Stop attacking Ben Ephson

Last week Ben Ephson’s Daily Dispatch published the observation of the Economic
Intelligence Unit (EIU) in which they observed that the NPP would be losing the next
election. Subsequently, the party unleashed their unforgiving bees on Ben as if he
had committed a felony against the almighty NPP. But wait minute, it was the same
Ben Ephson who called the 1996, 2000, 2004, and 2008 elections for the NPP. Despite
all the odds against the party in the second round of the 2008 election, he still
maintained the NPP was likely to win. Ben Ephson was a good friend of the NPP then,
but the worse enemy of the party now. He may be wrong sometimes, but the personal
attacks on him for carrying the observation of EIU, an independent and credible
body, are very unfortunate, brutish and very uncivilized.
However, civility is not an NPP cut of tea. The tribal gang always want stuff in
their favour. As soon as the tables are turn on them, they act as if a civil war is
about to ensue. The institution of the NPP lacks the appreciation of democratic
elections as a contest between competition ideas. To them elections are zero-sum
games and they imbibe and relish the Machiavellian concept of winning at all cost
and all times. To these ethnic entrepreneurs, the end result is what matters, and
not the fairness of the system. The system is only fair when they win, everything is
wrong with the electoral system if their so-called party is on the losing side. The
attack on Ben, therefore, came as no surprise to keen observers of Ghanaian
politics.
Ben was attacked as if he had committed a blasphemy. Again, what was wrong with
observing that the ethnic clique would lose the next elections? Is it that such an
observation is likely to affect the ethnic voter’s moral in the next election? By
whining about the story everyday on internet and radio, doesn’t the ethnic
enterprise know that it is giving the observation further legs to travel as far as
the eyes the can see?
Moreover, the reasoning of the EIU was right. The chance of an NPP victory in the
2012 election is as slim as the tip of a Ghanaian broom. Ghanaians are living
witnesses to their eights of disaster government. A government that left the country
with mountains of debts, most of which was used to reward ethnic cronies. They turn
the country into a transit for drug barons with their members of parliament as
“chief drug pushers.” It took the US port authorities to expose the NPP and its
association with illicit drugs with the arrest and imprisonment of Mr. Amoateng. NPP
lawyers have made millions off this trade though their back room negotiations with
state apparatus and conniving judges.
The ethnic clique government turn a very peaceful country in 2000 into the war zones
of ethnic conflicts. Before 2000, most Ghanaians perhaps didn’t know that there are
groups in Dagbom (Andanis and Abudus) and perhaps never thought Bawku, with it
vibrant markets and cross boarder activities, would explode into the hot bed of
carnage and refugees. It took the NPP only eights to inflict on the country the
demonic ethnic politics never seen in Ghanaian history. Within eight years in
Dagbom, they have turned sisters and brothers against each other solely for their
own political objective; an objective g that never materialized as they have lost
election after election in the Region at large since the gruesome killing of Yaa Naa
and forty of his elders.
If NPP deserves anything from Ghanaian, it should be the shrinking of their party
back to their bases in the Ashanti region. A region where the Asantehene is the mini
God that should be worshiped; where elections are seen not on the basis of party
platforms and reasoned arguments, but on the allegiance to the Ashanti kingdom and
their euphony. Ghanaians are not ready to turn the country into the abyss of the
dark ages, to quote Winston Churchill, when kings and queens are worshiped as if
they are representatives of God on earth and when political goods and representation
are distributed based on ethnic origins.

It took the citizens of mother Ghana eight years to wake up from their sober sleep,
but they are finally awake. The EIU was right; NPP will lose the next election.
Losing election is not new for the NPP; they had lost three elections thus far. It
is not unfair to one more loss to their camp.

Abdul Sidibe
agolumusah@yahoo.com