Define Your “Harmless Advertisement,” Fiifi Kwetey

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

The homestretch lead-up to Election 2012 has become increasingly exciting, if only because it has also been fast in unraveling the patent house-of-cards that is the Mahama-Arthur campaign agenda. And that campaign agenda, of course, involves the downright mischievous and outright criminal misquoting and doctoring of the measured opinions of highly respected religious and secular leaders including the globally renowned Pastor Mensa Otabil, General Overseer of the International Central Gospel Church (ICGC).

I have personally decided to join this otherwise ungodly fray, because I had earlier on carped Dr. Otabil for shamelessly and rather cynically attempting to plead his own all-too-mundane entrepreneurial cause in the critical and history-making matter of Nana Akufo-Addo’s fee-free Senior High School electioneering campaign policy agenda. Now, it turns out, rather characteristically, that all that the Mahama Campaign operatives have been doing is to simply splice up and edit grossly taken-out-of-context statements from speeches and sermons of Pastor Otabil and mischievously pass these off to eligible and potential Ghanaian voters as the renowned clergyman’s firm and intransigent stance against the Akufo-Addo proposal (See “Otabil is Playing Victim to Draw NDC Votes to NPP – Fiifi Kwetey” JoyOnline.com/Ghanaweb.com 11/13/12).

Caught with their pants down – hung, warts and all – Mr. Fiifi Kwetey, the notorious National Democratic Congress propagandist who doubles as Deputy Finance Minister, now curiously claims that this inescapably grievous and criminal attempt at defaming the hard-won reputation of Minister Otabil is, after all, a lighthearted “advertisement” of a purely benign nature and “harmless” thrust! Needless to say, this is very characteristic of the criminally minded key operatives of the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress. For, it is only the criminally minded who see absolutely no criminality, or criminal conduct, in this hideous attempt by the at once bumbling and bungling Mahama posse to effectively and perennially impose itself on Ghanaians, the way Chairman Jeremiah John Rawlings, founding-father of the P/NDC, did to peace-loving and longsuffering Ghanaians for some two protracted decades.

It also comes as hardly any surprise that Mr. Kwetey would so self-righteously play down this dastardly and unconscionable attempt to cheaply and impudently destroy the hard-earned reputation of a highly regarded Ghanaian citizen. This tacky electioneering campaign strategy is, of course, characteristic of the proverbial schoolyard-bully tactic perfected and employed to stunning effect by former President Rawlings. In other words, the NDC objective here is to decisively cow and intimidate Pastor Otabil via the reckless use of “negative persuasive coercion” as a means of literally co-opting him into the ruling party’s decidedly regressive stance on Akufo-Addo’s Fee-Free Senior High School Debate.

Further cast in other words, Mr. Kwetey and his fellow political gangsters of the so-called National Democratic Congress, in criminally attempting to misrepresent the views of the ICGC Overseer on the Akufo-Addo Fee-Free Education Debate, had rather pathetically and foolishly hoped that the far more astute, urbane and civilized Dr. Otabil would docilely and facilely come along for the ride, almost as if the Dramani-Mahama Gang were out to doing the renowned cleric a great favor in the form of an “advertisement,” or cheap publicity, as Mr. Kwetey would have his audience believe.

Needless to say, it is the flat and adamant refusal of Pastor Otabil to be used as a pawn for the devious ends of Messrs. Kwetey, Mahama and their ilk that appears to have so virulently ticked off the latest bout of NDC canine riot against our good man of the cloth. And here, also, it goes without saying that their drunkenly desperate attempt to perpetually hang on to power or not, the NDC THUGGOCRATS have absolutely no other recourse but be prepared to pack up and ship out of Jubilee House/Flagstaff House come December 7, 2012.

Indeed, the fact that U.S. Republican presidential candidate Mr. Mitt Romney’s equally devious “advertisement,” which expediently sought to grossly misrepresent the views and intentions of the leaders of the American automobile industry, in the culprit’s fervid bid to profusely bleeding President Barack Obama out of the White House, condignly backfired and auspiciously culminated in the massive defeat of the “mormonistic” mischief-maker, is a lesson and an even that is highly likely to be paradoxically and/or ironically repeated in Accra come December 7, 2012.

Did I hear anybody say: “Little Dramani, where is Woyome’s stolen ‘Mormon’?”

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is Director of The Sintim-Aboagye Center for Politics and Culture and author of “Ghanaian Politics Today” (Lulu.com, 2008). E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net. ###