Let the Tune-Caller Pay the Piper

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

I am too well-bred to call any members of the august Supreme Court of Ghana "timid" or any such patently intemperate names - for that is what royalty and nobility oblige me to do - but I can candidly and fearlessly attest to the fact that the Atuguba-led Supreme Court panel hearing the 2012 Akufo-Addo/New Patriotic Party (NPP) petition appears to be unduly allowing Mr. Tsatsu "The Thief" Tsikata to get away with way too much, in precisely the dastardly manner which the Oxbridge-educated felon is notorious for. And, of course, this is all geared towards the purchasing of time in order for the patently illegitimate government of the so-called National Democratic Congress (NDC) to be able to liberally loot as much of the public dole as it possibly can before the constitutional reality of its illegality catches up with the same and effectively chucks it out of power (See "Audit of Pink Sheets Could Cost About $100,000" JoyOnline.com/ Ghanaweb.com 5/10/13).

What is laughably interesting about Mr. Tsikata's call for the re-counting of the so-called pink slips is the fact that the lawyer for the Third Respondent - or the ruling National Democratic Congress - in the Election 2012 petition is not challenging the integrity and/or validity of Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia's comprehensive forensic evidence before the Atuguba Court authoritatively impugning the credibility and legitimacy of both the election itself and the declaration of Mr. John Dramani Mahama as the presidential election victor. What the former Legon Law School lecturer is questioning is whether, indeed, the key witness in the petition presented 11,000-plus pink sheets to the court, rather than 8,000 pink sheets.

Needless to say, the incontrovertibly stark fact of the matter is that the magnitude of the sampling, assuming for the sake of present polemic that, indeed, Dr. Bawumia submitted 8,000 pink sheets to the Atuguba Court, and not the originally stated 11,000-plus pink sheets, is still statistically scientific and/or representative enough to enable the former head of the currency re-denomination committee of the Bank of Ghana to carry the argument and the day, as it were.

Significantly, though, must be promptly conceded the all-too-apt call by the petitioners for the globally renowned accounting firm KPMG to review and/or audit the disputed pink sheets. My only reservation is that such auditing ought not, in any way, be conducted for free. It is rather too embarrassing for me to fathom, for even one moment, that a country that just authorized the payment of millions of cedis/dollars in decidedly gratuitous "gratuity" payments to parliamentarians, ranging between $100,000 and $300,000, according to most media reports, cannot afford to readily foot a KPMG auditing bill in the relatively marginal vicinity of $100,000.

Such shameless assay at freeloading beggarliness, a veritably chronic and perennial Third-World mentality, ought to be promptly and forwith banished from the proud vocabulary arsenal of Ghanaian politics. What is required here is the imperative need for such auditing to be executed with all the lightening speed that the process requires. It thus comes as quite perfectly in order, and even laudable, for the Atuguba Court to order the major parties involved in the Election 2012 petition to fork up an initial deposit of C15,000, apiece, for the process.

Of course, Mr. Tsikata and his unconscionable cohorts of NDC robber barons could easily give up some of their pelf in order to expedite the pink-sheet recounting or auditing process. But, needless to say, doing so would only defeat the lurid NDC agenda of delaying Ghana's democratic culture for as long as the Mahama posse could get away with the same.

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*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Department of English
Nassau Community College of SUNY
Garden City, New York
May 10, 2013
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net
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