THE MACHIAVELLIAN POLITICAL CROSS-DRESSER CALLED ASIEDU NKETIA

Sammy Awuku, the National Youth Organizer of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), has called for the immediate arrest of Asiedu Nketia, the General Secretary of the New Democratic Congress (NDC).

Awuku’s position stems from the following statement reportedly made by the NDC’s General Secretary:

“The very party people who will be calling on the Electorate Commission (EC) to remove names of aliens and minors from the register when the opportunity comes for registration to be done, these are the very parties who will go and pick aliens and line them up to have their name on the register in a bid to get advantage over each other…all political parties including NDC.”

These statements—if indeed true—are deeply troubling in all of their manifestations of political implications.

There is, however, a tempting tendency to treat this subject matter dismissively as a conspiracy theory because one cannot imagine a prominently conscious leader of a major political organization in the country, and an incumbent one at that, bringing down the heavy hammer and gavel of self-indictment upon the head of his party and those in opposition without, possibly, his not having had intimate knowledge of or access to some high-profile incriminating evidence of sorts.

Evidently, Asiedu Nketia appears to know more about the inside workings of men and women involved in Ghana’s underground economy of voter fraud than he was probably willing to reveal to the public.

And if this were indeed the case, what has prevented him from making this explosive information to the investigators at the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) and the EC?

Yet we cannot blame the NDC alone for this purported breach of the country’s electoral laws, as there is a high possibility that all the other parties might equally be guilty of the same crime(s) electoral breaches.

The idea that each of the political parties might want to gain some advantage over each other in the upcoming general elections could be the primary motivating factor instigating and feeding these widespread allegations of voter fraud. But we all know these serious allegations will go nowhere as has happened in many a situation, granted that incumbency advantage makes for easy owning and manipulating of the BNI.

And what about the Ghanaian parliament?

We better not take this trajectory there, the Ghanaian parliament, that is, since this institution is almost non-functional and non-functioning when it comes to its mandate of defending the public interest and the national interest.

What is more, the intrusive presence of executive dominance and incumbency advantage in the body politic of public diplomacy is such that it takes precedence over parliamentary assertiveness, prerogatives and privileges, thus potentially inactivating or undermining the constitutive jurisdiction of parliamentary assertiveness—primarily.

Worse of all, executive advantage and incumbency advantage also trump the collective wisdom of popular sovereignty, as it is forced onto the background of social and political irrelevance, and in effect, usurping or assuming the moral voice of popular sovereignty and rather, ironically, making it their own. In that case what should have been the moral conscience of the masses rather become a mere appendage to political opportunism as well as to parliamentary and executive dictatorship, with the masses’ moral conscience losing its commanding oversight of societal evil.

It is for this very reason and more that cross-dresser Asiedu Nketia, popularly known as General Mosquito, should have been compelled by the powers that be to provide additional information on the role of political parties, including the NDC, in registering minors—to all the appropriate authorities—and creating unnecessary problems for the EC and Madam Charlotte Osei. Admittedly, this is just one effective way we can improve our sick democracy—information sharing.

But, Asiedu Nketia’s “unfair advantage,” regarding the notion that all the political parties were allegedly involved in the scandal of registering minors and his other comment that, the NPP is in denial and playing ostrich are probably closer to the political truth than we are ready to admit. Yet, for Ghanaians to sit down on the fence and allow this sham two-party system to destroy the country beats our imagination. Here, listen to Rt. Rev. Prof. Emmanuel Asante, the Chairman of the National Peace Council:

“Ghana is bigger than any political party, so let’s break our silence and speak against the registration of minors. Ghana doesn’t belong to either the NDC or the NPP, it belongs to all…”

Of course, Rt. Rev. Prof. Asante could not have stated the case against the brutal dictatorship of this sham two-party system any clearer. What is more, there is so much evil being perpetrated by the leaderships of this two-party system that is, regrettably, ignored by the larger public. For instance, we have the questionable instance of the NDC allegedly putting up a US$20 million ultra-modern facility headquartered in Adabraka, a suburb in Accra, which Asiedu Nketia and others in the leadership of the party are refusing to tell the public how they came by that money.

Listen to Asiedu Nketia:

“It’s more expensive to rent an apartment than build a new office…Per the calculations we made, we realized that it will be cheaper to build a new headquarters than spend huge sums on rents…we took this decision because the NDC has come to stay.”

So, if we may ask: Why the initial denials by Asiedu Nketia, Anita De-Sooso, Yaw Boateng Gyan, and others that the NDC had nothing to do with the building?

On the other hand, we cannot make a categorical or authoritative statement on what to make of an allegation published in The New Statesman, a paper connected to the NPP and its flagbearer, Akufo-Addo, that the owner of the ultra-modern complex may have been Alfred Woyome, the man at the center of the country’s most scandalous judgment debt controversy!

Here is exactly what the paper reportedly claimed after having associated the Ahwois, Kojo Twum-Boafo, Alban Bagbin…with the complex in question:

“Inside sources within the NDC, which the paper cannot independently verify, tell the paper that the construction work is allegedly a kickback gotten from the Chinese as a result of the NDC’s growing relationship with the Chinese.”

