Kwabena Agyepong insults NPP "Old Woman"

With just about a month left for the New Patriotic Party to hold its annual delegates congress in Tamale to elect its national executives, the campaign team of one of the aspirants for the position of general secretary of the Party has decided to resort to insults, personality attacks and ridicule as a way of muscling out any party member who criticises their candidate.

It would be recalled that recently, the National Council of the Party urged party members to speak with decorum when speaking in public. Most candidates vying for positions within the Party have called on both their supporters and members of the Party to desist from insults and ridicule. Indeed, the campaign themes of most candidates are centred on unity of the Party after the internal elections.

Moreover, the 2008 and 2012 presidential candidate of the Party, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, and a leading member of the Party, Alan Kyeremanten, have both stressed on the need for the Party to remain united after the necessary internal reorganisation of the Party.

However, the campaign team of Kwabena Agyei Agyepong has used and continues to use social media, and in particular, Facebook, to insult, ridicule and attack hard working members of the Party. Key members of Kwabena Agyepong's campaign team, namely, Davis Opoku Ansah and Newton-Offei Justice Abeeku, have, over the course of the campaign, insulted and ridiculed hard working members of the Party, whose sacrifice for the Party cannot be questioned.

In January 2014, a stronger crusader of Mr. Agyepong's campaign, Mohammed Obosu, also known as Chief Obosu, in an open letter to the Party, which letter was also copied to pro-NDC media, attacked the integrity of the National Chairman, Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey, with all kinds of insulting words. His letter generated a heated discussion within the Party, and partly led to the directive of the National Council on public utterances of party members.

On all occasions, the attention of the persons involved and the attention of Mr. Agyepong have been drawn to the divisive effect of their comments, yet no action or step has been taken by those persons or Mr. Agyepong himself. Without condemning such attacks and comments by his campaign team, it is obvious that Mr. Agyepong condones the use of such language on party members and executives.

As recent as last week, Mr. Agyepong's campaign team issued a statement signed by Newton-Offei Justice Abeeku, and in the statement, insulted a party member using very foul language. The statement, which was released via Facebook, described the party member, one Maame Adwoa, who serves the Party as a serial caller, as a "frustrated old woman who is undoubtedly going through chronic pangs of menopausal heat-flashes."

The statement described Maame Adwoa's criticisms of Kwabena Agyepong as "nothing but a damn useless figment of her faded, twisted, thwarted, contorted, corrugated and confused imagination." The statement further described Maame Adwoa and other long serving members of the Party for find it necessary to question the track record of Kwabena Agyepong as "characters who have neither intellectual nor domestic sense to make any useful contributions to npp electoral fortune, except senseless vilification of hard working and sincere members of the party."

Since this statement was released by his campaign team, Mr. Agyepong has refused or failed to retract same and apologise to Maame Adwoa for the use of such words on her person. It therefore presupposes that Mr. Agyepong condones the use of such language on hard working members of the Party, which language may divide the Party. Mr. Agyepong is running on the theme, "Together We Shall Rise Again" but the question is how do you unite a Party, the members of which your campaign team has insulted and ridiculed?

Many party members consider Mr. Agyepong as a suitable candidate for general secretary but think that his human relations are very poor. These attacks from his campaign team only reinforces the perception of party members about Mr. Agyepong's poor human relations. Mr. Agyepong needs to show leadership by cracking the whip on his own campaign team by sanctioning Newton-Offei Justice Abeeku. The saying, "charity begins at home," is very instructive.