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

I am not on state side, and so I can neither contradict nor confirm Mr. Kennedy Agyepong's allegation of ingrained corruption among the ranks of the current national executive membership of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) - (See "MPs Reject Jake and Dr. Adjei" The Publisher / Ghanaweb.com 12/18/13).

What I am presently interested in more than anything alse are the facts. And so far, the Assin-Central NPP-Member of Parliament has not publicly released any forensically sustainable facts to back up his incontrovertibly serious allegation. And until he comes out shortly to do so, Mr. Agyepong's vehement call for Mr. Jake Otanka Obetsebi-Lamptey, the National Chairman of the New Patriotic Party, and the latter's executive associates, to be ousted during the party's upcoming primaries would remain as just one of those perennially vacuous calls of a frustrated politician on the lookout for gubernatorial power.

Likewise, a failure to prove his corruption allegation against the executive membership of the NPP may well find Mr. Agyepong being legally charged with the gratuitous defamation of the hard-earned individual and collective reputations of his targets of calumny. I am hereby, of course, in no way saying that the quite locally renowned media proprietor may not have made his allegation on the strength of empirical evidence. Rather, what I am saying is that he needs to back up his allegation with concrete facts and examples, or else Mr. Agyepong could fairly legitimately be charged with character assassination. He may also stand equally guilty of insulting the intelligence of party electors and the general Ghanaian electorate at large.

We must also clearly and emphatically point out that Mr. Agyepong's tirade against Ghanaian citizens of Ga and Ewe descent in the leadup to Election 2012, and in the wake of the alleged brutal beating of Ms. Ursula Owusu by hired goons and thugs of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), reportedly chaperoned by Messrs. Ade Coker and Nii Lantey Vanderpuije, may well have made up the marginal vote-count difference separating incumbent President John Dramani Mahama from Nana Akufo-Addo.

Back then, I supported the Assin-Central NPP-MP purely as a matter of principle and the imperative need to sending a strong message to the NDC bullies that no form or degree of unprovoked violence would be countenanced, rather than my firmly, in anyway whatsoever, believing that Mr. Agyepong's patently intemperate and potentially divisive rhetorical salvo contained any intrinsically righteous value in of itself, for it definitely did not.

I would, however, unreservedly concur with Mr. Agyepong if his argument happens to be squarely predicated on the apparent inability of the current executive membership of the party to remarkably build upon electoratal gains registered under the erstwhile Kufuor administration. The former President John Agyekum-Kufuor, truth be told, committed his own fair share of avoidable blunders immediately prior to him exiting his plush executive suite. And many a keenly observant Ghanaian voter was not totally out of the loop on the same.

For instance, Mr. Kufuor's widely perceived partiality towards one of his party's presidential candidates was not lost on discerning Ghanaian citizens. Likewise, his strategically inopportune release of jailed scofflaw taxi-cab drivers in the leadup to the presidential election runoff between Nana Akufo-Addo and the recently deceased President John Evans Atta-Mills, may not have necessarily been aimed at strengthening the hand of Nana Akufo-Addo who had convincingly, albeit narrowly, beaten Dr. Atta-Mills in the first round of Election 2008. What I am tersely implying here is that one cannot eat one's proverbial cake, or muffin, and curiously expect to have it all intact at the same time.

Nana Akufo-Addo, of course, could also have helped himself much better, if the former Attorney-General and Minister of Justice had diplomatically and wisely avoided the self-defeating rhetoric of innuendoes that seemed to be far more directed at his departing predecessor than his most formidable challenger for the post of NPP presidential candidate. Likewise, his self-preening litany of his parents' and grandfather's public service and political achievements were a glaring turnoff which savvy campaign operatives could readily have advised him against. The latter pretty uncomfortably made the candidate sound like a teenager desperately pressing his suit with a reluctant target of romance.

The preceding are just a few of the strategic mine fields that the executive operatives of the NPP ought to gingerly guard against, especially if they want to have a fighting chance come Election 2016.

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*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Department of English
Nassau Community College of SUNY
Garden City, New York
Dec. 18, 2013
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net
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