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

I am now fully convinced that Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan is one prime candidate, or analysand, that Ghana's chief psychiatrist ought to focus his attention and services on rather than the gay, transgender and lesbian community. At a review confab on Election 2012 in the Volta regional capital of Ho, the chairman of the Electoral Commission was reported to have asked Ghanaian voters to pat themselves on their backs, because Ghana had, supposedly, conducted the best biometric electioneering exercise in the world (See "Let's Commend Ourselves for the Success of December Polls - Afari-Gyan" Vibeghana.com 3/16/13).

According to the report, Dr. Afari-Gyan was sanguine about the fact that "a few months after the December elections, some countries approached the EC for support towards their elections, an indication that 'Ghana has something [worthwhile?] to celebrate.'" Predictably, not a single country was mentioned by Dr. Afari-Gyan; and so it would quite edifying if the Electoral Commissioner could publicly name at least a handful. I bet those countries, assuming there are any, were very likely looking for ways of rigging their polls and getting a largely lackadaisical judicial system to look the other way, as it were.

And I bet my proverbial "bottom-dollar" that absolutely not a single "civilized" nation has approached the former University of Ghana political scientist for any advice or instruction on how to conduct a successful biometric polling exercise. What with deftly orchestrated breakdown of biometric voting machines massively across the northern-half of the country, where Mr. Mahama had rapturously preached a gospel of "Tribal-Regionalism" and inveterate anti-Akan ethnic hatred? Or could such assistance solicitation entail the inimitable orchestration of biometric voting-machine theft, as witnessed in several parts of the country shortly after the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) presented its petition challenging the political legitimacy of President Mahama to the Wood Supreme Court? Or, perhaps, it was just about how to set up a "Savelugu Three-Like" scam artistry in order to meliorate the culpable gravity of an electioneering fraud?

For me, though, the venue of the so-called 2012 Election Review gave the epic lie to the veritable moral blight that was unarguably Ghana's most scandalous attempt at constitutional democracy in nearly sixty years! You see, you simply cannot take any polling exercise in the Volta Region seriously, let alone think of publicizing the results thereof; you might just as well program a bunch of Trokosi look-alike robots and come up with strikingly the same results!

In reality, Dr. Afari-Gyan was simply attempting to shamelessly put a brave face on the woefully forensically untenable. It is also quite possible that in the wake of the Atuguba Court's instruction to the parties involved in the Akufo-Addo petition to reconcile the "issues" on which they desire the ruling of the Court, Dr. Afari-Gyan is finally beginning to feel a false sense of vindication.

Well, as the old saying goes: We live to see; and then we shall draw the relevant and logical conclusions on the road to liberation.

___________________________________________________ *Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D. Department of English Nassau Community College of SUNY Garden City, New York March 15, 2013 ###