IS THE NPP THE PUPPET WHO IS TO COME?<%20http://theodikro.blogspot.com/2010/02/read-article-npp-needs-functional.html> *

*"...initially, at least, a military junta would take over."* * - "William P. Mahoney, the U.S. Ambassador to Ghana, ...in a candid discussion in Washington, D.C., with CIA Director John A. McCone and the deputy chief of the CIA's Africa division, whose name has been withheld." March 11, 1965.*

Okoampa writes: * "Simply put Mr. Kufuor, who had earlier on served under the Rawlings-led Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) junta, in the wake of the unconstitutional overthrow of the Limann-led People’s National Party (PNP), became president following two decades of virtual economic wreckage sophomorically unleashed on longsuffering Ghanaians by the Rawlings Gang in the name of “revolution.” What actually transpired within those two decades, however, has almost invariably been characterized by avid students of postcolonial Ghanaian politics as a “devolution,” a clinically degenerative process by which the entire functioning statal apparatus had effectively been ground to a standstill. This is what many a Kufuorian opponent, largely members and sympathizers of the so-called National Democratic Congress (NDC), has facilely described as “the goodwill of the international community,” coupled with sound financial backing, particularly among wealthy foreign governments and other individuals who always hoped for a democratically functioning polity along ideological lines prescribed by Dr. J. B. Danquah, the putative doyen of Gold Coast and Ghanaian politics, and former Prime Minister K. A. Busia, among others."*

- Okoampa-Ahoofe, Kwame, Read Article: NPP Needs Functional Structures and Statesmen ... Feature Article of Thursday, 11 February 2010, Columnist: Okoampa-Ahoofe, Kwame

COMMENT:

A famous Roman general once said “I more fear a stupid ally than I fear a clever enemy”. How right he was. I have always considered Kwame Okoampa as the weakest chain in the NPP propaganda machine as a result of his special skills in writing prodigiously without thinking about the import of what he writes. Reading both this article of Okoampa and that of Paul Lee's "Documents Expose U.S. Role in Nkrumah Overthrow" (Special to SeeingBlack.com) gives me an important dimension of Ghana's unfinished struggle to be free and independent.

Paul Lee writes: "Declassified National Security Council and Central Intelligence Agency documents provide compelling, new evidence of United States government involvement in the 1966 overthrow of Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah."

In predicting the future role prepared for the NPP by them, we get a glimpse of that from just one word: "initially"!

"In a reversal of what some would assume were the traditional roles of an ambassador and the CIA director, McCone asked Mahoney who would most likely succeed Nkrumah in the event of a coup. Mahoney again correctly forecast the future: Ambassador Mahoney stated that initially, at least, a military junta would take over. "

To make this happen, the report reads, I produce highlights:

"Making it Happen

"But Mahoney was not a prophet. Rather, he represented the commitment of the U.S. government, in coordination with other Western governments, to bring about Nkrumah's downfall. Firstly, Mahoney recommended denying Ghana's forthcoming aid request in the interests of further weakening Nkrumah. He felt that there was little chance that either the Chinese Communists or the Soviets would in adequate measure come to Nkrumah's financial rescue and the British would continue to adopt a hard nose attitude toward providing further assistance to Ghana."

Often the traducers of Ghana's first president, the Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah dare to accuse his government of economic mismanagement which resulted in the 1966 coup d'etat. Wrong!

"The documents appear in a collection of diplomatic and intelligence memos, telegrams, and reports on Africa in Foreign Relations of the United States, the government's ongoing official history of American foreign policy."

The Ghanaian economy was carefully targeted to fall. The government of Nkrumah was deliberately subjected to massive economic sabotage and was not spared any effort to ensure a "regime change". The reason given for this must be very instructive of any Ghanaian seeking the way forward. "Nkrumah was doing more to undermine our interests than any other black African." The fundamental political question the NPP exists to answer is whether or not the people of Ghana are there only to satisfy foreign interests, or their own interests?

"Where the more subtle methods of economic pressure and political subversion have failed to achieve the desired result," Nkrumah wrote from exile in Guinea three years later, "there has been resort to violence in order to promote a change of regime and prepare the way for the establishment of a puppet government." * "The coup d'etat, organized by dissident army officers, toppled the Nkrumah government on Feb. 24, 1966 and was promptly hailed by Western governments, including the U.S."*

The puppet government they sought to restore after Nkrumah disintegrated under a blaze of scandalous foreign policy that even tried to make friends with the Apartheid South Africa, a life and death struggle with the labour movement, harassment of citizens from neighbouring countries sojourning in our country, a massive and sudden devaluation of the cedi at the say-so if the IMF and the World Bank, etc., etc...! It was not until the end of the NDC rule that they could once more assume full control of the entire government apparatus.

How do we identify a puppet of neocolonialism? Please, to answer this question, read again what Okoampa says about the level of "support" the Kufour Administration received. Note also that most of these monies were eventually ploughed back or shall be ploughed back at great cost to our economic stability and development. This is exactly what they do to their puppets! But, at what cost to the country and its people? Compare and contrast the way the Ghanaian economy was treated under these two regimes by the Western powers, and you are on your way to understanding what Nkrumah meant by neocolonialism. The fact the NPP regime enjoyed the special treatment Okoampa mentions here must speak volumes of which group Ambassador Mahoney had in mind after the military junta when he said: "...initially, at least, a military junta would take over."

Quick confirmation can be found in comparing their basic programmes and philosophies from their very early beginnings up to the present day! As a result of their own greed and selfishness on the part of everybody in that party, it now faces an inevitable implosion. The question that some of us have been seeking to ask both Alan Cash and Nana Akuffo Addo is very simple: "Are you the puppet who is to come, or wait we for another?" --

Nana Akyea Mensah, The Odikro. http://theodikro.blogspot.com/<%20http://theodikro.blogspot.com/2010/02/read-article-npp-needs-functional.html>