By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
August 24, 2014
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

The man who, in the wake of his sound trouncing in the December 2007 presidential primary, adamantly refused to use "laid-down [party] rules and regulations in resolving any misunderstandings" and rudely walked out on the most revered of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) leaders, would now have other members of the party follow the very rules and regulations he so cavalierly flouted with impunity (See "Let's Not Play Into the Hands of Our Opponents - Alan cautions NPP Leaders" MyJoyOnline.com 8/20/14).

I can barely contain my anger. Indeed, my gut reaction immediately after reading such cant and hypocrisy balled up into the following question: Is Alan John Kwadwo "Quitman" Kyerematen above the same laid-down party rules and regulations that he so casually flouted in the late summer of 2008? If this is not the very apogee of arrogance, then I really don't know what else is. I am also wondering what the venerable and immortalized Mr. B. J. Da Rocha would have to say about such gross impudence on the part of Mr. Kyerematen today.

At the time in question, when Alan Cash, as Mr. Kyerematen is popularly known, walked out on the party elders and promptly tendered his resignation letter to then-Chairman Mac Manu, Mr. Da Rocha soberly noted that Mr. Cash had absolutely no substantive grievances against Nana Akufo-Addo and the latter's staunch supporters and sympathizers, as Mr. Kyerematen cynically wanted the rest of the nation to believe. Rather, the first dean of the Ghana Law School was convinced that Alan Cash was a patent nuisance who wanted to put his personal and parochial interests over and above those of the party and the nation at large. Mr. Da Rocha therefore concluded that the New Patriotic Party would be far better off to completely and definitively sever all links with Mr. Kyerematen.

It is also interesting and significant to observe that in his parting shot to party leaders, Alan Cash emphatically stated that his ambitions and aspirations far trascended the aims and objectives of the New Patriotic Party's as well as those of all the other major Ghanaian political parties, for that matter. And so, really, I was darn suspicious when Mr. Kyerematen made a 360-degree turn and shamelessly threw his hat into the Election 2012 Presidential Primary Contest. Some of those very familiar with party rules and regulations noted then that Mr. Kyerematen had not fully served out his constitutionally stipulated sanctions as a willful party deserter before he decided to contest for the party's presidential candidacy.

Which, of course, brings up the question of just who abetted Mr. Kyerematen's flagrant violation of laid-down party rules and regulations? For, needless to say, the sinister return of Alan Cash into membership of the New Patriotic Party effectively signaled the electoral death-knell of the NPP in the lead-up to Election 2016. But then, the most appropriate and logical question to ask is as follows: Who killed Antwi-Boasiako? We have also just begun witnessing the veritable nuisance time-bomb that is Mr. Alan John Kwadwo "Quitman" Kyerematen, that Mr. Da Rocha so prophetically hinted at that late summer of 2008.

Anyway, reacting to the criminal acts of vandalism and barbaric mayhem that rocked the headquarters of the New Patriotic Party on Tuesday, August 19, 2014, Mr. Cash quaintly claimed to be, somehow, "deeply saddened" by the same. He also quizzically added that "Now is not the time to engage in blame games in order not to play into the hands of our opponents and lose focus of our greater goal of winning power in 2016."

Wow, did Mr. Kyerematen really say the foregoing words attributed to him? And if, indeed, he did say those words, did he really listen to himself to get a vivid picture of the comically incongruous scenario that those words must have created in the ears and minds of those party bigwigs on whom he had so rudely walked out on that late summer of 2008? Well, for those of us party members, supporters and sympathizers on whom Mr. Kyerematen walked roughshod on, and out on, that late summer day in 2008, it is not clear precisely what the Edweso/Ejisu native means, when Alan Cash talks about party members' needing to guard against the eerie possibility of "playing into the hands of our [political] opponents."

For not only did his 2008 walk-out on the New Patriotic Party inescapably play into the hands of then-Candidate John Evans Atta-Mills, his fellow "Fante clansman," Mr. Kyerematen also spent most of the 2012 presidential campaign season courting and consorting with President John Dramani Mahama and the National Democratic Congress (NDC) for the purely personal favor of clinching the secretary-generalship of the World Trade Organization (WTO).

The fact of the matter is that Mr. Kyerematen woefully lacks the credibility to authorize him to presume to morally grandstand on the critical questions of party loyalty and unity.

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