It is also categorically strange for Asiedu Nketia to tell the world he was not going to be forthcoming with the cost for the ultra-modern complex facility. No transparency and accountability to the public—in other words.

And yet the same public keeps voting for the same wicked, unimaginative politicians and for the clueless, visionless political parties—the NPP and the NDC particularly—as though the country cannot offer a better alternative in the form of a third-party coalition.

Seriously, this should have been a serious question for the BNI and parliament to have taken up and fully investigated and, even if they had done what we are suggesting here, the outcome(s) of such a high-profile investigation would have been insidiously buried as all the other major scandalous controversies that have stalked this party to date.

This is how executive dominance and incumbency advantage contribute to the destruction of the country as well as to the further weakening of bureaucracy.

Both executive dominance and incumbency advantage, it turns out, have a way of usurping the jurisdiction of the BNI through the instruments of political patronage and outright bribery of its leadership.

Thus, the political economy of Asiedu Nketia’s “undue advantage” makes perfect sense in the scheme of political realism. Simply put, politics boils down to comparative advantage or undue advantage. The leadership of the NDC is taking full advantage of these concepts because it knows the leadership of the NPP will be doing likewise when it takes over the reins of power.

In fact, no one expresses this political sentiment better than Charles Wereko-Brobby, a Chief Policy Analyst at the Ghana Institute of Policy Options (GIPPO):

“When people are in opposition, they see every action of the incumbent as tantamount of gaining undue advantage but when they get into power they forget that the rules of engagement have to be very tight so that they do not suffer unduly from the abuse of incumbency advantage…

“We have to have rules of engagement and people now in opposition are saying that we should have rules on what the president can do and cannot do. We don’t have laws and the absence of laws create the opportunity for people in power to abuse it. I happen to have been one of the drafters of so far so very good in 2004 which was also produced using state funds.

“I remember the NDC protested vehemently against that particular document. Now the NPP is shouting. But the very sensible view that is emerging is that, there should be laws and proper rules of engagement.”

FINAL THOUGHTS

Ghanaweb has also reported on the following scandalous allegations (our emphasis):

“Myself [Mathias Mokono Wilson, an ex-NDC accountant] and Asiedu Nketia went to the bank and withdrew money on behalf of the EC…there are a lot of cheques drawn on behalf of the EC which I don’t have the receipts…If I go, they will tell me that I have embezzled money. They used me as a scapegoat. When I finished issuing the checks then they fired…”

Where did this sensational story go? Did the accountant make those serious allegations to save his skin or to spite the NDC, Asiedu Nketia, Kofi Adam…? What did parliament and the BNI make of this story? And how did Asiedu Nketia wiggle himself out of this sensational dragnet?

Nevertheless, the anorexic-looking cross-dresser Asiedu Nketia can sometimes be brutally, unrepentantly, and wickedly honest.

But guess what?

Ghana undoubtedly needs another “non-partisan” National Reconciliation Commission (NRC), to investigate and then prosecute all the political criminals in the NDC and the NPP, another good reason for the non-establishment parties to bury their differences, to coalitionize with each other, and to come together as a formidable bloc to displace our proverbial corrupt duopolistic leeches, the NDC and the NPP.

Yes, a non-partisan criminal prosecution of the hardened criminal elements in the NDC and the NPP is what we want. It is not exactly rocket science to figure out that the NDC and the NPP will not prosecute each other’s instinctive political criminals, all these because they both belong to the same amoral cloth of greedy bastards.

None of them—we repeat—none of them believes in the “law of retaliation,” the so-called Hammurabi’s Code or retributive justice, for they have never found a reason to force them to equate political equalization with political equality in terms of equitable re-distribution of national wealth and retributive justice. Perhaps, rather, they believe in this maxim, sometimes wrongly attributed to Mahatma Gandhi:

“An eye-for-eye and tooth-for-tooth would lead to a world of the blind and toothless.”

Of course, none of the political leaderships of the NDC and the NPP either wants to go “blind” or “toothless.” This is what our winner-takes-all schadenfrude duopoly simply boils down to!

CONCLUDING REMARKS

On the track “Gospel Ghetto” late rapper Tupac Shakur said the following:

“Everyone’s ashamed to the youth ‘cause the truth looks strange…

“And for me it’s reversed, we left them a world that’s cursed, and it hurts…

“‘Cause any day they’ll push the button and all good men like Malcolm X and Bobby Hutton died for nothing…

“Don’t them let me get teary, the world looks dreary…

“Before we find world peace, we gotta find peace and end the war in the streets…”

Here, as elsewhere, Tupac was making a direct reference to society turning “truth” upside down to confuse the youth. The other interesting point he made which we cannot simply gloss over is that, this “truth” which society has succeeded in turning upside has the potential to render the hard-fought battles (and tireless efforts) which great men like Kwame Nkrumah, Amilcar Cabral, and Nelson Mandela…waged to free Africa from the yoke of colonialism and slavery, useless and pointless.

