NPP's moderates must take control of their party to secure its future

For some fair-minded Ghanaians, it was extraordinary that those who alleged that the Electoral Commissioner, Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Djan, colluded with President Mahama to rig the December 2012 presidential election in the president's favour, objected to his being allowed to give evidence in the presidential election petition being heard by the Supreme Court.

For such discerning Ghanaians, that cynical legal-tactic, which in their view was rightly over-ruled by the panel of judges, spoke volumes about the real motives of those seeking to use legal technicalities to remove President Mahama from power.

In search of the truth, what did it matter that Dr. Afari-Djan's deputy, rather than the chairperson of the Electoral Commission himself, had signed affidavits covering the Electoral Commission's documents submitted to the Supreme Court?

To the independent-minded layman, that objection to Dr. Afari-Djan giving evidence, was hard to fathom.

To the patriotic Ghanaians who despise the extremists amongst our political class, that aborted legal manoeuver by the petitioners' legal team illustrates perfectly, the real motives of the party hardliners who prevailed on the New Patriotic Party (NPP), to agree to the Supreme Court being petitioned to overturn the declaration by the Electoral Commissioner, of President Mahama as victor in the 2013 presidential election.

Clearly, for that small group of NPP hardliners who are depending on falsehood to secure the presidency for their party's defeated candidate, the object of the presidential election petition before the Supreme Court is not about seeking the truth as to what actually occurred during polling in the 2012 presidential election, but the clever use of arguments and legal technicalities to enable them achieve their objective.

There are many fair-minded Ghanaians, for whom it was against natural justice, and most unfortunate, that those who have openly maligned a man of honour, who has served his country diligently as Electoral Commissioner for many years, and supervised elections in which there have twice been transfers of power from one political party to another - resulting from victories of presidential candidates of opposition parties in December 2000 and December 2008 - objected to the Supreme Court allowing Dr. Afari-Djan to give evidence to ascertain the truth or otherwise, of their own allegations.

It is obvious that the NPP's hardliners came to the Supreme Court to manipulate the legal system to obtain what they failed to secure in the December 2012 presidential election: political power. Alas, they will fail there too.

To secure its future, when the inevitable happens, one hopes that the NPP's many decent-minded moderates, will move swiftly to seize control of their party from those hardliners and extremists, into whose grasping hands their party has fallen. A word to the wise...