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Opinions of Tuesday, 9 August 2016

Columnist: Okoampa-Ahoofe, Kwame

Not a Chinaman’s chance, Victor Smith!

Mr. Emmanuel Victor Smith, GhanaMr. Emmanuel Victor Smith, Ghana

Ghana’s High Commissioner to The United Kingdom of Great Britain, Mr. Emmanuel Victor Smith, has quite a few questions to answer regarding the violent death of Mr. Joseph Boakye Danquah-Adu, the man who routed him for the Abuakwa-North parliamentary seat in the 2012 general election and the by-election for whose vacant seat he failed to contest, but is now vowing and vying to occupy come Election 2016.

Writer's e-mail: (See “Victor Smith Confirmed NDC-MP Aspirant for Abuakwa-North” Citifmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 8/2/16).

So far, it well appears that police investigators have effectively bungled the forensic process of finding the masterminds behind the early morning stabbing death of Mr. Danquah-Adu.

It may be recalled that initial information filtered into the public domain by police investigators clearly hinted at the pungent smell of contract killing, with a glaring aspect of possible assassination. Since then, the narrative has shifted from one Ananse story speculation to another.

What makes getting to the bottom of Mr. Danquah-Adu’s murder all the more imperative is the fact that initially, the key operatives of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) showed little interest in fielding any contestant for the Abuakwa-North’s by-election. And then just as the hoopla surrounding this most heinous crime seemed to have died down, the party quietly put in a candidate.

And then just the other day, we were told that Mr. Simon Peter Asirifi, the Metropolitan Chief Executive of East-Akyem, who had been scheduled by the party to contest the Abuakwa-North seat in the 2016 general election, was reported to have abruptly vacated his candidacy.

Now comes news of Mr. Smith’s touting of some purported development projects that he claims to have brought to the Abuakwa-North Constituency as his prime claim for regaining the Abuakwa-North’s seat. Now, let’s backtrack to the welter of initial reports that emerged in the wake of the murder of Mr. Danquah-Adu, pointing to the fact of some operatives inside the Flagstaff House having had a run in with the deceased, a successful businessman in his own right, with a political pedigree going back a couple of generations or more, depending on who is doing the recounting.

Back then, we were even told about police investigators having retrieved the phone numbers of several political opponents who may have harbored palpable ill-will for the deceased from the dead man’s cellphones, with at least one of the owners of the numbers being known to have recently threatened the life of Mr. Danquah-Adu.

What I am clearly driving at is that the most pressing need of the residents and voters of Abuakwa-North presently is not those Micky-Mouse projects that Mr. Smith claims to have brought to the constituency he once served in parliament, when the country’s main opposition party, the New Patriotic Party, massively boycotted the 1992 maiden Fourth-Republican general election.

Rather, the people of Akyem-Tafo and Kukurantumi are dire need of all the help they can get in order to promptly get to the bottom of the violent death of Mr. Danquah-Adu. In other words, if Mr. Smith, who spent most of the last couple of years, or so, in Britain’s capital cooling his heels and butts, cannot help us in this direction, then he had better butt out of the political culture of Abuakwa-North and kiss his luck good bye.

Trust me, absolutely nobody is accusing Mr. Smith of having had a hand in the murder of Mr. Danquah-Adu, any more than Mr. Samuel Atta-Akyea who, in the immediate wake of Mr. Danquah-Adu’s death, for whatever reasons best known to himself, the New Patriotic Party’s Member of Parliament for Abuakwa-South, had had the temerity to suggest that this apocalyptic event, somehow, was apt to redound to the good fortune of the New Patriotic Party.

I am writing this column a little past midnight, because the spirit of the man continues to insist on a closure being brought to bear on all those visibly devastated by his violent demise. I also smell the scent of something fishy here; and we would be all the better to promptly get to the heart and bottom of it all. God bless the spirit of Mr. Danquah-Adu and, of course, our Homeland Ghana.