Agyarko's Red-Herring Will Not Save Mahama

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

I personally neither trust nor respect Mr. Boakye Agyarko, the manager of Nana Akufo-Addo's 2012 presidential election campaign; and so this brief rejoinder is in no way meant to defend the reputation and/or integrity of the man who once questioned my sanity, merely because I had deigned to ward off a black-mailing mercenary gadfly who viciously attempted to stampede Nana Akufo-Addo's presidential ambitions.

What I essentially seek to do here is to point out the fact that even Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, Ghana's Electoral Commissioner for some twenty-odd years now, has himself publicly and unabashedly stated that, indeed, Election 2012 was anything but clean, free and fair. At a post-election review in the Volta regional capital of Ho, for instance, Dr. Afari-Gyan revealed to the media and the Ghanaian public at large that funding earmarked for the training of election workers and seasonal volunteers had been willfully and criminally embezzled by some salaried employees of the Electoral Commission.

Indeed, at the time that he made the preceding observation, Dr. Afari-Gyan also promised to promptly ensure the rigorous prosecution of the yet-to-be-identified EC operatives involved, once an ongoing investigation of the matter had been completed. The chairman of the EC has also publicly acknowledged that the figures originally provided the public as representing the total number of registered Ghanaian voters was significantly higher than the actual number of eligible citizens in the voter's register.

What the foregoing, of course, means is that even if Mr. Boakye Agyarko had rather naively and exuberantly thanked the Ghanaian electorate for a "free and fair" election, the latter statement was clearly based on the Akufo-Addo campaign manager's all-too-premature and, in retrospect, woefully misguided belief that, somehow, Dr. Afari-Gyan was poised to strictly and honestly abiding by the sacred mandate of the Ghanaian electorate.

Needless to say, now the global community has been fully apprised of the fact that Ghana's Electoral Commissioner, all along, had a totally different agenda underneath his sleeves, as it were. In sum, what Mr. Tony Lithur ought to be doing before the Supreme Court of Ghana, is to be seen to be shrewdly poking credibility holes into the forensic evidence laudably presented by Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, or at least be seen to be sowing objective and palpable doubts in the minds of the Atuguba-led panel of jurists, rather that lamely and pathetically taking cheap shots at the "hearsay" press release of a decidedly inexperienced political opportunist seeking to facilely curry favor with Ghanaian voters.

Histrionically waving the Boakye Agyarko press release in front of the justices of the Supreme Court, almost as if it were a viable substitute for the clearly sustainable forensic evidence presented by Dr. Bawumia, in definitive impugnation and outright proscription of the presidential legitimacy of Mr. John Dramani Mahama, such as Mr. Lithur is widely reported to have done, is an irreparable losing proposition. And Mr. Mahama had better sober up and begin packing out of the Jubilee-Flagstaff House!

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*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Department of English
Nassau Community College of SUNY
Garden City, New York
April 25, 2013
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net
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