We bring up this interpretation in the light of impunity, anomie, and the magnitude of political corruption the country is engulfed in even as the elite politicians enrich themselves at the expense of the masses.

For instance, why no institution of state and/or any of its appendages would dare take on Asiedu Nketia, then a board member of the Bui Authority, and his dubious relationship with the Bui Dam Project beats our imagination.

It is as if the political morality question of conflict of interest does not matter in our body politic.

Also, his complete silence on how much the ultra-modern complex facility cost is another interesting case in point. No wonder a wealthy businessman associated with the NDC would donate an expensive building to the NDC, to be used as the headquarters by one of the regional branches of the party [NDC] and this never generated public outcry.

This author remembers a scandalous story told him by a prominent member of the NPP, that the elites [of the NPP] share national booties among themselves while largely ignoring their food soldiers, while the elites of the NDC make sure their foot soldiers get a fair share of the pie of national booties.

Strangely, and understandably, this NPP member would claim to like and love the NDC for this very reason. And the question is not that our politicians are not “intelligent.” They are—certainly. Except that the collective “intelligence” of this special breed of political animals functions so well in orchestrating political criminality, running down the society, stealing and lying.

And whether we like it or not, The Ghanaian duopoly has contributed to creating this dangerous breed of criminal masterminds. The point is that the NDC and the NPP, both of which represent the extreme polarities of Ghana’s duopoly, are nothing more than spitting images of each other.

This duopoly is in effect a one-party system of professional thieving brigades, liberally given a 4- to 8-year mandate of continued cyclic plundering of the nation’s wealth for the benefit of a few.

Signing away our depletable wealth of national resources—on the cheap—to multinational companies from without for lack of technocratic vision and transforming technology, as well as of pragmatic, prudent leadership, has remained the source of the country’s downfall and underdevelopment.

And both parties are guilty of these heinous crimes committed against and in the name of the state.

From the shady oil deal (E.O. Group) to the controversial Woyome judgment debt scandal, we can only say that these high political crimes committed against the state and its people on a daily basis represent a scandalous travesty of the callous, dangerous political mindset of the ruling elite.

And with the kleptomaniacal crony capitalism which the NDC calls social democracy…And with the resource-rich Akan-ethnocracy and kleptomaniacal ethnic politics which the NPP calls free-market capitalism…this rich country is bound to remain in the grips of a vicious cycle of crushing poverty until…

As an aside, though, this interesting political cross-dresser called Asiedu Nketia has a sharp, acidic tongue that has successfully managed to dissolve, even reduce serious, critical issues of enormous national significance to a public display of comic and teasing wisecracks, and in the process eventually disarming politicians and critics from the opposing camp, the NPP mostly.

The “evil genius” in the persons of Akufo-Addo and Asiedu Nketia is what is killing the country. Is it any wonder that NPP’s Yaw Adomako Baafi would characterize Asiedu Nketia as “possessed” and “arrogant wizard”?

And how about Akua Donkor’s characterization of Akufo-Addo as being “more dangerous than Gitmo 2”?

Now, let us hear out Kennedy Agyapong too (our emphasis):

“I will not sit here and blame only the NDC…He [Asiedu Nketia] has a point if he says all political parties register minors…”

Sammy Awuku should petition the appropriate authorities to arrest both Ken and Asiedu Nketia for interrogation. It is interesting how Ken catches Awuku, his party mate, in the act of lying. Hear him, the man Awuku, speak so confidently, so innocently, so childishly, and so angelically:

“I want to say for the record that we [the NPP] do not bus in foreigners. Ghanaian elections are for Ghanaians and Ghanaians deserve the right to choose who their leaders should be… It is clear that people in government are aiding foreigners to treat our constitution like a piece of trash...if it came from the mouth of an opposition activist, you would see the national security apparatus discerning heavily with the cohesive machinery of the state…”

REFERENCES

Ghanaweb. “Sammy Awuku Calls For Asiedu Nketia’s Arrest.” May 6, 2016.

Ghanaweb. “Don’t Blame EC For Bloated Register—Political Parties Told.” May 10, 2016.

Ghanaweb. “I’ll Not Disclose Cost of New NDC Headquarters—Asiedu Nketia.” October 17, 2014.

Ghanaweb. “Abuse Of Incumbency Claims Against Mahama Flawed—Tarzan.” April 23, 2016.

The New Statesman. “NDC Struggles To Find Owner For $20M Office.” Courtesy of Ghanaweb. December 12, 2011.

Ghanaweb. “NDC Pays EC GHC5.4M.” February 12, 2016.

Ghanaweb. “Exposed! Asiedu Nketia Sells Blocks To Bui Dam.” February 17, 2011.

Ghanaweb. “Asiedu Nketia Is An ‘Arrogant Wizard.’” February 26, 2016.

Ghanaweb. “Akufo-Addo More Dangerous Than Gitmo 2—Akua Donkor.” January 15, 2016.

Ghanaweb. “Sammy Awuku Calls For Asiedu Nketia's Arrest.” May 6, 2016.

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