of course, co-presidency is a novelty in our brief political history. Nkrumah had one with Sekou Toure.

Our submission is that we should try this new approach to governance as we have never done it before.

Either this approach or that Akufo-Addo and the NPP face the wrath of Inspector General of Police John Kudalor’s “social media” Gestapo!

Where are the John Edgar Hoovers, the Adolf Hitlers and the Joseph Goebbels of the NDC to “steal” the political manifesto of the NPP?

No wonder the NPP and its leadership are not “campaigning” as they fear the NDC and its leaderships will “steal” their ideas!

What a country!

And what a party (NPP) of ethnocentric political “rednecks”!

Ghanaians should have long been tired of this kleptomaniacal duopoly! But no, politics of the belly will not permit it.

REFERENCES

Ghanaweb. “I Said We ‘Could’ Declare Election Results—Mac Manu.” June 8, 2016.

Ghanaweb. “Ignore Violent Political Comments—House of Chiefs To Media.” June 8, 2016.