Progressive Democrats Vindicate Franklin Cudjoe

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

I am not on state side, as it were, and so, naturally, I have not been privy to much of the happenings on the ground. Nonetheless, it comes as rather amusing, albeit nauseatingly predictable, to hear the pro-National Democratic Congress (NDC) activist group, the so-called Progressive Democrats (PD), issue a statement calling for the summary dismissal of the Executive Director of IMANI-Ghana, arguably one of the most heavy-lifting and forward-looking think tanks in the country (See "Sack Franklin Cudjoe[,] Else... Group Threatens IMANI-Ghana" Ghanaweb.com 11/17/13).

The basis for such call is scandalously because Mr. Cudjoe has dared to exercise his inalienable democratic right by putting President John Dramani Mahama where he belongs in the annals of Ghanaian presidential politics - and that is, smack-dab in the waste bin of veritable political misfits. The call is also predictable because it comes from a group affiliated with a party that has no enviable track record of democratic praxis, administrative competence and creative imagination. And about the only way that the apparent urchins of the so-called Progressive Democrats could effect the ouster of Mr. Cudjoe from the job that he has been performing so creditably for so long, is if the PD could also categorically and publicly lay claim to having both caused the establishment and funding of IMANI-Ghana. Short of the foregoing, any talk of ousting the Executive Director of IMANI-Ghana is malarkey.

Indeed, for precisely the same reasons that the PD rascals would have him summarily ousted, Mr. Cudjoe ought to be glowingly lauded - if for nothing at all, at least for boldly and consistently standing up to the brazen bullies of the so-called National Democratic Congress. Then also, what is so respectable about the administrative venality, wanton profligacy and abject lack of accountability on the part of the Mahama government that the economic saprophytes and pathological sycophants of the so-called Progressive Democrats would have Mr. Cudjoe pay servile deference to?

I also don't know who injected into the numbskulled members of the PD, who signed the scandalously desultory statement calling for Mr. Cudjoe's ouster, that any partisan activist group has a peremptory right to determine the ideological agenda and/or temperament of the key operatives of any think tank.

At any rate, what concerns me here is the patently puerile threat issued by the executive members of the ironically named Progressive Democrats, in a fatuous bid to stampeding the patrons and sponsors of IMANI-Ghana. If, as it clearly appears, the executive members of the Progressive Democrats have nothing "progressive" to engage their energies and attention, by all means, let them heed this timeless philosophical admonishment: "Silence Is Golden." It also goes without saying that any dastardly attempt to endanger either the person and/or intellectual and professional integrity of Mr. Cudjoe will be met with swift and commensurate response.

A word to the fool....

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*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Department of English
Nassau Community College of SUNY
Garden City, New York
Nov. 17, 2013
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net
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