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

On Monday, March 28, 2011, I was summarily cut off a live Internet current affairs radio program at a New York station called Volta Power.Com. Now, I hate to be according such publicity to this radio station, because being summarily and embarrassingly cut off in the middle of this current-affairs program clearly appears to have been my premeditated reward for voluntarily offering, upon express and earnest invitation by the host, to participate in the same.

Anyway, the topic for this particular night’s discussion regarded effective ways and means of stanching the abject culture of insults – or public abuse – that seems to have become a staple political diet between the country’s two major parties, namely, the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the New Patriotic Party (NPP). I had driven 32 miles from the campus of Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City, to my Bronx Borough residence in rush-hour traffic under 45 minutes!

Well, the host of this particular program may never have gotten to learn of this, but I escaped being sanctioned with a speeding ticket by the proverbial skin of my teeth. My basic crime for being summarily disconnected from the program was for daring to discursively suggest that at another time in the history of Ghanaian politics, the nauseatingly lackadaisical stance of President John Evans Atta-Mills towards his incessantly foulmouthed/badmouthing cabinet members against their political opponents would have provoked any “madman,” such as Mr. Rawlings, to forcibly assume the reins of governance with popular support.

I had also quickly added that a critical review of the familial backgrounds of most of the key culprits involved in this rancid culture of public abuse would reveal a gaping lack of adequate parental supervision, as most of these impudent foul-mouths, be they of NDC or NPP persuasion, may be found to have been born into and raised in broken homes lacking either responsible novercal and/or avuncular figures. I had also capped the latter with that age-old Akan maxim which observes as follows: “She who gave birth to you (or the generic child), did not toil as heavily as s/he who raised the same.”

The host of the program, a Mr. Amissah, then sharply accused me of personally launching an unprovoked verbal assault against former President Jerry John Rawlings. I promptly riposted that the clinical evidence for my discursive characterization inhered in the consistently erratic public pronouncements and priggish posturing by the man who once called Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, my paternal uncle and the 2012 Presidential Candidate of the main opposition New Patriotic Party, “a dwarf.” Of course, the Rawlings “revolution” would also engender the summary detention and severe beating of my World War II veteran maternal uncle, the late Rev. Lt.-Col. H. H. Sintim-Aboagye (1921-1987). Now, regarding the delicate question of the veritable and clinical psychography of Mr. Rawlings, Ghanaians were given a good taste of the same last Tuesday, March 29, 2011, when the man who dominated the Ghanaian political landscape resoundingly commended NDC youth who torched their party’s offices in the Northern Regional capital of Tamale, as well as other towns and cities in the vicinity, for so “constructively” channeling their more than justified anger at the politically unfavorable ruling by Justice E. K. Ayebi in the landmark acquittal of all 15 suspects accused of murdering the Supreme Overlord of the Dagbon State, namely, Ya-Na Yakubu Andani II on March 27, 2002.

We are also informed that the cost of damaged and destroyed property runs into hundreds of thousands of cedis. And, ironically, in response to such apocalyptic mayhem, this is what Mr. Rawlings, who had reportedly traveled to Tamale unannounced, in an apparently desperate act of damage control, had to say: “I am here to praise [the Andani youth] for the control that they exhibited, that they took it out on the party [sic] structures, the government’s [sic] party structure, that is very much justified. I believe an opportunity is on the horizon for us to do justice” (See “Rawlings Justifies NDC Youth Violence in Tamale” MyJoyOnline 4/3/11).

Earlier on, leading Accra-based privately owned Fm radio station Joy had reported the following reaction from Mr. Rawlings vis-à-vis the landmark Ya-Na verdict: “According to Mr. Rawlings, the anger [violently expressed by the pro-Andani youths] at the ruling NDC was long overdue, adding that the action of the aggrieved youth would have been worse, had they not restrained themselves. He therefore commended them for controlling their anger.”

It goes without saying that this paradoxical act of mayhem on the part of a faction that claims to be in voracious search of judicial redress, or justice the civilized way, seems to be totally lost on the former president, who may well have deliberately instigated these multiple acts of arson and vandalism. Mr. Rawlings also does not appear to fully appreciate the fact that by torching the property of a legitimately constituted and recognized political party, these pro-Andani youths have directly and seriously implicated themselves in a felonious act of criminality that is punishable by both monetary fines and imprisonment. And if he does, then it is almost certain that the former Ghanaian strongman appears to envisage himself to stand head and shoulders above the civic laws of the land.

And needless to say, Mr. Rawlings has every right to envisage matters as such, being that on the eve of his relinquishment of illegitimate power, an unprecedented proviso absolving him of all past acts of wanton criminality, was appended to Ghana’s 1992 or Fourth-Republican Constitution. And so in quite a real sense, Mr. Rawlings could be aptly envisaged to be a man who lives in a world that is totally all his own.

Interestingly, Mr. Rawlings, by his unguarded public support for the arson and vandalism wreaked by the pro-Andani youths, may just have inadvertently initiated a second and parallel trial vis-à-vis the Ya-Na regicide. And in the second case, or trial, he may well be called upon as a prime witness. But, perhaps, what needs to be promptly and vehemently pointed out to the founding-patriarch of the ruling National Democratic Congress is that no level of anger, however deemed legitimate, justifies the wanton destruction of public property in any civilized society. And, needless to say, the overwhelming majority of Ghanaians are of the firm believe and opinion that ours is a civilized society that is governed by the rule of law.

If the preceding observation has validity, then Mr. Rawlings may well have inflamed an already volatile situation, particularly with his clearly partisan and politically polarizing exclusive meeting with the pro-Andani youths, even while rather cynically insisting on his neutrality in the Ya-Na Yakubu Andani tragedy.

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is a Governing Board Member of the Accra-based Danquah Institute (DI) and author, most recently, of “The Obama Serenades” (Lulu.com, 2011). E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net. ###